InfoMigrants

One male migrant has died, and several others are reportedly missing after a boat capsized on the Una River on the border between Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina.

Croatian police said the incident occurred in the early hours of Monday (February 23), around 90 kilometers southeast of the capital Zagreb in the area of Hrvatska Kostajnica. Witnesses said they heard cries of help coming from the Una River, police added in a statement.

When the emergency services arrived at the scene, reported the news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), they found one man had already died. They were able to rescue two others from the water, including a Chinese national.

A Bosnian national was later arrested on suspicion of migrant trafficking, reports AFP.

Rescue crews continued searching the river for other people. Local media reported there were at least eight people on board when the boat overturned.

The nationalities of those on board have not yet been reported. However, a Croatian tabloid newspaper known as Index Portal reported that there may have been as many as seven or eight Chinese nationals on board, according to the news agency Associated Press (AP). This was not confirmed by police.

Balkan route

In 2025, the European Border Agency Frontex registered 12,525 irregular crossing attempts along the so-called Western Balkan route, which can include journeying through Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia. However, the number of people actually making those journeys can differ from the numbers detected.

Some people may make several attempts to cross a border before finally getting through or trying a different route, while others will never be detected. NGOs and organizations that work with migrants further up the route, like in Italy and Slovenia, have told InfoMigrants that they believe, based on the numbers of arrivals they are seeing in their cities, that the number of migrants using that route remains fairly stable despite significant drops in the reported irregular crossing attempts.

This, say the organizations, could be because smugglers have honed their strategies and are now passing people more quickly along the route and also sometimes provide accommodation for them too, so that the migrants avoid staying in any state-run institutions where they might be registered.

'Plan B'?

The presence of at least one Chinese national in Monday's incident may or may not be linked to a phenomenon identified recently by the regional investigative magazine Balkan Insight. On February 13, they published a long investigation pointing to more Chinese nationals using the Balkan route to migrate to Europe.

According to Balkan Insight, the chances of settling in the USA for Chinese migrants are becoming "increasingly bleak". This is reportedly prompting more to travel visa-free to Serbia or Bosnia Herzegovina and then attempt crossings into the European Union. This has become known to some Chinese as the 'Plan B'.

File photo: This is not the first time that boats have capsized on the rivers around the Bosnian-Croatian border, in December, a boat capsized on the Sava river in eastern Croatia, resulting in three deaths | Photo: Nenad Opacak / AP Photo / picture alliance / dpa

In 2024, more than 620 Chinese nationals were registered attempting border crossings on the Western Balkan route. A further 30 were detected traveling through Greece and Albania, according to Balkan Insight, citing Frontex data.

In 2025, Chinese nationals detected on the Balkan route reached 706. In October and December last year, four Chinese nationals reportedly drowned trying to cross from Serbia into Croatia.

Push factors and dangers

One of the Chinese nationals interviewed by Balkan Insight, a 23-year-old they named Wang, told the magazine that he had been out of work since 2023 and that jobs in China are "exhausting. There’s no time off and wages are often delayed," he claimed. The report said that youth unemployment in China "remains high" and stood at around 18.9 percent for those in the 16 to 24 age bracket.

Because of the visa-free travel possibilities for Chinese nationals in both Serbia and Bosnia, explained lawyer Milica Svabic to Balkan Insight, Chinese nationals can move and be "completely invisible" at least for some parts of their journeys. This, thinks Svabic, "can open the door to labor exploitation [and] sexual exploitation." Svabic is affiliated with the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv, which provides legal and social support for migrants and refugees on the Balkan route.

Chief Inspector Viljem Toskan head of the State Border and Aliens Department at Koper Police Directorate talking to InfoMigrants in early October 2025 | Photo: Emma Wallis / InfoMigrants

When InfoMigrants joined police patrols further up the route in Slovenia in October 2025, Chief Inspector Viljem Toskan, head of the State Border and Aliens Department at Koper Police Directorate in Slovenia, also mentioned that officers had sometimes found that drivers transporting groups of Chinese nationals toward Western Europe were themselves Chinese nationals already based in the EU with residency permits. This, he suggested, indicates that the smuggling of this national group may be organized from within the Chinese-speaking communities.

Seeking asylum?

Data from Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) also suggests that more Chinese people might be traveling the route. In 2025, 1,700 Chinese nationals applied for asylum in Germany, a threefold increase on the numbers in 2023, stated Balkan Insight.

Italy, which hosts the largest Chinese community in Europe, has seen even more applications. More than 3,800 filed for asylum in 2025, according to UNHCR data. A total of 1,500 applied for protection in the UK.

However, although the number of applicants may be increasing, the approval rating for Chinese nationals is still fairly low. In 2025, 56 percent of applicants from China were rejected by the German authorities, according to Balkan Insight.

With AFP and AP