“What we are seeing is that people are leaving voluntarily”.
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Greek authorities have been sending in cleaning crews regularly and have provided portable toilets, but conditions have been precarious at best, with heavy rain creating muddy ponds.
There were no reports of violence as Greek police continued to put refugees, by the thousands, onto buses headed toward other, more formal camps, run by the Greek army.
The operation began around dawn Tuesday when about 20 riot police units, 400 police in total started to transfer people on buses.
Originally set up by the United Nations refugee agency last September, the Idomeni camp was meant to hold a maximum 2,000 people on a short-term basis as they made their way along the Balkan route to northern Europe during the peak of the continent’s refugee crisis.
Greece was the main entry point for more than a million migrants who made it to Europe previous year, most after perilous sea crossings.
A refugee boy on a wheelchair passes in front of riot policemen during the operation to clear the Idomeni refugee camp.
In recent weeks, the camp had begun taking on an image of semi-permanence, with refugees setting up small makeshift shops selling everything from cooking utensils to falafel and bread.
More than 54,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in financially struggling Greece since Balkan and European countries shut their land borders to a massive flow of people escaping war and poverty at home.
Aid workers and photographers have been publishing photos of the forced eviction – Greek authorities have been trying to close the camp for months and transfer its inhabitants to official camps – and the suddenness of the closure has left a sea of discarded possessions where, for the past few months, so many carried out their lives in limbo.
Almost a million people have passed through Greece, the vast majority arriving on islands from the nearby Turkish coast. Under the deal, people arriving clandestinely on Greek islands from the Turkish coast after March 18 face deportation to Turkey unless they gain asylum in Greece.
The evacuation of Idomeni signalled “the establishment of medium to long-term camps on European soil”, said Melanie Ward of aid group International Rescue Committee.Idomeni signalled “the establishment of medium to long-term camps on European soil”, said Melanie Ward of aid group International Rescue Committee.
Journalists were barred from the camp during the evacuation operation, stopped at a police roadblock a few kilometres away.
Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman on immigration, said the line should open “in coming days”. Others took taxis heading to the country’s main northern city of Thessaloniki or a nearby town of Polycastro. “That’s what everybody who’s been there said”, Hind Al Mkawi, a 38-year-old refugee from Damascus, told the AP news agency on Monday evening. “At Idomeni, I spent three months just eating and sleeping, but I want to work”, said Khayata. “We lost clients, we lost money, time and our credibility”. “It only serves the interests of smugglers … removing all the refugees from the disgrace which is Idomeni is in their own interests”.
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Worldwide charity Save the Children said it was concerned about a lack of basic services such as bathrooms and shelters in the official camps.
