Thread: Troops fire stun grenades at illegal aliens on border

Macedonian troops fire stun grenades at migrants on border

Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press
Updated 10:13 am, Friday, August 21, 2015


Photo: Darko Vojinovic, AP

Migrant men help a fellow migrant man holding a boy as they are stuck between Macedonian riot police officers and migrants during a clash near the border train station of Idomeni, northern Greece, as they wait to be allowed by the Macedonian police to cross the border from Greece to Macedonia, Friday, Aug. 21, 2015. Macedonian special police forces have fired stun grenades to disperse thousands of migrants stuck on a no-man's land with Greece, a day after Macedonia declared a state of emergency on its borders to deal with a massive influx of migrants heading north to Europe.


IDOMENI, Greece (AP) — Macedonian special police forces fired stun grenades Friday to disperse thousands of migrants stuck on a no-man's land with Greece, a day after declaring a state of emergency on its border to deal with a massive influx of migrants heading north to the European Union.

A crowd of 3,000 migrants who spent night out in the open made several attempts to charge Macedonian police Friday, a day after after the border was shut to crossings. At least eight people were injured in the melee, according to Greek police.

One youngster was bleeding from what appeared to be shrapnel from the stun grenades that were fired directly into the crowd.

Police backed by armored vehicles also spread coils of razor wire over rail tracks used by migrants to cross on foot from Greece to Macedonia.

Hours after the clashes, Macedonian police started letting small groups of families with children cross the border by walking along the railway tracks to the railway station in the Macedonian town of Gevgelija.

The migrants, many with babies and young children, spent the chilly and windy night in a dusty field without food and with little water.

Some ate corn they picked from nearby fields.

"I don't know why are they doing this to us," said Mohammad Wahid, an Iraqi. "I don't have passport or identity documents. I cannot return and have nowhere to go. I will stay here till the end."

Greece has seen an unprecedented wave of migrants this year, the vast majority fleeing war and conflict in Syria and Afghanistan. More than 160,000 have arrived so far, mostly crossing in inflatable dinghies from the nearby Turkish coast — an influx that has overwhelmed Greek authorities and the country's small Aegean islands.

Yet few, if any, of the migrants arriving want to remain in Greece, a country in the grip of a financial crisis. The vast majority head straight to the country's northern border with Macedonia, where they cram onto trains and head north through Serbia and Hungary on their way to the more prosperous EU countries such Germany, the Netherlands and those in Scandinavia.

Last weekend there had been chaotic scenes at the station as hundreds of migrants struggled to board trains.

Macedonian police spokesman Ivo Kotevski said both police and the army would control the 50-kilometer (30 mile) border stretch to stop a "massive" influx of migrants coming from Greece.

"This measure is being introduced for the security of citizens who live in the border areas and for better treatment of the migrants," he said Thursday.

Until now, the border has been porous, with only a few patrols on each side. 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.

Almost 39,000 migrants, most of them Syrians, have registered as passing through Macedonia over the past month, double the number from the month before.

On Greece's eastern islands, hundreds of migrants arrive each day in overladen, often unseaworthy boats. The Greek coast guard said Friday that a patrol boat from Europe's border agency Frontex had spotted a capsized boat off the island of Lesbos. One migrant was found dead and 15 others were rescued.

Separately, the coast guard said it had picked up 620 people in 15 search-and-rescue operations in the last 24 hours off the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Agathonissi, Leros, Farmakonissi, Kos and Megisti.

That doesn't include the hundreds more who have reached the islands on their own.

A Greek government-chartered ferry carrying about 2,200 mainly Syrian refugees from the island of Lesbos — which sees the highest number of arrivals in Greece — was due to reach Athens later Friday, the coast guard said.

Thousands of refugees waiting to head for Athens and then the border with Macedonia are stuck on Lesbos, as it is hard to find ferry tickets at the height of the summer holiday season.

Before heading for Lesbos, the Eleftherios Venizelos ferry had been used as a floating refugee registration center on Kos, another island close to the Turkish coast where hundreds of people arrive daily in small boats.

http://www.chron.com/news/world/arti...ts-6457060.php

Why did this idiot of a father take his little boy right up on riot police if not to try to create some kind of sympathetic propaganda?

He should be arrested and charged with endangering children for that.

W

Macedonia migrants: Hundreds rush border forces

• 3 hours ago
• From the sectionEurope

Hundreds of migrants have rushed at Macedonian border forces in an attempt to enter the country from Greece.

The security forces beat back the migrants with truncheons and riot shields. A number of people were injured.

On Thursday, Macedonia declared a state of emergency to cope with migrants - many from the Middle East - who are trying to reach northern EU states.

The UN urged both Greece and Macedonia to tackle a "deteriorating situation".

'Vulnerable categories'

Some 44,000 people have reportedly travelled through Macedonia in the past two months, meeting little border resistance, but razor wire has now been rolled across the frontier to prevent people from entering.

The BBC's James Reynolds, at the scene, says hundreds of migrants crushed their way towards the border's security forces on Friday afternoon.

Medecins Sans Frontieres said it treated 10 people with wounds from stun grenades fired by Macedonian troops, near the Greek border village of Edomeni.

Amnesty International deputy Europe director Gauri van Gulik said: "Macedonian authorities are responding as if they were dealing with rioters rather than refugees who have fled conflict and persecution."

Austria chart success for migrant "minute of silence"

The Macedonian interior ministry on Friday said it would allow a "limited number of illegal migrants in vulnerable categories to enter Macedonia and they may be provided aid in accordance with the state's capacities". It gave no further details.

Police have issued temporary transit documents to 181 migrants in the past 24 hours.

Spokesman Ivo Kotevski told Reuters: "We are allowing entry to a number that matches our capacity to transport them or to give them appropriate medical care and treatment."

Our correspondent says he later saw some families being allowed to cross - they smiled with relief as they walked to a train station so they could head north to Serbia, Hungary and the rest of Europe.

The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, on Friday expressed concern for "thousands of vulnerable refugees and migrants, especially women and children, now massed on the Greek side of the border amid deteriorating conditions".

Some families got through but many were held back

A number were treated after fainting

Macedonia has declared a state of emergency

It urged Macedonia to "establish an orderly and protection-sensitive management of its borders" while appealing to Greece to "enhance registration and reception arrangements" on its side of the border.

The UNHCR also said it had been assured by Macedonia the border "will not be closed in the future", but did not elaborate.

In recent weeks there have been chaotic scenes at Gevgelija station, with migrants trying to clamber on board packed trains bound north.

Many of the migrants at the border are from Syria

The UN has urged Macedonia to establish an orderly border system

Crowds were seen running and ducking for cover as police fired tear gas early on Friday

As well as Gevgelija, Macedonia declared a state of emergency in northern Kumanovo, where migrants attempt to travel on to Serbia, the next stop before entering Hungary, which is part of the EU.
Greece itself has seen almost 160,000 people landing on its shores since January, the UN estimates, with 50,000 arriving in the past month alone.

A German journalist with Bild, Paul Ronzheimer, said he had witnessed a Greek border guard explaining to a group of Syrian refugees from Aleppo how to cross into Macedonia.

Speaking to the BBC's Outside Source programme, he said he had asked the guard why he was helping them cross illegally.

According to Ronzheimer, "he replied 'we can't handle the situation, there's hundreds of thousands of migrants in Greece right now and we want them out - they don't want to stay in Greece, they want to go to Germany'."

The migrants trying to reach northern and western Europe come from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Many arriving in Macedonia are escaping the conflict in Syria.



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