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| Migrants are seen through the fence of an immigrant-detention center in the village of Fylakio, on the Greek-Turkish border |
Sakis
Mitrolidis / AFP / Getty Images
Even with guards
patrolling the Greek-Turkish land border, Nadir Abdullaweh says no
one stopped him when he walked in the dead of night to the Greek
border village of Nea Vyssa. Abdullaweh, 37, who's from Oran in
northwestern Algeria, says the police didn't catch up to him until
dawn, when he and about 10 other migrants were walking along the
train tracks on the outskirts of the village. "It did not seem
so hard to get here," he told TIME in November, after his
release from the Fylakio detention center near the border. "It
seemed like a path into Europe that everyone knew."
Now
Greece's Public Order Minister Christos Papoutsis wants to block that
path with a border fence. Over 128,000 undocumented migrants crossed
into Greece last year, more than 40,000 of them along the land border
with Turkey, he said as he announced the plan in an interview with
the Athens News Agency on Jan. 1. Many crossed along an 8-mile
stretch that diverges from the Evros River, which marks most of the
Greek-Turkish border. And that's where Papoutsis would like to see
the fence, which is made of reinforced barbed wire and concrete.
Greece, he said, can no longer manage the flow of illegal migrants
into the country, even with the help of Frontex, the E.U.
border-patrol agency that sent an emergency force there in November.
The government said on Wednesday it also wants to add new detention
centers in the area — the old ones are so full that human-rights
groups have criticized the conditions as inhumane and deplorable.
"Greek society has reached its limits in taking in illegal
immigrants," he told the Athens News Agency. "Greece can't
take it anymore." (See
pictures of immigration in Europe.)
Turkey seems to
support the fence. The Turkish Foreign Ministry noted on Monday that
Greece has to guard its borders, while Gokhan Sozer, who governs the
Edirne province, which borders Greece, told Turkish media that the
barrier "will come in handy for Greece to curb illegal
immigration." Greece had long criticized Turkey for not doing
enough to stop illegal immigration from its end, but the countries
now say they are cooperating to crack down on people-smuggling rings.
Some
Greek politicians, migration experts and human-rights groups,
however, have spoken out against the plan. The Greek Communist Party
called the border fence "barbaric," and left-wing protest
groups, immigration-rights associations and labor unions are planning
a rally against the proposed fence on Jan. 15. The U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Athens questioned the fence's
effectiveness. "Every country has a right to control its
borders, but these kinds of measures don't give a substantial
solution, a comprehensive and humane solution, to the problem of
irregular migration," UNHCR spokeswoman Ketty Kehayioglou tells
TIME. (Read
about how the economic crisis brought about a Greek-Turkish thaw.)
Anna
Triandafyllidou, a migration scholar affiliated with the Hellenic
Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, an Athens-based
think-tank, says such a fence would be expensive, especially while
Greece is struggling through a deep recession spurred by a huge debt
crisis. She adds that a fence would keep out not just economic
migrants but also refugees fleeing wars. "Some 21,000 people who
crossed into Greece this year were Afghanis. That's huge," she
says. "So then the migration issue becomes an asylum issue."
Greece
is woefully behind on processing its asylum cases, though a new law
pushed by the ruling center-left PASOK party aims to speed up the
process. Less than 1% of asylum applications are granted in Greece,
the lowest rate in Europe, and UNHCR says the country has a backlog
of some 50,000 cases. Many migrants in Greece seeking asylum have
grown so frustrated with the years of delay that they have staged
hunger strikes, with some even sewing their mouths shut in protest.
(Read
"Why Is the E.U. Sending Armed Guards to Greece?")
Although
human-rights groups have criticized Greece for keeping migrants in
deplorable conditions in detention centers and mishandling asylum
requests, Greek leaders say the E.U. hasn't done much to help the
overwhelmed country until recently. In October, after statistics
revealed that some 90% of undocumented migrants entered Europe
through Greece, the E.U.'s Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia
Malmstrom declared that the flow of migration through Greece had
reached "alarming proportions."
The following
month, the E.U. sent the Frontex rapid-response team to the Evros
region where it has helped decrease the number of illegal crossings
along the river, the agency says. The European Commission also plans
to help Greece access some 300 million euros in aid from refugee
funds. But speaking to reporters in Brussels on Monday, Malmstrom's
spokesman, Michele Cercone, was cool to the idea of a border fence,
calling it a "short-term" solution.
And
it may be. The Greek-Turkish land border is not the only entry point
for migrants, and Frontex notes that people-smuggling rings are
always looking for new routes. Migrants, too, say if people want to
get through, they will find a way. Mizanur, a 33-year-old garment
worker from Comilla in southeastern Bangladesh, says he paid a
smuggler more than 2,000 euros to take him from Romania to Athens
through Bulgaria about five months ago. He says he rode in the back
of a covered cargo truck driven by a man who paid off officials at
the Greek-Bulgarian border. (See
pictures of economic-driven riots in Greece.)
Now Mizanur, who
declined to give his last name for fear of being deported, shares a
tiny apartment in a rundown section of central Athens with six men,
also from Bangladesh. Although he has worked as a supervisor at
garment factories in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
he can't find a job in Athens. So he sells vegetables out of a
plastic crate. "If my mother could see me, she would be crying,"
he says, shaking his head. "I found a way to get here. But I
wonder every day if I made a mistake
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2040821,00.html#ixzz1r4Bgpddz
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2040821,00.html#ixzz1r4Bgpddz
Jan. 07, 2011
