Slovenia asks for EU police force over refugee crisis

Slovenia has asked the European Union (EU) for a police force to regulate the influx of refugees crossing into the country from neighboring Croatia.

Late on Wednesday, Slovenian Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar told TV Sloveni, the state news agency, that “Slovenia has already asked other EU member states for police units.”

More than 12,600 asylum seekers have entered Slovenia in the past 24 hours on their way to their preferred destinations of northern and western Europe, authorities said.

Earlier this week, Slovenia's parliament gave more power to the army to help police control the borders as the country plans to call in retired police back into the force to help administer the huge inflow of refugees.

Since Saturday, a huge number of migrants started coming to Slovenia after Hungary on Friday sealed its border with Croatia.

Croatia and neighboring Slovenia agreed earlier this week that they would keep their borders open under the condition that Germany and Austria would also do the same. 

‘Let us go’

On Wednesday, a dozen tents were destroyed by a fire that broke out at the main refugee camp on Slovenia's border with Croatia.

According to reports, there were hundreds of mostly young male refugees nearby who chanted, "Let us go! Let us go!"

The government said that it was still investigating the cause of the blaze, but police at the scene told AP that asylum seekers set a stack of blankets, supplied by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, deliberately on fire to protest against the conditions in the camp on the outskirts of the town of Brezice in eastern Slovenia.

Many of those demanding to leave the Slovenian border town for Austria, Germany and other European Union nations to the north were complaining about the conditions and the lack of help they needed.

Emergency Meeting

This is while the European Union (EU) has called an extraordinary summit with Balkan countries on the refugee crisis.

On Sunday, the leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia will meet in Brussels with their counterparts from non-EU states like Macedonia and Serbia, according to the office of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

According to the International Organization for Migration, over 600,000 people fleeing foreign-backed wars, terrorism, and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa have landed on European shores this year after making dangerous sea journeys from Turkey to Greece and across the Mediterranean to Italy.

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