Greece
Chaos and despair in Idomeni
Thousands of refugees are waiting at the Greek-Macedonian border. The tension rises for days. Now, the Situation is escalated. DW-reporter Marianna Karakoulaki was spot on.
Despair, tension, rage, Chaos, in contrast to the atmosphere in Idomeni not describe. In the small village at the Greek-Macedonian border with less than 150 inhabitants, about 7,000 refugees are waiting for the next trip. But the is closed to them.
“What’s going to happen with us?” asks Mohammed. For eight weeks, he stuck to the border of Macedonia. “I cry every day. I have a wife and our Baby is sick. I have the number 65, and I’m next. But how long must we wait?”
Although it is said that 500 people per day are allowed to pass through the border, reports aid workers and journalists that on Saturday, less than 220 refugees were let through. On Sunday it was 300 and in the early Monday morning a further 50. The refugees are angry and show it: On Saturday there were the first protests – quiet and peaceful. On Sunday they went farther, and were line of heated, eventually stormed the refugees in the train.
The Frustration grows
“We don’t want food, we want no money. We want to continue,” says Reem, a combative woman from Syria, the state at the time of the protests in the first row. “Look at me! I haven’t showered in clothes and I am”, she complains.
The despair has fueled the tensions along the Greek-Macedonian border attached
“Here are just too many people. In the Camp currently 7000 refugees are housed, although it is geared for only 2000 people,” says Antonis Rigas, Camp-coordinator of the aid organisation Doctors without borders (MSF).
On Monday, the atmosphere changes completely. It is in the air that something is about to happen. Hundreds of people – mostly from Syria and Iraq will gather on the tracks, everywhere they mutter, and some leaders try to give instructions. The people pushing in the direction of the gates on the tracks, through the trains to the border fence to happen.
Storm on the frontier
Eventually, the Blockade of the Greek police breaks in. Refugees storming straight for the border crossing. Some of the men in the front row to use a street sign as a battering RAM to the border fence to break down. Others try to climb over the border fence, where possible. A speaking choir calls: “Open the border!” – first in Arabic, then in English.
While the Macedonian police is watching unmoved on the other hand, loses lot of patience. Some of the press as long as with violence against the gate until it opens for a brief Moment. Immediately, the guards block the passage – just so, the refugees try to more determined, in the Macedonian Camp in Gevgelija.
Stones and tear gas
This barricade gives in to the pressure, the gate opened again. The Situation gets out of control. Stones fly in the direction of the border guards. The firing of tear gas directly into the crowd on the Greek side. Refugees and journalists racing in a panic, screaming apart, out of fear. But the tear gas is more a shot in their direction, even as the crowd dissolves.
The Macedonian police is responding to the stone-throwers with tear gas
A young girl is looking completely out of breath after something that relieves the pain of the tear gas triggers. Desperately she is looking for her mother.
Meanwhile, some refugees try to calm the situation, in order to escalate even further. “I told you that you should stay calm and not throw stones,” says Rami, a 20-year-old Syrians. He came from Kozani, around 150 kilometers to the South, because he speaks English and I want to help. “Unfortunately, you have not listened to me. This output was to be expected.”
“We have to go to Germany”
As the situation calms down somewhat later, the protests continue, even in the night. “This can’t go on. I want to go back,” says a young Syrian. “You say that the situation in the Hotspots is better. I’ve heard that I can apply for in Samos asylum, if I stay two months there.” Then, so hot he could travel by plane to Germany. “We have spent a lot of money. This is no way to live. The food is not enough – look at the snake! We have to go to Germany,” he says.
In the transition camp in Idomeni in any case, he could not stay longer. Hundreds of refugees arrive here every day – some with cabs, others on foot.
The refugees want to be able to Germany, but stuck in Greece, without knowing where you’re going
After the riots, the Greek interior has forbidden the Ministry of the journalists to enter the so-called Hotspots for refugees. Idomeni neither Hotpot nor a real refugee camp. There are too many people just wait to pass the border.
And they want their stories to be told – in the hope that the pressure on the governments of the Balkan countries and the EU increased. The want on 7. March on the refugee crisis for advice. Meanwhile, more and more people are coming across the Mediterranean to Greece and eventually to the Idomeni, or to another border crossing. There, you will be caught between the Chaos and the question of how to do it.