Hundreds of refugees and migrants attempting to cross the border from Greece into Macedonia were met by riot police and tear gas on Friday morning as the country cracked down on the growing crowds entering the country.
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But after Friday’s clashes, the Macedonian Interior Ministry said Friday it would allow a “limited number of illegal migrants in vulnerable categories to enter Macedonia and they may be provided aid in accordance with the state’s capacities”.
A throng of people pressed against the police line and the razor wire strung along the border, many holding crying children on their shoulders and begging to be allowed to pass. Women screamed, and men shouted that they were being suffocated in the crush. The move appeared to raise tensions among many of those prevented from crossing.
In a state of emergency, Macedonia beefed up their police force and controlled the mob with tear gas and stun guns, along the border to help control the thousands flooding in daily.
Macedonia has confronted refugee crises before, most notably in 1999 during the war in Serbia’s then southern province of Kosovo when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians took shelter in refugee camps on Macedonia’s northern border.
Macedonia has become a key transit route for migrants arriving in Greece and “attempting to reach prosperous EU countries”.
The previous day the Macedonian government declared a state of emergency on its southern and northern border following an unprecedented influx of refugees.
Macedonian police said blocking the refugees on the 50-kilometer (30-mile) frontier was introduced “for the security of citizens who live in the border areas and for better treatment of the migrants”.
Until now Bulgaria’s main focus has been on stopping migrants crossing over its border with Turkey, where it has dispatched over 1,000 extra police and where it is expanding a 30-kilometre barrier. Four people had to be sent to the hospital.
“The clampdown came after days of chaotic scenes at the local railway station as thousands of people tried to board trains to Serbia, young children being passed through open carriage windows”.
“The problem will get bigger and bigger”, Dimitar Bechev, the chairman of the European Policy Institute in Sofia, said by phone.
“We are exhausted from the situation in Syria”.
Until now, the border has been porous, with only a few patrols on each side.
Greece, particularly on the tourist hotspot islands, has been overwhelmed by the influx because some 160,000 had arrived in the country so far this year.
Nearly 39,000 migrants, the majority of them from Syria and Afghanistan, have been registered to pass through Macedonia during the past month. They reached 9,464 between Friday, August 14 and Wednesday, it said. “We need this road to see our future”.
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Europe’s migrant crisis has escalated in recent months as increasing numbers of people risk their lives to travel on overloaded, unsafe boats, mainly through Greece and Italy.
