Macedonian Police Fires Tear Gas At Migrants

A number of thousand individuals from the Center East, Africa and Asia, many on Thursday declared a state of emergency and successfully sealed its southern frontier to migrants and refugees.

On Thursday, Macedonia declared a state of emergency and announced it will send troops to its border with Greece to stop illegal migrants from pouring into the country.

Last week, police arrested three Syrians as angry crowds threw stones, bottles and shoes at officers attempting to restore order at the station. At least eight people were injured.

Strong police and army forces, armored vehicles and barbed wire have been deployed along the border in an attempt to prevent a wave of migrants from entering the country, Macedonian media are reporting today.

The passage via Gevgelija has been abruptly halted by the armed intervention. Once they’re in the EU, they can cross borders more easily en route to more prosperous countries, though Hungary is building a fence at its border with Serbia to try to keep them out.

Macedonia registered 44,000 migrants since the start of the year, the vast majority of them Syrians, along with many from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A group of about 200 migrants, majority women, children and old people were allowed to enter Macedonia from Greece on Friday afternoon.

Greek officials said a migrant died when a boat keeled over while trying to reach the island of Lesbos; fifteen were rescued.

“We have the right to protect our borders”, Kotevski said by phone from the capital Skopje. “When politicians decide to “close” a border, all they actually do is give control to the mafia and corrupt police, and make refugees pay them much more to get across”.

The migrants, many with babies and young children, had spent the chilly and windy night in a dust field without food and with little water.

The Interior Ministry, in a statement, said its measures were working and that it had admitted 181 foreign nationals overnight – “a limited number of migrants of vulnerable categories who could be adequately treated in line with the country’s capacities”.

Five injured refugees were taken to a hospital on the Greek side of the border on Friday, Doctors Without Borders said, according to Al Jazeera.

“Every country has the power to patrol its own borders, but this kind of para-military response is an unacceptable push-back in violation of worldwide law”.

Macedonia and Greece have long enjoyed an uneasy relationship, rooted in a dispute over Macedonia’s name since it broke away from socialist Yugoslavia in 1991. “We need a European-wide policy”.

Macedonian police also stepped up their presence at the train station in the border town of Gevgelija, where thousands of migrants who had been arriving daily previously were given temporary documents allowing them to cross Macedonia so they could travel on to Serbia and the main European Union frontier.

Instead, he said, it stemmed from concern over whether the migrants would stay in Slovakia for the long term.

The increase in border enforcement comes after a move by Greece to relieve stress on its outlying islands, where boatloads of mostly Syrian migrants coming from Turkey have led to unsafe overcrowding in government facilities.