The mayor of Bihać, Šuhret Fazlić, says that the city and the Una-Sana canton generally best understand migrants and the situation these people face. About ninety percent of migrants who entered or left BiH passed through Bihać and Velika Kladuša. The situation is currently much better than before, and we hope it will stay that way.
“We went through various stages, from the initial ignorance in this regard, the situation when we were “run over”, to the period when the competent state authorities took over the activities related to migrants and when that situation was normalized. The situation is not even close to what it used to be. Currently, there are 300 to 400 migrants in the center of Lipa near Bihać, 150 to 200 in Borići, maybe there are several hundred of them in wild locations, but that is no longer the situation it was three or four years ago,” stressed Fazlić.
As he said, migrants in the center of Lipa live in a warm and clean environment, they have the conditions for a normal social life.
“It would be good if there were as few as possible, but if there are even a thousand or 1,500, the center of Lipa can receive them,” he said.
He specifies that the reception center is taken care of by the Service for Affairs with Foreigners of Bosnia and Herzegovina, security is provided by agencies for the coordination of police bodies, and non-governmental organizations are also active in that area.
Fazlić emphasizes that at the beginning there were migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maghreb countries in the area of USC… Now they are migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Cuba and mostly younger people and/or families.
“The structure of migrants is changing. I have a feeling that the approach of Croatia and other EU countries is also changing when it comes to this. There are no more columns of battered and tired migrants that the police were returning through the forest to Bihać. There is nothing more, it would be good if it remained like this,” says Fazlić.
When asked about the mood of the local population towards migrants, Mayor Fazlić points out that it has changed over time, but in general people still have an understanding for these people.
“Bihać is a city that suffered, we were all ready to help and we did. Later, as time passed, the mood changed, but in general people still have an understanding for migrants. Those people are involved in the life of the community, there was no problem with that. We would be happiest if there were no migrants, but when they are already there, we know how to deal with it,” he emphasized.
There are different data on the number of migrants who have so far passed through Bihać and other parts of the USC, and as the mayor of Bihać said in the most difficult period, there were seven thousand migrants in one day.
“In the most difficult period, in one day, there were seven thousand migrants, 150 arrived by train per day. 70,000 to 100,000 migrants must have passed through Bihać and Velika Kladuša, where the situation was even worse and it is now, because they do not have a reception center (after the temporary reception center Miral was closed earlier), so the migrants are accommodated in the open, which is then a problem for them but also the local population. I think that about ninety percent of migrants who entered or left BiH passed through Bihać and Velika Kladuša,” he emphasized.
The Mayor of Bihac Šuhret Fazlić participated in Sarajevo at the final conference of the Project ‘Reduction of irregular migration in the EU by strengthening the capacity of structures related to migration in the Western Balkans’, which was implemented by the international organization Hilwsferk in cooperation with the local aid and development association HAJDE. That project was co-financed by the Fund for Asylum, Migration and Integration and the Federal Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Austria.
In addition to emphasizing the value of projects of this type, Fazlić also emphasizes the contribution of the international organization Hilwsferk, which contributed to the construction of the Lipa water supply system with significant financial participation.
He characterized this as an example of how non-governmental organizations, humanitarian organizations, international agencies, UN agencies, the EU and others should work and how many worked to solve the migrant crisis.
