Thread: Migrant crisis: Greece starts moving migrants camped at border

Migrant crisis: Greece starts moving migrants camped at border

DateMay 25, 2016 Phoebe Fronista and Fedja Grulovic

A bulldozer clears the makeshift refugee camp during a police operation at the Greek-Macedonian border near
the northern Greek village of Idomeni on Tuesday. Photo: AP

Idomeni: ​ Greek police on Tuesday started moving some of the 8000 migrants and refugees stranded in a makeshift camp on the sealed northern border with Macedonia to state-run facilities further south.

Several busloads of people, most of them families with children, left the sprawling expanse of tents at Idomeni early on Tuesday and about a dozen more buses were lined up ready to take more, witnesses said.

Macedonian police officers stand near the border fence during an operation of the Greek police in the makeshift
refugee camp at the Greek-Macedonianborder near southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Tuesday, May 24, 2016.
Greek authorities have begun Tuesday an operation to evacuate the country's largest informal refugee camp of Idomeni,
located on the Greek-Macedonian border, where more than an estimated 8,400 people have been living for months.
(AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski) Photo: AP

At the latest tally, about 8200 people were camped at Idomeni. At one point more than 12,000 lived there after several Balkan countries shut their borders in February, barring migrants and refugees from central and northern Europe.

Greek authorities said they planned to move individuals gradually to state-supervised facilities further south which currently have capacity for about 5000 people. The operation is expected to last several days.

"The evacuation is progressing without any problem," said Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the migrant crisis. People would be relocated "ideally by the end of the week," he said. "We haven't put a strict deadline on it."

A Reuters witness on the Macedonian side of the border said there was a heavy police presence in the area but no problems were reported as people with young children packed up huge bags with their belongings.

Media on the Greek side of the border were kept at a distance. Inside the Idomeni camp, police in riot gear stood guard as people from the camp boarded the buses, footage by the state broadcaster ERT showed. Some 1100 refugees and migrants had been relocated by noon, Greek police said.

A police official said about 1000 people were blocking the sole railway tracks linking Greece and Macedonia. Protesters demanding passage to northern Europe have for weeks blocked the route, forcing trains to divert through Bulgaria to the east. Some goods wagons have been stranded on the tracks for weeks.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) urged Greece to refrain from using force during the transfer of the migrants and refugees.

"It's important that organised movements are voluntary, non-discriminatory and based on well-informed choices by the individuals," spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing in Geneva.

International charity Save the Children said it was concerned about a lack of basic services such as bathrooms and shelters in the official camps.

"Many of the children, especially lone children, have been through enough trauma already," said Amy Frost, team leader in Greece.

"Now that the evacuation has started, it is paramount that authorities make it a priority to keep families together, and to ensure that children are being transferred to facilities where they can live in conditions that meet

European and international standards for child welfare," she said.
Reuters

Greece starts moving migrants camped at border

Put barges in the water...apprehend them...process them and send them ALL back.

Unload the boats and sink the boats where they came from. Stop this Human Trafficking!!

Put them in Safe Zone on THEIR soil. Take their oil to pay for it and put them to work building their own village. It's a BIG sandbox!!