Macedonian police used stun grenades and tear gas Friday to drive back thousands of migrants and refugees trying to cross its southern border from Greece.
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Macedonian authorities declared a state of emergency at its border, sending police and military forces to try to prevent the refugee wave, but admitted that the measure was not a definitive solution to the huge migrant crisis.
Reporters on the border said tensions quickly subsided, but a crowd of at least 1,000 was sitting in no-man’s land at the entrance to Macedonia, their path blocked by riot police with armoured vehicles.
Thousands of refugees were stranded in a no man’s land near the Macedonian town of Gevgelija, from where they planned to catch trains that would take them to the Serbian border on their way to Hungary.
The numbers on the Greek-Macedonian border have been building for a couple of days, and Friday’s clashes broke out as the crowd surged towards the police cordon, shouting “Help us”.
“I don’t know why are they doing this to us”, said Mohammad Wahid, an Iraqi.
“While understanding the pressures facing FYROM [former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia] and legitimate security concerns, UNHCR appeals to the government to put in place mechanisms necessary to establish an orderly and protection-sensitive management of its borders”, the UNHCR said in a statement Friday.
Those who could not cross spent the rainy and chilly night in the open with little food and water.
Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU’s Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner, insisted the commission had been working “day and night” to offer funding and other support to states struggling to cope with the influx of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Nearly 39,000 have been registered passing through over the past month, double the month before.
“We can’t believe that we are here from this morning”, Ahmet Husa of Syria told Reuters. “They got my brother and most of the others and sent them back to Greece“.
“It is a fact that we are facing an increased pressure from the influx of migrants attempting to cross the border”, said Ivo Kotevski, a spokesman for the Macedonian Ministry of Internal Affairs, to the New York Times. “Right now there are more than 3.000 people there”, MSF Spokesperson Tim Shenk told Mashable. Hungary is building a 110-mile long fence along its border with Serbia to keep migrants and refugees from entering the nation. Najip Zazal, an Afghan migrant, said: “People are very nervous because they have been waiting here for many hours”, “It’s scorching sun and there are no facilities here even for children or sick people”. Sealing it disrupts the Balkan corridor for migrants who start in Turkey, take boats to Greece or walk to Bulgaria, then make their way through Macedonia or Serbia heading north to the EU.
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Instead, they head north, crossing the border with non-E.U. member Macedonia that has been relatively porous until recently, with an estimated 2,000 people a day making it across.
