Bosnian Security Minister Dragan Mektic said today the government would close the infamous Vucjak refugee camp on the Croatian border next week and relocate its residents to other camps.
Aid organisations say the camp is unfit for habitation, as it is sited on a former landfill next to a minefield remaining from the 1992-5 wars that tore apart the former republic of Yugoslavia.
It has no running water or toilets and heavy snowfall has now placed refugees in more danger.
Dunja Mijatovic, the Commissioner for Human Rights sent by the Council of Europe to investigate the camp, said it should be shut immediately.
“The living conditions of hundreds of human beings in the improvised Vucjak camp are shameful,” he declared. “That camp should never have been opened in the first place.
“Many people lack adequate clothing and footwear. It is inhumane and unacceptable to keep people in such conditions.”
The spotlight was also on a UN-run refugee centre in Libya that the international body is now trying to close, offering residents $112 (£85) each to leave and saying it cannot provide food after the new year.
The Gathering and Departure Facility in Triploi has been overwhelmed by refugees fleeing from detention in other Libyan centres where torture and the sale of refugees as slaves or into the sex trade is rife.
It now contains 1,200 people — double the number it was built for — and is struggling with outbreaks of tuberculosis and overflowing sewage.
The European Union funds the Libyan coastguard in a bid to stop refugees making it to Europe, but the UN has attacked the practice, saying the country’s detention centres are utterly unsafe.
SOURCE: Morning Star Online
