Thirty thousand stranded in Greece as EU tries to halt inflow from Middle East, South Asia and Africa
The Wall Street Journal
By NEKTARIA STAMOULI
Updated March 2, 2016 10:16 p.m. ET
IDOMENI, Greece—A clampdown along Balkan borders has left 30,000 migrants trapped in Greece, marking a new stage in the humanitarian crisis swamping Europe.
Countries farther up the migration trail, from Macedonia to Austria, are now letting in only a few hundred a day, and sometimes no one.
Allowing migrants to be stranded in Greece is considered the EU’s last option to halt the relentless inflow of people from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. More and more EU governments have lost faith in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of stopping irregular migrants at Turkey, spreading bona fide refugees around the EU, and keeping Europe’s internal borders open.
Ms. Merkel warned this week of “chaos” in Greece, but other European Union leaders say there is no alternative to shutting down the Balkan migration route.
“The first priority is to rapidly stem the flows,” European Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday while visiting Croatia, a country on the now-constricted Balkan trail. Europe’s monthslong furor over migration “is testing our Union to the limit,” Mr. Tusk said.
Senior EU officials argue that a humanitarian crisis in Greece, ameliorated with EU money, would help deter further migrants from traveling to Europe. On Wednesday, the EU executive in Brussels said it could send Greece €300 million ($326 million) quickly, from a new €700 million emergency fund for the bloc.
Greece is rapidly becoming a pressure cooker. Refugees and other migrants are growing frustrated and angry. Hundreds tried to storm the border with Macedonia on Monday, only to be driven back with tear gas. The presence of riot police and military vehicles is growing daily. Authorities are hastily building a network of camps around the country, hoping to spread the trapped migrants and avoid major unrest.
At Idomeni alone, nearly 10,000 people were stranded by Wednesday at a camp built for 1,500. Most are sleeping in tents or in the open, in muddy fields next to the razor-wire border fence erected by Macedonia.
An air of growing desperation hangs over the camp. There is little sign so far that the closed border or squalid conditions are deterring people from fleeing the Middle East’s war zones for Europe.
Ramadan Muhamad, a 27-year-old hotel manager from Syria, said he and his wife have been sleeping in a small tent by the fence for 10 days. “My wife is eight months pregnant. This means I have one month to go somewhere safe,” he said. His wife had breathing problems after Macedonian police fired tear gas to disperse people trying to force their way across the border, he said.
Like most people here, Mr. Muhamad wants to reach Germany, where he fears the policy of welcoming refugees won’t last much longer. Berlin should call the Balkan countries and tell them to let people pass through, he said: “If Germany does that, they will have no choice but to do as Merkel says,” he said, adding that he would gladly return to Syria “when the war stops."
But Ms. Merkel—despite her criticisms of Austria and others for closing their gates—hasn’t called for them to be reopened. The chancellor is under huge domestic pressure to reduce the numbers of refugees and migrants arriving to Germany, after around a million came in 2015.
Germany’s interior ministry said on Wednesday that arrivals in the country have fallen to a few hundred a day lately, compared with about 2,000 daily in February, and peaks of around 10,000 a day in September.
On Wednesday Macedonia let only about 170 people pass through the fence, via a checkpoint where hundreds, mainly from Syria, wait after their papers have been verified.
At night, the air near the border fence becomes suffocating as people burn garbage to stay warm. Many children can be heard coughing. Nongovernmental organization Doctors Without Borders says it has been treating many people suffering from the cold, and some with respiratory problems.
Greece’s foreign minister Nikos Kotzias told Greek broadcaster Skai on Tuesday that the country can cope with up to 150,000 refugees. Some officials say privately they fear the number could rise much higher than that.
Greece’s worry is that a huge number could be stuck here indefinitely. The EU’s plan for relocating refugees around the continent—championed by Ms. Merkel—is floundering for lack of takers.
Fearing violence, Greek authorities are trying to reduce the crush at the border with Macedonia by putting up migrants further south, including in Athens and its port of Piraeus. Army bases, public parks, sports stadiums and other facilities are hastily being turned into refugee camps.
But many migrants fear they may be detained indefinitely in the new camps and prefer to sleep rough. For those who have some cash left after crossing Turkey and the Aegean, hopes of reaching Germany now depend on smugglers’ ability to bypass fences and riot police.
Many, however, are out of money and at a loss.
Vayel Yasan, a 34-year-old engineer who fled Syria’s war, is among many sleeping outside a container terminal at Piraeus, with a blanket for a bed. With bus services for migrants restricted, he is thinking of walking the 400 miles to the border. He said his biggest fear is being sent back to the Middle East.
“If they tell me that my options are staying here or going back to Syria, I would say kill me here,” Mr. Yasan says.
Many Syrians and Afghans at the dockside are debating alternative routes into Europe, from hiding on a cargo ship to Italy, to walking over the mountains into Albania.
Smugglers have been approaching them with promises of transit, but prices ranging from €1,000 to €3,000 are beyond reach for many of the asylum seekers, who say they spent all their cash on the dangerous crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands.
Fahad Mohamed, a Syrian who arrived here with his wife and four children aged from 7 years to 1 month, said he would try the trek over the mountains if he were alone. “I know that my little baby girl wouldn’t make it, she would die in a couple of days,” he said.
“But on the other hand I have no other option. If nothing happens, I’ll swear to God I’ll jump in the sea; my baby first and then me,” he said.
Write to Nektaria Stamouli at nektaria.stamouli@wsj.com
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