Many in a crowd of 3,000 migrants who spent the night out in the open repeatedly tried to charge Macedonian police after the border was shut to crossings Thursday.
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Hungary erected anti-immigrant billboards and said it started building a fence on its border with its southern neighbor Serbia – a key transit country – earlier this year. “I don’t have a passport or identity documents”. “The policemen let us on the train only because they felt sorry for the baby”.
This is far from enough, since the calculations presented by the Macedonian Ministry of the Interior show that positioning more police at the border is costing the country at least 800,000 euros every month. Interior Ministry spokesman Ivan Netik defended the decision by saying his country isn’t equipped to handle Muslim migrants because it doesn’t have any mosques. The UN has said that this year crisis-hit Greece has received over 160,000 migrants, through the sea routes alone, predominantly from Syria, Libya and Afghanistan.
“This measure is being introduced for the security of (Macedonian) citizens who live in the border areas and better treatment of the migrants”, he said.
The stepped-up border enforcement came after Greece picked up some 2,500 migrants from its islands of Kalymnos, Lyros, Kos, and Lesvos and landed near Athens on Thursday in a bid to relieve stress on the islands, where boats full mostly of Syrian migrants arriving via Turkey have led to a risky overcrowding of refugee centres.
“The Macedonian government has decided to declare a state of emergency in crisis regions, on its southern and northern borders so according to laws, army can be deployed on the territory of Republic of Macedonia“.
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said in a statement that it is “particularly anxious about the thousands of vulnerable refugees and migrants, especially women and children, now massed on the Greek side of the border amid deteriorating conditions”. Some commentators suggested it may play well with voters for the government to be seen taking on Greece for allowing thousands of Middle Eastern, African and Asian migrants to pour across its northern border. The other one goes through Italy.
“The Macedonian Railway Company has no more capacity to carry all those who want to travel toward western European countries”, the head of the state railway, Nikola Kostov, told Telma TV channel, urging neighboring countries and others to provide more train carriages.
But Slovakia has made clear it is opposed to the idea of EU quotas on migrants.
“Every country has the power to patrol its own borders, but this kind of para-military response is an unacceptable push-back in violation of worldwide law”.
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“There is a lot of frustration and anger among the migrants and refugees because of the closure”.
