Riot police on standby as Greek authorities clear refugee camp

At the border: a refugee family leave the makeshift camp near Macedonia
AP
Michael Howie24 May 2016

Hundreds of riot police were on standby in Greece today as authorities began to clear a massive makeshift refugee camp on the Macedonian border.

A government spokesman insisted police would not use force as the first buses carrying 340 people left Idomeni for a new camp near the northern city of Thessaloniki.

The Idomeni camp, which sprung up at an informal pedestrian border crossing for refugees and migrants heading north to Europe, is home to an estimated 8,400 people - including hundreds of children - mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

At its peak when Macedonia shut its border in March, it housed more than 14,000, but the numbers have declined as people realised the border was shut and began accepting offers of alternative places to stay.

Journalists were barred from the camp during the evacuation operation, stopped at a police roadblock a few miles away. Twenty buses carrying various riot police units were seen heading to the area while a police helicopter hovered above. An estimated 700 police were involved in the operation.

The government has been trying to persuade people in Idomeni to leave the area and head to organised camps.

“It’s much better here than in the camps. That’s what everybody who’s been there said,” Hind Al Mkawi, a 38-year-old refugee from Damascus, told The Associated Press.

“It’s not good ... because we’ve already been here for three months and we’ll have to spend at least another six in the camps before relocation. It’s a long time. We don’t have money or work - what will we do?”

Abdo Rajab, a 22-year-old refugee from Raqqa in Syria, has spent the past three months in Idomeni, and is now considering paying smugglers to be taken to Germany clandestinely.

“We hear that tomorrow we will all go to camps,” he said. “I don’t mind, but my aim is not reach the camps but to go Germany.”

More than 54,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Greece since Balkan and European countries shut their land borders to a massive flow of people escaping war and poverty at home. Nearly a million people have passed through Greece, the vast majority arriving on islands from the nearby Turkish coast.

In Idomeni, most have been living in small camping tents pitched in fields and along railroad tracks which Greek authorities want to reopen, while aid agencies have set up large marquee-style tents to help house people.

Greek authorities have been sending in cleaning crews and have provided portable toilets, but conditions have been precarious.

In recent weeks refugees have set up small makeshift shops selling everything from cooking utensils to falafel and bread.

Police and government authorities say the residents will be moved to newly completed official camps.

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