Johanna Mikl-Leitner, Austrian interior minister, said on Thursday that “the most honest thing is to tell the refugees: it’s impossible to get through the Balkan route anymore. The Balkan route is closed…the biggest problem is that these refugees still have hopes and expectations, and these hopes are being constantly fed.”
“The closure of the Balkan route is going to plan and this clock will not be turned back,” she said to German paper, Die Welt, explaining that the route was permanently closed.
Thousands of refugees remain trapped in Greece; Macedonia, to its North, is only allowing a select number who have a “proved need of protection” to pass through.
Close to the Greek-Macedonia border is Idomeni, where refugees face terrible conditions. The refugees shelter in their tents as the ground muddies with rain. Wood and even plastic bottles serve as their only source of fuel, which they burn to stay warm. Burnt plastic releases toxic fumes.
Al Jazeera interviewed Lazmiya, a Syrian refugee who is trapped in Idomeni with her daughter. Somewhere on the other side wait her husband and sons. “I want to get out from here,” she said. “I have not had a shower since I arrived. There is little assistance. All my clothes are soaked. look at the weather. We are dying here.”
The EU and Turkey have reached a deal to manage the crisis, but some critics wonder if the solution isn’t just an attempt at pushing the problem far away enough that European citizens stop caring; out of sight, out of mind.
Kenan Malik, writer, lecturer and broadcaster wonders “why should bottling migrants up in Turkey rather than in Greece be any different?” He then asks rhetorically, “Leave aside the morality, think of the practicalities. Do the EU leaders think that tens of thousands of migrants and refugees will meekly accept their fate and return quietly?” He notes that even a small amount of resistance would spell chaos and tragedy, and points out that this deal is a continuation of a pact once made with Gaddafi (whose death came with the backing of NATO, ironically the catalyst for this crisis and many others).
“Far from the Turkey deal being a “historic breakthrough”, as Donald Tusk, the European Council president described it, it follows the pattern of previous EU migration policies.
Since the 1990s, the EU has adopted a three-pronged strategy: criminalizing migrants; militarizing border controls; and outsourcing the problem by paying non-EU states (most notoriously Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya (PDF)) huge amounts of money to act as Europe’s immigration police; relocating Europe’s borders to beyond Europe. Push the problem outside of Europe and pretend that it’s not there.
There are no easy solutions… though perhaps a humane solution, which everyone can agree with, would be to replace the refugees with the politicians who had supported the invasion of Iraq, the ousting of Gaddafi and the agitation of the Syrian civil war, causing all of this to begin with.
The reduced drain on resources from military spending alone would more than offset the migrant’s needs. Just this author’s opinion.
Sources: Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera
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Not refugees economic migrants taking advantage of stupid Europe – god I hope the uk leave!!
Speaking of it, I have a question for you, “Anonymous”. You think of the state at the northern borders of Greece as “Macedonia” or “Fyrom”?? It does matter to me, as , up until now we were together everywhere. Thank you