THESSALONIKI: Greek police detained 214 Syrian refugees after they crossed a river that forms a natural border with Turkey, authorities said Wednesday.
The announcement marked the second recent mass crossing of the Evros River — 107 refugees were detained in the same border area last week. A police official told The Associated Press that refugees and other migrants were taking advantage of current low river levels near the border town of Orestiada. The official wasn’t authorized to speak to the news media and asked not to be identified. Migrants are seeking alternative routes to the European Union after a crackdown on crossings to the Greek islands started in March, as part of an agreement between the EU and Turkey to stop the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe.
More than a million migrants and refugees crossed through Greece and on to other EU countries since the start of 2016, while over 60,000 have been stranded in the country since the EU-Turkey deal took effect and the Balkan transit route north was closed. According to Greek police estimates, about 200 people try to cross the border into Macedonia every day, seeking breaks in the razor wire frontier fence as it runs along rugged terrain. Police in the Greek border area recently stepped patrols and are checking all the trains passing from Greece to Macedonia.
In their attempts to cross borders, some migrants are paying people traffickers. But others, like 35-year-old Afghan refugee Kazem Gasig, are trying to find their own way through the mountains. “I set off last night from Athens to Thessaloniki, then from here I plan to go to (the border town of) Idomeni, then I will cross the Macedonia border on foot,” he told the AP. “I have decided to go forward with the help of Google Maps, as far as I can. If I reach a point where I see I can’t move on by my own, I’ll have to go with human traffickers and use a guide.”
Meanwhile, far from the crowded ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais where migrants try to smuggle themselves aboard trucks bound for Britain, hundreds more are risking their lives to enter the other end of France from northern Italy.
The frontier between Italy’s Ventimiglia and Menton in southern France is already known as ‘Mini Calais’ – and the problem may get bigger. Just this week, Italian coastguards have rescued more than 10,000 migrants who set out from Libya on the north coast of Africa. Nightly, people who have fled war in countries such as Sudan and Libya set out from Red Cross and Caritas camps on the Italian side in the hope that they can negotiate the 5-6 km (3.1 to 3.7 miles) of mountain passes and tunnels and enter France unnoticed.
“This is my eighth attempt,” says Hassan, a young man who set out from Sudan’s Darfur region five years ago and has made it this far despite a childhood injury that left him with a walking handicap. A record 65.3 million people were uprooted worldwide last year, with wars in Syria and Africa responsible for a large part of a 50 percent surge in just five years, the United Nations refugee agency said in a report in June. That means 1 in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee, asylum-seeker or internally displaced person.
“Italy No, Italy No,” chants one group of young migrants among those playing cat-and-mouse with French border guards. “Personally, I want to get to Montpellier because a French lady I met on a boat spoke about it,” said Magdi, who left Sudan last January, crossing Chad, Niger and Libya before making it to Ventimiglia. One of his attempts to enter France 10 days ago was aborted when a fellow-migrant was hit by a train and seriously injured while walking along the tracks. For those who get further than Magdi and his companion, there is every chance of being sent straight back.