Balkan countries on refugee route adopt more pragmatic tactics
When the Halawis, a family of Syrian haberdashers, wanted to get from
Greece to Macedonia on Wednesday, they took a direct coach from Athens
to the last hotel before the border. At the border itself, they joined
group number 106, a line of 50 fellow Syrians waiting patiently to cross
into Macedonia. Group 105 was already over the other side.
“There is a system,” 28-year-old Assad Halawi nodded approvingly, as
he and his sister waited in line. In his arms he held Amr, his
one-year-old nephew. Amr’s parents could not afford the trip from Syria,
where the civil war has destroyed the family’s home in Aleppo, and two
of their shops. So Halawi has carried him from Aleppo, and will soon
take him into Macedonia.
Assad Halawi with his one-year-old nephew, Amr. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer
Once there, the Halawis will swiftly receive transit papers at a camp
that was built recently for this specific purpose. Before long, they’ll
amble over to a new, makeshift station assembled in recent weeks solely
for refugee use. By the evening a special train will have taken them
straight to the Serbian border.
“The wait is long, and there is no free water,” says Halawi, as he
hugs Amr. “But the police are gentle, and 50 people just go to the
police, get a number, and then walk through. It is organised.”
It is also the latest example of an increased pragmatism from the
governments of the Balkan countries that line the refugee route from
Turkey to the European Union.
When Syrians came this way a month or two ago, Greece and Macedonia
both pretended that their passage could be prevented or ignored. Back
then, refugees usually had to walk 40 miles to the border. Once there,
the Macedonians twice tried to stop people entering, blocking the way with a line of policemen and troops,
sparking terror and pandemonium. When they relented, the sudden flow of
refugees swamped the nearby town of Gevgelija, as hundreds queued
outside the police station for papers, and scrambled to squeeze into
carriages at the town’s small train station.
“It was a bad situation,” said Jane Janiv, a waiter who watched it
all unfold from his home next to the station. “Every day, two or three
thousand were coming and they were sleeping in the streets, they were
sleeping in the parks.”
That’s all changed. Now the Greeks allow refugees to take a bus to
the border, where the Greek police manage how many can approach it at
any one time. And on the other side, the Macedonians have built a new
camp and station platform where several thousand refugees are given
paperwork and allowed onto trains every day – without even having to
enter Gevgelija.
Refugees have a rest at the Hotel Hara on the Greek side of the border at Eidomeni. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer
Leonardo Leonelli, a coordinator at the UN refugee agency, which is
helping to run the camp, is relieved. “The chaos that we saw is not
happening any more,” says Leonelli, standing near a long line of toilets
and tents that arrived in recent weeks. “It’s still a work in progress,
but we know we are getting somewhere.”
These are the growing pains of a continent that once tried to ignore
the biggest wave of mass-migration since the second world war, but which is increasingly having to work out ways of managing it.
Even Hungary, two borders to the north, is having to change its
approach on the ground – albeit to a far lesser extent. In terms of
rhetoric, Hungary remains firmly opposed to refugees, although about
160,000 have crossed its borders so far this year. Notoriously, Hungary
has even built a barbed-wire fence to stop them.
A father plays with his daughter while waiting to board a bus at the
Serbian-Hungarian border. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer
But on the ground, the Hungarians have quietly had to adopt a more
pragmatic response. After refugees entered the country anyway, using
sleeping bags and clothes to blunt the fence’s barbs, the government
began to allow thousands to cross through one specific point in the
fence, instead of crossing in dribs and drabs along its entire length.
This decision allows Hungarian policemen to funnel most of them into
registration camps – a fulfilment of its EU obligations – before
allowing them to take trains into Austria, and then Germany.
Refugees charge their phones via a power outlet connected to a generator. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer
This process is not being performed in a humane manner; since the camps have no space, hundreds of refugees are being forced to wait in a chilly field near the border, where several have passed out in the cold. The tedium and indignity of the experience has led many to place their faith in smugglers, instead of waiting in the field.
But the fact they have been allowed to gather there in the first
place ultimately represents a change in tactics from the government,
said Magdalena Majkowska-Tomkin, head of the International Organisation
of Migration in Hungary.
“They are letting people in, and they are letting them take the
trains,” said Majkowska-Tomkin. “But they don’t have enough [officials]
to register them – and that’s why people are still waiting.” Hungary
may change its approach again on 15 September, when new laws will
criminalise the act of crossing and damaging the fence. But
Majkowska-Tomkin believes even these new measures may be unworkable.
“The prison system has only 13,000 places, which are already full,”
she said. “So I don’t see how they could conceivably arrest large
numbers of people arriving every day. In many ways it is unenforceable.”
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