FYROM Seals Border With Greece to Afghan Migrants

IDOMENI, Greece (AP) – Greece’s government warned Monday it expected a growing number of stranded migrants and asylum seekers after neighbor Macedonia further restricted border access at the weekend, sparking protests by Afghan nationals at a border crossing.

Germany’s interior minister says his country won’t put up in the long term with other nations simply waving migrants through to Germany, and is objecting to the number that neighboring Austria is allowing to transit. The report says that a train carrying 600 migrants left for Croatia earlier Sunday.

Macedonia said it would allow Syrian and Iraqi refugees to pass transit through the country on their journey towards Germany and other well-off European Union nations.

By early afternoon Sunday, about 1,000 migrants were waiting at the Greek border camp in Idomeni.

Several thousand migrants have been stranded at…

“We made an agreement on the joint profiling and registration of migrants at the Greek-Macedonian border”, Croatia’s police director Vlado Dominic told reporters.

About 5,000 people massed at two locations in northern Greece, close to the border with Macedonia, while aid groups urged another 4,000, who arrived on the Greek mainland from outlying islands, not to head to north for fear of creating a bottleneck.

Among the protesting Afghans was 25-year-old Shafiulahh Qaberi who traveled to Greece from the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. “We have spent three nights in the cold”.

“Not only have Visegrad countries not taken in one refugee, they didn’t even send a blanket or a tent”, he told the TV channel of Greece’s parliament, referring to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. However, when I started from Afghanistan I knew borders were open for us.

Macedonia said it was now halting access to Afghans as well, because Serbia had itself imposed restrictions, although that was disputed by the Belgrade government. “I am going to the Idomeni border crossing to find out and ask why they have closed it”.

“Everyone has right to move through our territory in accordance with the rules established by Austria and Slovenia”.

“If others think that they will dump a greater burden on Germany, we won’t accept that in the long term”, he said. He added that “the Serbian state does not decide who can pass through its territory without consulting the states up the migrant route”. German media reported that stricter controls on Balkan route might force migrants to seek an entry to the European Union elsewhere – across the Black Sea or trough Georgia and Russian Federation. As part of the identification process, migrants would be required to submit biometric data, verify their nationality with documentation and prove that they have fled war-torn regions.

Maas’ comments posted on Twitter were prompted by crowds who cheered as flames ripped through an under-construction shelter in Bautzen, in the eastern state of Saxony, on Sunday.