Greek riot police 'clear' Europe's largest refugee camp.

(Baonghean.vn) - Greek police are working to clear out Europe's largest informal refugee camp, where thousands of migrants have been stranded for months south of the Greek-Macedonian border.

Greek police enter the Idomeni migrant camp on the border with Macedonia. Photo: AP.

Reporters were not allowed into the area, but according to witnesses, about 400 riot police entered the camp early on May 24 to force the approximately 8,000 residents to leave. Many voluntarily boarded government vehicles, and by 8 a.m. local time, no violence had been reported.

Idomeni is the unofficial border crossing through which hundreds of thousands of migrants entered Macedonia in 2015. Migrants began setting up camps there when the Macedonian government closed its borders to citizens of several countries last November. When the border was completely closed in March this year, the area became a camp and a symbol of Europe's failure to handle the migration crisis.

Greek authorities have been trying for weeks to move people from Idomeni to official camps at former military bases. But many migrants are reluctant to leave, hoping the border will reopen; others want to cross with the help of human traffickers; and many still fear being confined in the hastily built government centers.

Under an agreement reached by the EU last summer, migrants were essentially supposed to be transferred to other European countries – but so far EU members have failed to meet their expectations.

Riot police stand among tents in the Idomeni camp on the morning of May 24. Photo: AP.

When the government promised not to use force to eliminate Idomeni, many volunteers in the area expressed doubts that this would be accomplished by May 24th.

Vasilis Tsartsanis, a Greek volunteer who has served in the area since migrants began flocking there in late 2014, said: “It seems like they are evacuating, but I don’t know how they will do it. They might try to intimidate the migrants into leaving.”

Médecins Sans Frontières, which has been present in Idomeni for over a year, confirmed that no violence had occurred by 8 a.m.

Loic Jaeger, head of the charity in Greece, said: "So far everything is calm, people are evacuating."

Jaeger also argued the evacuation was a failure of European unity. He told the Guardian: “Everyone is excited about the evacuation – about whether there was violence or not – but that’s not the point. The issue is that they should be in an apartment in Europe: there are only 8,000 of them. Why put them on trucks to unfinished camps in Greece when Europe promised to resettle them?”

A view from the fence into the camp. Photo: AP.

Elsewhere in Greece, 50,000 migrants have been trapped in isolation since March, when Balkan countries closed a humanitarian corridor that had transported hundreds of thousands of refugees to countries like Germany and Sweden in 2015.

Thousands are trapped in dire conditions in detention centers on Greek islands, where many are starving themselves in protest against their treatment. Wassim Omar, a Syrian teacher detained on the island of Chios, said: “This is my seventh day of starvation. We don’t want to live here.”

Some people still want to get to Germany through human trafficking routes. Abdo Raja, a 22-year-old Syrian, told the Associated Press the night before the Idomeni evacuation: “We heard that we all have to go to the camps tomorrow. I don’t really care, but my goal isn’t to go there, it’s to get to Germany.”

The dire humanitarian situation in Greece, coupled with border closures and threats of deportation back to Türkiye, has led to a decrease in the number of migrants arriving in Greece in recent weeks. However, the Greek appeals committee recently ruled that Turkey is not a suitable country for migrants – meaning migrants now have a renewed incentive to cross the sea to Greece from Turkey.

Thao Linh

(According to Reuters)