Greece starts clearing Idomeni refugee camp

Valerie Plesch

Special for USA TODAY

A migrant family carries their belongings during an evacuation operation by police forces of a makeshift migrant camp at the border at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, on May 24, 2016.

IDOMENI, Greece — Greece began clearing its Idomeni refugee camp on the Macedonian border Tuesday, sealing the area and deploying more than 400 riot police to relocate thousands of refugees.

Officials said they would refrain from using force in the operation.

Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for the Greek government's refugee crisis committee, told the Athens News Agency that all the refugees would be moved to “industrial premises” around Greece.

"We believe that it will take up to 10 days to transfer the refugees from Idomeni and in the meantime more places will have been found," Kyritsis said.

He added that current facilities can accommodate between 6,500 and 7,000 refugees. Authorities said many would be transferred to industrial buildings acquired by the government near Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city.

The makeshift camp, which housed as many as 14,000 people earlier this year, is now home to 8,200 refugees. It turned into a site offering squalid living conditions after Macedonia formally sealed its border with Greece in early March.

Afghan refugees trapped in limbo in Greece with nowhere to go

Still, the refugees do not want to go.

Zainab Panahi, 20, of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, has been camping out in Idomeni with her husband since February. Despite growing tired of daily life there and deteriorating conditions, including fighting among refugees and clashes with the Greek and Macedonian police, she refuses to leave.

“I’d like to stay in Idomeni until the border opens," she said. "I don’t want to go to (government) camps — people there say you cannot go out. I have hope of moving forward, not staying in Greece.” Macedonia has not announced if it will reopen the border to refugees.

The evacuation is set against the backdrop of a controversial deal made two months ago between the European Union and Turkey that includes the deportation to Turkey of refugees who arrived in Greece after March 20.

The Idomeni camp was originally intended to temporarily accommodate no more than 2,000 refugees, but with the closure of borders along the Balkan route to northern Europe in March, Idomeni has turned into a smaller version of the migrant camp in the northern French port of Calais.

The Calais camp, also known as the “Jungle,” has been overtaken by thousands of refugees and asylum seekers trying to reach the United Kingdom for the past decade.

Tensions have been mounting in Idomeni for months.

Protests organized by refugees have taken place on railroad tracks in the area, and clashes between the protesters and Greek and Macedonian police are a common occurrence.

Afghans line up to escape a war without end and a bleak future

As the border remains shut, the sprawling camp has become a makeshift city complete with barbers, food stands and medical tents.

Laundry hangs on the barbed wire separating Greece and Macedonia while women sweep the fronts of their tents with makeshift brooms made out of tree branches, ferns and plastic bags. Some refugees have placed rugs outside their tent entrances. Others have spray-painted the names of Syrian cities on nearby walls.

Syrian refugee Ahmed Kasem inside a building where he now lives and that was once part of a public veterinary station for sick animals in this northern Greek village, a few kilometers from the border with Macedonia. Kasem has been stranded in Idomeni for almost one month and a half after Macedonia shut down its border, which also closed down the Balkan trail that was used by a million refugees to enter Western Europe.

Ahmed Kasem, from Hama in western Syria, has been living in a cement barn that customs officers once used to inspect livestock crossing the border. He shares the dark room that still smells of manure with other single Syrian male refugees.

“I don’t know what I am doing,” said Kasem, 30. “We are just waiting for the border to open.”

On the other side of the camp, dozens of families have set up temporary living quarters in and around a large, abandoned turquoise house.

"Before the war, we had a beautiful home. I had friends, I had high school. Such a beautiful life," said Rasha Maki, 19, from Damascus. Now Maki, who was a high school senior before fleeing Syria, shares one of the rooms in the turquoise house with her family and sleeps on top of piles of blankets donated by aid organizations. On her phone, she keeps photos of her former apartment building, which lay in ruins.

Fahed Maki prepares spaghetti with tomato sauce for his family in Idomeni, Greece a few kilometers from the border with Macedonia. His family has been stranded here for almost two months after Macedonia shut down its border, which also closed down the Balkan trail which was used by a million refugees to enter Western Europe.

The Maki family doesn't want to leave the camp even as they have grown pessimistic of their chances to get out of Greece and move west.

"We (initially) thought we would stay here for four or five days," said Maki as her father Fahed prepared a huge pot of spaghetti with tomato sauce over the open fire. The family has been there for three months.

"We do not know what we will do,” she said. “We don't want to go to the other camp, we want to get out of Greece."

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