Greece’s government is ordering authorities on islands near Tur… There was no word of returning migrants or refugees to departure stations.
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Further north, hundreds of refugees and refugees have walked out of similar camps in an effort to get to the border on foot.
At a Greek migrant camp, 24-year-old Jamshid Azizi said he tried to cross into Macedonia in the last few days but was sent back to Greece.
By Saturday, the number of people at Idomeni had reached 5,500, local police said, with 800 others gathered at another provisional camp some 20km away.
Meanwhile, buses carrying hundreds of refugees were stopped throughout Greece to slow a buildup of hopeful migrants at its border.
But Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner raised the possibility of Greece’s exclusion from Europe’s Schengen passport-free travel zone, which is cracking as countries reintroduce border controls. But to those on the road and to Greece, a financially struggling nation with a lengthy seacoast that is impossible to seal who is responsible for the border restrictions nearly doesn’t matter.
In a bid to regulate the flow of refugees until the border situation is resolved, Greek authorities are trying to house them on the islands where they land by boat from neighbouring Turkey.
The European Commission said separately it failed to “understand” Hungary’s decision to hold a referendum on mandatory quotas for refugees that the bloc had agreed on previous year. “I was born in war”. Some were sleeping rough in central Athens, and others in stadiums. Police said the men, who were rushed to hospital, one unconscious, had tried to draw attention to their predicament.
Some 400 migrants from Syria and Iraq demanded to leave a transit camp in northern Greece Thursday and have begun a 70-kilometer (45-mile) trek walking to the country’s border with Macedonia.
The migration crisis shows no signs of abating with 100,000 arriving in Europe so far this year on top of one million in 2015, with majority coming via Turkey across the Aegean Sea to the Greek islands.
Suddenly, Afghans appear to be the new pariahs of Europe. “Why can Syrians and Iraqis pass but not us?”
He added that ministers of the seven countries had “a good discussion” about the immigration issue and established a joint approach, noting Mediterranean EU countries were in the front line of the crisis.
Bitter sniping has ensued between Greece and other European Union members as Greece insists the EU’s 28 nations share the refugee burden equally. The difference is accounted for by factors such as people being registered twice, going home, going to relatives or continuing on to other countries in Scandinavia and elsewhere. Those recriminations culminated in Greece’s recalling its ambassador to Austria on Thursday.
The meeting includes interior and foreign ministers from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.
De Maiziere said he would go to Rabat seeking to boost cooperation and brushed off criticism from human rights groups which have decried a policy they say could, for example, threaten the safety of homosexual asylum seekers.
The EU on Friday blasted countries’ unilateral actions, instead pushing for a deal with Ankara to be discussed at a special summit in early March.
While the politicians wrangle, the refugees still stream in, risking their lives across the winter seas in the hopes of a better future. By Thursday, 854 Afghans were stuck at Macedonia’s border with Serbia, and 300 more on Serbia’s border to Croatia.
Many of his friends were already talking to smugglers, but not him.
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“If they want to block the road, they should block (it) for all”, declared Azizi, who says he was an interpreter for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan, not an occupation looked upon kindly by the Taliban.
