Posted
on may 29, 2012 by Patrick Keddie
The
Greek authorities, with support from the EU agency Frontex, have
drastically reduced the numbers of migrants reaching the Greek
mainland or islands by sea. Since 2010, the vast majority of
migrants have instead arrived in the country via the border with
Turkey, often paying traffickers thousands of dollars to cross the
dangerous Evros River to enter Greece. According to the UNHCR,
more than 80% of all irregular entries into the EU now cross this
border.
Migrants
often cross the wide river in overcrowded boats or attempt to wade or
swim across despite the fast-flowing and eddying currents, gluey mud,
and a riverbed which shelves unpredictably. Last year at least
22
people died
trying to cross the river. This year there have been eight
confirmed deaths and eight people remain missing, according to
information recorded by the Thessaloniki-based activist group The
Group of Migrants and Refugees.
Those
who die in this bleak, militarised borderland are often undocumented
and unidentifiable. The unknown people are buried in a cemetery
in the small village of Sidero by the Mufti Serif Damadoglou in a
plot of land up a rutted, muddy track at the edge of the village.
Small mounds of earth and stones indicate unlabelled graves.
There are 300 unknown migrants buried in the cemetery, according to
Damadoglou. He informed us that the most recent burial took
place in February this year and that they buried an unknown Iranian
woman with her son in January.
Crossing
the River
We
visited the small border town of Soufli, 60km from Alexandroupolis,
which is next to the River Evros and is a major crossing point for
migrants coming into Greece. The rail network runs through
Soufli, allowing migrants to jump on the train at the station to
begin the journey to Athens or Thessaloniki. When we arrived
early one morning the station was empty but a wet bundle of discarded
clothes indicated that migrants had been there recently.
The
border with Turkey is a few hundred metres away from the station,
reached by a small scramble over an embankment. There is no
barbed wire or fences as you might expect at a border and the Greek
military watchtowers stand empty. The Turkish side of the river
is mostly a thicket of trees, providing cover for those wanting to
cross. Torn clothing, lifejackets and rubber dinghy’s remain
snagged in the branches along the Greek side of the river bank.
The atmosphere is peaceful but eerie with the knowledge of the deaths
and calamities that have occurred at the river.
As
we made our way down the river we unexpectedly came across a group of
migrants from Somalia who had just made the crossing in a tiny rubber
dinghy. They were damp and muddy. Many were sitting and
eating – celebrating having made it across. Some couldn’t
seem to believe their luck and checked with us repeatedly that they
were actually in Greece, grinning broadly when it was confirmed.
Nineteen
of the migrants had made it across and were waiting on the bank but
nine people remained on a small island in the middle of the 100
metre-wide channel. They didn’t seem to know how to get back
across the fast flowing current to reach them and some of the
migrants asked if we knew how to row across.
I
spoke briefly to ‘Nour’, a 30 year-old Somali woman, who had been
living in Syria and left due to the violence being perpetrated by the
Assad regime as it tries to crush the rebellion against its rule.
She had paid a trafficker to get her across the border and described
the process as “very simple”. Others claimed that they had
paid traffickers 6000 euros to make the journey. They weren’t
sure what they were going to do next.
We
couldn’t talk for long as a Greek police officer turned up. His
eyes were bloodshot, his breath reeked of alcohol and his hand shook
as he lit a cigarette. The migrants allowed the dinghy to drift
off as the officer radioed for reinforcements and demanded to know
who they were and why we were there. We were arrested and had
our cameras confiscated.
As
the nine people stuck on the island shouted in English that they
couldn’t swim and called for help, the Greek police yelled “Go
back to Turkey” in reply. The migrants were just abandoned on
the island and we weren’t able to find out what happened to them.
The
migrants on the river bank were taken to the police station to be
processed. At Soufli police station an officer told us that
this was a relatively quiet period of the year; in the height of
summer the tiny police station deals with around 100 people a day.
The
migrants may be released – usually after being given a 30 day
deportation notice to leave Greece, without any individual assessment
of asylum cases. As a report
released by German refugee rights umbrella group Pro Asyl shows, many
migrants are regularly held in detention for up to six months in
dirty, overcrowded and degrading conditions “deprived of basic
rights…there is no legal aid, no information, no interpretation.”
If released without deportation, or if they evade the
authorities altogether, most migrants begin the journey to Athens or
Thessaloniki by jumping on a train to Alexandroupolis.
At
Alexandroupolis station we met a group of young men from Morocco and
Algeria. They had spent all their money paying traffickers to
cross the river. They had been sleeping rough outside the
station for several days and were very hungry. Some were trying
to beg for enough money to pay the 38 euros for a train to Athens.
‘Imran’
was a Moroccan man in his early twenties, with long, slick black hair
poking out of a woolly hat. He had flown to Turkey from Morocco
and then crossed the River Evros. He had been waiting at the
station for three days trying to get enough cash to ring his parents
to send him some more money, having spent everything he had to get to
Greece. Imran’s plan was to get to Spain to join his father
but he claimed it was far easier to get there via Turkey, Greece and
Italy than attempting to cross directly from Morocco.
The
Security Fence: Forcing More People to Cross the River
As
the Greek authorities and Frontex continue to restrict access to
Greece by sea, they are also trying to deter the huge numbers
entering via the Turkish border. Most of Greece’s 200km long
border with Turkey runs along the River Evros, however there is a
short stretch of dry land along the border. Greece has
announced
plans to prevent migrants crossing this stretch by building a 10km
long, 4-meter high fence topped with razor wire on its border with
Turkey.
It
is highly likely that this wall will simply encourage even more
migrants to cross the River Evros, taking grave risks just to reach a
country in which access
to asylum is degrading and severely restricted,
government support
for migrants has collapsed
and in which an increasingly belligerent anti-immigrant rhetoric is
accompanied by a rising
epidemic in racist attacks
against migrants.
[For
David Shaw’s full photo story on migrants in Greece see here]
