At the time of writing this post, only 150 people have crossed the border from Greece into Macedonia. The camp at Idomeni is heaving with 7000 people, many of whom have been there for over a week now. Hundreds today gathered at the fence, demanding for the opening of the border. “We don’t want food” they chanted, “open the border” as the gates to Macedonia remained shut for the third day in a row.
“In Syria, we will die immediately. Here, it is just a slow death we are living. I prefer to be in Syria if this is Europe” one man who had been waiting for ten days at the border observed. Another woman pointed out, “if we do the maths, with the amount of people going through each day, I would have to wait 15 days here before even having a chance of getting through. And I don’t even have a tent”.
With new arrivals numbering in the thousands on the Greek islands every day, the various accommodation camps already full and only a tiny trickle of people being let through the northern border, the era of the so-called ‘humanitarian corridor’ seems to be coming to an end. The situation in Greece is untenable and will definitely not remain static with so many people voicing such clear demands. If the corridor does remain shut though, people will find their own way to central Europe, as they did this summer. There are already reports of large numbers gathering on Greece’s border with Albania.
At the same time today, in over a hundred cities around Europe, people showed their solidarity with those blocked and killed by borders by taking to the streets. Under the slogan “safe passage now”, thousands marched to denounce the violence of fortress Europe.
On the 18th of November 2015, Slovenia closed its borders for refugees who are not from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. Just a little later, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia also adopted this practice of segregation. There is little doubt about that this policy was pushed by the European Union as a starting point for slowing down or even stopping the flow over the Balkan route. Thousands of refugees were stuck in Eidomeni, Greece, and started to protest. The Moving Europe Bus was on the spot and reported live from the 22nd of November to the 11th of December 2015 – when the camp had been evicted. On the 5th of February 2016, we decided to restart our live-ticker as the new year has already seen several attempts from the European Union to slow down the migration movement towards Europe. Macedonia seems to become a key player in this strategy. For several weeks the Macedonian border authorities have slowed down the transit process. The predictable effect of this, given the high arrival numbers to the Greek islands, is that thousands are becoming stuck in Greece. On the 3th of February the Macedonian government announced its plans to strengthen border controls which will further reduce the speed of the transit process. In the meantime, the Greek authorities have established a new buffer zone near to Eidomeni. Since the camp at the border has already become highly overcrowded, there are fears that the violent scenes of last December in Eidomeni will be repeated. Therefore the authorities have decided that people should be kept at bay, at a gas station on the highway that is 20 km far away from the border (at Polykastro). For weeks migrants have had to stay there for hours under miserable conditions. Since the end of January the situation at the Greek border zone has escalated once more. There is only a trickle of people being let through to Macedonia and now people at the gas station have to wait for days before their buses finally leave towards the border. On the 3rd of February 2016 thousands of them decided not to wait any longer at the petrol station and started to walk towards the Macedonian border (#marchofhope 2). Further protests and tensions are to be expected. The Moving Europe Bus is on the spot since the 2nd of February and reports live from Polykastro and Eidomeni.
