TIRANA, May 21 – A government representative said on Sunday Montenegro does not exclude the possibility of building a migrant fence on the Albania-Montenegro border to keep out illegal migrants and refugees coming from Syria and other third countries.
Vojislav Dragovic, the head of Montenegro’s department for state border supervision, gave this statement in the context of the increasing refugee influx coming from Albania.
“If there is a high refugee flux, we will build a wired wall on the border with Albania,” Dragovic said.
He added that Albanian authorities occasionally refuse to take back refugees being sent back from Montenegro within the bilateral refugee readmission agreement framework.
Thousands of Middle East refugees and migrants fleeing war and poverty continue to head toward Western Europe via the Western Balkans. Recently, smugglers have been using a new corridor passing through Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina to reach Croatia, which is a European Union member state.
Montenegro’s statement is not unprecedented, as a number of EU states have built fences and walls to keep refugees outside their borders. Hungary built one on the border with Serbia and Croatia during the 2015 refugee crisis, when more than 1 million refugees and migrants entered the EU.
According to recent reports, the number of refugees passing the border to Montenegro has indeed increased lately, worsening the government’s capacity to deal with their needs accordingly.
In 2015, Montenegro opened its first refugee camp in Spuzhe, next to Podgorica, while officials have said two more camps will open close to Albania, in Zogaj and in Hani i Hotit.
