The U.N. human rights chief is denouncing a growing “race to repel” migrants and refugees by some European governments, and says he plans to raise his concerns in Brussels before a European Union summit next week.
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The Serbian interior ministry said in a statement on Tuesday evening it would coordinate all migration-related measures with the EU. There is war in my country, and they are closing the border”, said Mahmoud Hassan, a 23-year-old Syrian.
As EU interior ministers met in Brussels on the crisis, Austria urged migrants to give up hope of moving on.
Thousands of people have pitched tents donated by aid agencies in nearby fields and among railway lines.
“Greece is a poor country, for us and for (its) people”, said 17-year-old Ahmed Merza from Syria’s Qamishli, who had been in the camp for eight days.
Zeid said he had concerns about the building of fences on European borders, the seizure of personal goods from migrants and refugees, and the arbitrary detention of people based on their nationalities.
Passage through those countries began being restricted last month.
Nikos Toskas says the country can provide better conditions in other camps within 10-20 kilometers (6-12 miles) of the Idomeni crossing, where up to 14,000 people live in a waterlogged tent city.
More than a million people have crossed the Aegean Sea into Greece since the start of 2015, many from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq and most aiming to reach wealthy Germany, Austria and Scandinavia. Macedonian authorities halted all entry for migrants on Wednesday, Dejana Nedeljkovic said by phone.
A group of 42 people, more than a dozen of them children, sat inside a coastguard compound, some lying under blankets, in the seaside resort of Didim after being detained.
In response, analysts and campaigners said that though officials have closed the humanitarian corridor that emerged late last summer, irregular migration would probably still continue throughout eastern Europe, albeit to a lesser extent. He named the plan as “one for one system” and said that the only difference between the previous European Union relocation plan and the current one is that Member States will now need to take refugees from Turkey instead of Greece. Five, including an infant, drowned in the attempt.
The Western Balkan nations have slowly been reducing the number of refugees allowed through their frontiers for weeks, effectively dashing the hopes of migrants hoping to reach richer nations in other parts of Europe. Macedonian authorities say they could go back to an established migrant camp less than 1 mile (1 km) away in Macedonia, but they refuse.
The talks came after Slovenia and Croatia, two of the countries along the Balkan route used by hundreds of thousands of people in recent months, barred entry to transiting migrants from midnight Wednesday.
Some 500 refugees and migrants, Afghans in their vast majority, set off for a 15 km march from the relocation center of Schisto in Piraeus to the Greek capital, carrying placards with slogans such as “We do not want discrimination”.
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“Border restrictions which do not permit determination of the circumstances of each individual violate worldwide and European law”, he said. He said people will again try crossing the Mediterranean, or go through Bulgaria and Albania.
