European Migrant Crisis

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  • fatso
    Member
    • Sep 2008
    • 301

    #31
    Onur has too be consistent with his posting on those evil Orthodox mujihadden priests. He's a Genocide denier who goes to great lengths to defend muslim terrorists or war criminals.

    Turkey has been a huge contributor in smuggling illegal immigrants into Europe.
    interesting read :http://rieas.gr/index.php?option=com...=812&Itemid=89





    .

    Comment

    • George S.
      Senior Member
      • Aug 2009
      • 10116

      #32
      i wonder if greece takes on the rquired un charter refugees.??there are probably more economic refugees.
      "Ido not want an uprising of people that would leave me at the first failure, I want revolution with citizens able to bear all the temptations to a prolonged struggle, what, because of the fierce political conditions, will be our guide or cattle to the slaughterhouse"
      GOTSE DELCEV

      Comment

      • Risto the Great
        Senior Member
        • Sep 2008
        • 15658

        #33
        Greece's migrant fruit pickers: 'They kept firing. There was blood everywhere'



        Last year, Greek farm guards shot at illegal migrant strawberry pickers, wounding 35. When a court acquitted them this summer, there was outrage. At the camp, where they continue to live like slaves, the workers share their stories

        Is a man worth nothing when he is branded illegal? Tipu Chowdhury has spent the past 17 months wondering. The answer has not been easy. Even now, after being forced to endure subhuman living conditions, after being starved and worked like a slave, the Bangladeshi does not speak ill of Greece. Instead of anger, there is resignation, an almost fatalistic acceptance that this is the life meted out to those who go "undocumented".

        Had he and his fellow strawberry pickers not been shot at – had the case not reached the courts and the men who did the shooting not been scandalously freed – he might not have pondered the question at all.

        "When they pointed their guns at us, and there were around 200 of us gathered in that space, we thought they were joking," says Chowdhury of the April 2013 attack. "After all, we hadn't been paid for more than five months. We couldn't believe it when they actually began shooting."

        This week, unions, anti-racist groups and peasant workers' associations will launch a solidarity campaign in support of the Bangladeshis, starting with a mass demonstration timed to coincide with a speech the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, will give on Sunday outlining the government's economic policy at the international trade fair in Thessaloniki. As preparations get under way, 33-year-old Chowdhury has found himself reliving the events of that day, one that would go down as the worst assault in Europe on migrant workers in living memory.

        The sun was setting when the Greeks turned up at the camp. There were three of them – two armed with shotguns, one with a pistol. The Bangladeshis knew the men well. All three worked for Nikos Vangelatos, a wealthy fruit producer who had made a fortune cultivating strawberries, mostly for the Russian, German and UK markets, on the great plains that surround the nondescript town of Nea Manolada in the western Peloponnese. From 6am to 7pm, it was they who stood guard, occasionally barking orders but mostly obscenities as the labourers, in army-like formation, picked their way in the steaming heat from plant to plant, greenhouse to greenhouse, across the "fields of blood".

        Small, wiry and dark, Chowdhury recalls the bullets skimming past his right leg as the men opened fire – just as he can recollect the events leading up to the attack.

        "We were meant to get €22 [£17] a day, minus €3 for food and €3 for our living quarters, but every week we were told: 'Next week we'll pay you', and every month it never happened," he says, his white hand-me-down leather shoes slipping from sockless feet.

        "Earlier that day, me and three others had gone to see Vangelatos in his office in Lapa [near Manolada] and we said: 'Look, we have to be paid because we need to support our families back home.' And he said: 'We can pay you, but you have to tell the rest to wait.' We had already gone on strike twice and that's when we decided: 'That's it, we are going to go back to the camp and tell the others the truth.'"

        The Bangladeshis were in their makeshift tents – places that no one could call a home but which the migrants, in a bid for some kind of dignity, had built with cardboard boxes, nylon and bamboo – when the men arrived.

        Tipu Chowdhury 2
        Tipu Chowdhury: 'Every week we were told: "Next week we'll pay you", and every month it never happened.' Photograph: Panagiotis Moschandreou for the Guardian
        The young migrant workers were worried. Like Chowdhury, they had paid smugglers thousands of dollars to reach this promised land in the hope of wiring money to their families in Bangladesh. Chowdhury managed to send back €2,000 (£1,600) in total before his wages stopped. Now that they were here, in a country that was, itself, crushed by economic crisis, there was one inescapable fact. As state-declared "illegals," without recognised papers or permits, they had no rights. They could go to the authorities but the authorities wouldn't care because, officially, they did not exist. And, this time, their armed overseers were not just angry; they were seething with rage.

        "The month before, they had killed the two dogs we kept in the camp," says Lynton Khan, Chowdhury's friend. "And when they shot them dead they said: 'This is how we will deal with you.'"

        Then, in April, the men returned following Chowdhury's ultimatum. "They said: 'Collect your things; if you don't want to work, we've got others.'" The heavies had brought a small group of new recruits to work the fields. The existing pickers feared they would lose their jobs. "At that point we left the camp and walked over to the field as well because we were so shocked at what we were seeing," says Khan.

        Chowdhury was in the foreground when the shooting began, which left 35 injured, four critically. "When they started firing and the shot and bullets began to fly, we all started howling and crying, 'Help', 'help,'" he says, for the first time breaking into halting Greek, his eyes fixed on the ground. "But they kept firing and there was blood everywhere, people lying head-down in the field as if they were dead."

        As the assailants fled panic-stricken, Khan reached into his pocket for his phone. He called the police. Within minutes, officers and ambulances were on the way.

        Shot migrant workers in hospital
        Two of the victims of the shooting are attended to in hospital. The three men who shot them, plus the farm's owner, were acquitted in July 2014. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
        For Moisis Karabeyidis, the lawyer who would go on to represent the pickers, it was a seminal moment in the drama that so often engulfs the exploited underclass of migrant workers in Greece. "Precisely because these people lacked any social contract, with no rights or protection, they had no recourse to justice," he tells me, banging the steering wheel of his car as we drove from Patras, western Greece's provincial capital, to the strawberry fields of Manolada. "That we got to the courts, that the case was sponsored by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), that the migrants were defended at all in a country where xenophobic attacks are so very common is, in itself, a big thing."

        Not since the infamous incident in Kililer, when a revolt against landowners and their privileges saw four farmers killed and dozens injured in March 1910, has any worker been shot in Greece.

        The attack in Manolada, more than 100 years later, would go down as the worst in modern times. It would also throw a light on the appalling conditions in which cheap migrant labour is employed to toil Europe's agriculturally rich southern land.

        Yet far from ending the drama, a court decision announced in July acquitting all four men, including Vangelatos, of charges ranging from grievous bodily harm to forced labour, has only served to stoke the fire further. Even the shooters were allowed to walk free, with the option of paying off their initial prison sentences of 14 and eight years upon appeal. "The verdict was reached in a record 15 minutes and the three-member panel of judges didn't even bother to explain their motives," says Karabeyidis who, on hearing the ruling, said: "I am ashamed to be Greek."

        "Vangelatos had a nine-strong team, which included some of our best criminal lawyers. We were two. It was David versus Goliath. Our only hope, now, is that the supreme court steps in and orders a new trial."

        Disbelief in Greece has been matched by dismay abroad. How, asked critics, could a mixed-jury court allow the culprits to walk free? Was justice itself falling prey to the menacing mood of rightwing fanaticism that has pervaded the country with the inexorable rise of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn?

        Outside Patras's freshly painted, neo-classical courthouse, Chowdhury felt the ground slip from under his feet as news of the verdict filtered out. "When we heard that decision, everyone began weeping," he says, still plainly numbed. "For a few seconds, I could see nothing in front of me; everything went blank and then, when I came to, all I could think is: 'It can't be, it can't be.' Is there no justice? Does a man have no rights?"

        For those who have had a glimpse of how "illegal" migrants work in the fruit fields of Greece, the answer would be a resounding "no". Egyptians, Rumanians, Bulgarians and Albanians have all passed through Manolada, a town as famed for its seasonal workers as the luxury cars owned by fruit farmers. At the height of the harvesting season, between October and July, an estimated 6,000 migrants are employed as strawberry pickers for wages that no Greek, despite record levels of unemployment, would ever accept.

        Polytunnels
        Polytunnels near Nea Manolada where the migrants worked for €22 a day. Photograph: Panagiotis Moschandreou for the Guardian
        The vast majority are Bangladeshis because fruit firms have discovered that they are nimble and can fill crates the most quickly. But, with rare exception, almost none of them own the papers that would provide them with any rights.

        "It's a multimillion-euro business that has made a lot of people rich around here," says Dimitris Peppas, an anti-racist activist who lives in the adjoining town of Amaliada. "We're talking about a huge market whose profits migrants never see. It's the producers and the people who work for them, the guys who drive the Porsche Cayennes, who get it all."

        Peppas, a motor-bike mechanic who spent 11 years living in Germany, says he has been sickened by the way the Bangladeshis have been treated and so he has ensured they had clothes and food. "I know what it's like to be a foreigner abroad – the helplessness and loneliness of it all," he sighs. "What these people have had to endure is intolerable and yet they have not wallowed in self-pity. They have maintained a level of dignity that is extraordinary, really."

        He is far from being alone in the region. Last week, an assortment of unionists, leftists and migrant support groups gathered in the Patras Workers' Centre to debate how best to promote the plight of the Bangladeshis.

        "What is certain is that this shameful court decision has to be reversed," said Ourania Birba, a city councillor with the radical left main opposition Syriza party. "Our enemies have been more organised than us," she railed from the raised stage of the centre's ramshackle amphitheatre. "There are dark forces out there, seeking to prevail."

        Shock outside the court
        The shock of the verdict kicks in outside the court in Patras in July 2014. Photograph: Menelaos Mich/Demotix/Corbis
        With summer's end, anti-fascists fear that Golden Dawn is back on the march. Despite being exposed as a criminal organisation, with most of its leadership placed in pre-trial custody, the extremists performed surprisingly well in local and European elections in May. Ominously, black-shirted hit squads have made a comeback with a spate of attacks in recent weeks on gay people and dark-skinned immigrants.

        "It is a very worrying turn of events," says Petros Constantinou, a leading anti-racist campaigner in his air-conditioned office in Athens. "They are coming back because the [conservative-dominated] coalition is desperate for votes ahead of presidential elections next year. On prime pieces of legislation, such as the anti-racism bill, amendments are being made because of Golden Dawn. That is giving the fascist front new confidence, new life."

        Back at the camp, within view of a gas station on the national road that criss-crosses the Peloponnese, Chowdhury explains how he risked his life to get to Greece in November 2007 – hitch-hiking across Iran, trekking across Turkey, dodging bullets at the border the two countries share.

        It was a journey that he and his seven siblings had agreed on early in life. "My village, Betauka, is surrounded by rice paddies but has been badly hit by typhoons for years," he tells me. "My older brother, Jebu, got a visa to America after winning the lottery [organised by the US embassy in Dhaka]. For 18 years, he has worked in a belt factory in Michigan. He was the one who gave me and my younger brother, Juman [now in construction in Saudi Arabia], the money to pay for our journey here."

        It took six weeks of flying, driving and walking before Chowdhury was finally ushered by traffickers on to a boat bound for Greece. "It was so cold. We could only walk at night to avoid being detected and one of my friends died on the way," he said. "But every time I crossed a border, I was so happy; I felt reborn. When I got here, I thought I have landed in the country where democracy was born, the country of civilisation."

        Does he still feel the same? We take in the camp that he has been forced to call his home for nearly two years. At its lower end are three big holes, covered with nylon sheets, which are the repositories of human excrement. In between roam chickens, cats and dogs. In the middle is a vegetable garden and all around fly-filled shacks, without electricity or running water, that serve as the migrants' living quarters. For the pickers there is nowhere else to go. This wretched existence is the only thing on offer. "I think I'd like to go home now," Chowdhury says. "My family want me back. But what has happened is an injustice and I can't carry it around for ever. It would kill me if I did. It is a wrong that has to be put right first."
        I hope Macedonians are not stupid enough to look for work in such places for such peasants.
        Risto the Great
        MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
        "Holding my breath for the revolution."

        Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.com

        Comment

        • Philosopher
          Senior Member
          • Sep 2008
          • 1003

          #34
          When I got here, I thought I have landed in the country where democracy was born, the country of civilisation.
          Wrong on so many levels.

          Comment

          • SoutherNeighbour
            Junior Member
            • Aug 2014
            • 67

            #35
            I think the decision to acquit the bastards that attacked the immigrants has been heavily criticised in Greece.

            I read somewhere last week that there is an appeal pending.Let's hope the bs judges in Patra review the case in a fair way this time.

            Comment

            • Risto the Great
              Senior Member
              • Sep 2008
              • 15658

              #36
              Bulgaria to extend fence at Turkish border to bar refugee influx



              SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria said on Wednesday it would extend a barbed wire fence along its border with Turkey by a further 130 km (80 miles) in an attempt to prevent a growing number of refugees, mainly from Syria, entering the European Union member state.

              However, the United Nations' refugee agency criticized the announcement by Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, saying it would endanger more lives and increase the role of human traffickers.

              More than 18,000 refugees, mainly from Syria's civil war, have crossed the border from Turkey to seek asylum in Bulgaria in the past two years, increasing the pressure on the EU's poorest member state, data from the interior ministry showed.

              Borisov's decision will extend a 33-km fence built last year along Bulgaria's 240-km southeastern border with Turkey. The government expects a new influx of refugees in the spring, when the weather will become more favorable.

              "This (extension) is absolutely necessary," Borisov told lawmakers. "There is no such (refugee) pressure where such facilities exist."

              The interior ministry will prepare details for the extension, including construction deadlines, by the end of January, the government said in a statement.

              "The defense facility will decrease the refugee pressure on Bulgaria by around seven times," Borisov said.

              The fence will save Bulgaria around 2 million levs ($1.20 million) a month in policing costs. Sofia has deployed more than 1,000 police officers in the area to limit the influx.

              More than 11,000 refugees sought humanitarian or refugee status in Bulgaria last year after crossing from Turkey.

              The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has repeatedly urged Bulgaria to practise an "open door policy" toward the refugees, said further restrictions would create problems elsewhere.

              "This is increasingly leading people, including families with small children, to undertake more dangerous crossings and it further puts refugees in the hands of relentless smugglers and traffickers," Boris Ceshirkov, UNHCR spokesman in Bulgaria, told Reuters.
              Bulgaria is giving it a red hot go.
              I still think Macedonia should have one with Kosovo.
              Risto the Great
              MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
              "Holding my breath for the revolution."

              Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.com

              Comment

              • George S.
                Senior Member
                • Aug 2009
                • 10116

                #37
                Greece Should Address Human Rights Issues

                Greece Should Address Human Rights Issue



                Greece’s new government should move quickly to tackle longstanding human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said today. Critical human rights priorities include combating racist and xenophobic violence, reforming police practices and ensuring accountability for police abuse, and remedying serious human rights violations related to migration and asylum.

                “Key ministers have made important commitments to change abusive laws and practices, raising hopes that campaign pledges will become reality,” said Eva Cossé, Greece specialist at Human Rights Watch. “The Tsipras government should seize on its strong mandate to push through necessary reforms as soon as possible.”

                adressing gaps in law and practice to tackle the epidemic of racist violence in Greece, particularly in Athens, should be a top priority, Human Rights Watch said. Greece has taken some positive steps in the past two years, including establishing specialized police units to tackle racist violence and appointing a special hate crimes prosecutor in Athens. A 2014 anti-racism law increased minimum penalties for hate crimes and improved the scope and application of racist motivation as an aggravating circumstance. But the new law failed to remove significant obstacles to effective investigation and prosecution of hate crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

                The new justice minister, Nikos Paraskevopoulos, has rightly pledged to amend the 2014 law and to strengthen training about racism and xenophobia for magistrates and prosecutors. Prosecutors should be required to investigate bias as a possible motive in a crime and to present any evidence of bias to the court. Courts should be also required to consider evidence of bias motivation, and to explain the reasons for applying or not applying a penalty enhancement for bias crimes. The government should amend the law to encourage reporting of hate crimes by explicitly exempting victims from paying a fee to file their complaint. The law should also incorporate measures that currently exist only in a ministerial decree, to protect undocumented migrants who are victims or witnesses to a hate crime. The measures protect migrants from any negative immigration law actions pending a prima facie assessment by a prosecutor of the merits of the complaint about the attack.
                Human Rights Watch research has shown that fear of detention and deportation and the fee deter some victims of racist attacks from filing a complaint. The authorities should also revise hate crime legislation to expand protection to those targeted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation should also acknowledge explicitly that those responsible for crimes sometimes have mixed motives, and make clear that multiple motives should not preclude investigating and prosecuting a case as a bias crime. The mandate of Greece’s anti-racism police units, created in March 2013, is limited to offenses committed exclusively because of the victim’s racial or ethnic origin or religion.

                Abuse by the police is another key concern, and the new government’s pledge to abandon the anti-immigrant police operation Xenios Zeus is a positive step, Human Rights Watch said. Citizen Protection Alternate Minister Giannis Panousis should also put an end to abusive police sweep operations against other groups perceived as unpopular in downtown Athens, including drug users, sex workers, and the homeless. Human Rights Watch research found that police in Athens conduct abusive stops and searches, and in many cases confine people in police buses and police stations for hours, including far from the city center, without any reasonable and individualized suspicion of criminal wrongdoing.
                Working with the justice minister, Panousis should propose legislative reform to limit overly broad police stop-and-search powers, and ensure that police stops are conducted in accordance with national and international law prohibiting discrimination, including ethnic profiling, ill-treatment, and arbitrary deprivation of liberty. The authorities should adopt clear and binding guidelines for law enforcement officers with respect to identity checks, including the permissible grounds for conducting a stop, a pat-down, and search of personal belongings, and for taking a person to a police station for further verification of their documents. Finally, Panousis needs to ensure diligent and independent investigation and accountability for all complaints of police abuse by improving human rights training, and establishing an independent complaints mechanism, Human Rights Watch said.
                Law enforcement abuse of migrants and asylum seekers in Greece is a serious and longstanding problem, including in the context of identity checks, as documented by Human Rights Watch and others. The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Greece 11 times in cases concerning ill-treatment or misuse of firearms by law enforcement officers, and the absence of effective investigations. In 10 of the cases, the victims were migrants or members of minorities.

                The new Greek government should take concrete steps to uphold its pledge to address chronic deficiencies in the country’s asylum system, pushbacks of asylum seekers at land and sea borders, and prolonged detention in substandard conditions. Despite reforms over the past few years, asylum seekers in Greece face obstacles applying for protection, significant delays in the processing of claims, and virtually nonexistent reception conditions.
                There is mounting evidence and expression of concern by the UN refugee agency that Greek border guards push back and expel migrants and asylum seekers at the borders with Turkey, and engage in ill-treatment and dangerous maneuvers at sea that put people’s lives in danger. The new government should immediately take steps to end unlawful pushbacks. Parliament should exercise its oversight powers to examine the scope of these illegal actions, determine whether they have amounted to a de facto policy, and identify those responsible.

                Following the suicide of a Pakistani man in the Amygdaleza detention center on February 13, 2015, the government vowed to keep its election pledge to shut down migrant detention centers within the next three months. Prior to this incident, the government had already announced the end of immigration detention beyond the 18 months permitted by EU law. Migrants and asylum seekers, including children, are systematically detained, often in appalling conditions, for prolonged periods. Since December 2013 alone, the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Greece eight times for inhuman and degrading conditions in immigrant detention facilities.

                The government should invest in alternatives to detention, including reception centers, and integration measures, Human Rights Watch said. “The Tsipras government has a lot on its plate now as it attempts to renegotiate the country’s debt,” Cossé said. “But taking concrete steps to address terrible human rights abuses affecting some of the most vulnerable people in Greece is no less a priority.”
                "Ido not want an uprising of people that would leave me at the first failure, I want revolution with citizens able to bear all the temptations to a prolonged struggle, what, because of the fierce political conditions, will be our guide or cattle to the slaughterhouse"
                GOTSE DELCEV

                Comment

                • Volokin
                  Member
                  • Apr 2014
                  • 278

                  #38
                  The migration problem in Macedonia

                  Tracking down Macedonia's migrant kidnap gang

                  Hundreds of migrants at a time are being held by a kidnapping gang at a house in Macedonia. Reporter Ramita Navai tracked the house down.

                  The messages from Mohammed were desperate: please help us; we are so scared.

                  Mohammed then describes the conditions – about 300 migrants locked inside a few small rooms, crushed in so tightly at times it was hard to breath; at night bodies piled on top of each other to sleep. The house was patrolled by armed guards 24 hours a day, the windows were blacked out with bin bags. Beatings were frequent. Food was scarce. There was no escape.

                  He sent the messages from his phone when the kidnappers had turned on the internet. The hostages were told to contact their families to send ransom money. But Mohammed and his friend Ahmed, both university students from Syria, had no one to turn to.
                  News

                  Ahmed has not heard from his family since he fled the bombing and Mohammed's mother has lost everything in the war. When they left their home town Aleppo they could never imagine they would find themselves hostages in the heart of Europe, human commodities traded by Afghan people smugglers.
                  Batons and knives

                  What began as a desperate message from these two students lifted a lid on an operation that generates millions of euros a year for criminal networks that extend back to the bad lands of Afghanistan.

                  I was forwarded the messages by a contact and began to investigate their story, retracing the journey that Ahmed and Mohammed had taken from where they were kidnapped – the border area between Greece and Macedonia.

                  Here, under willow trees and in fields of wild flowers and poppies, over 500 migrants camp out every night, most of them sleeping rough; some families find shelter in disused barns and outhouses.

                  This may be Europe, but this is Afghan smuggler territory and scores of Afghan people smugglers swarm the undergrowth, negotiating cash deals with migrants to take them to Western Europe.

                  The smugglers are armed with machetes to protect themselves and their charges against the criminal gangs that stalk the woods robbing them of mobile phones and cash.

                  News

                  The drill is nearly always the same: at dusk, the smugglers lead groups of migrants into Macedonia. At Gevgelija station the migrants are loaded into the windowless wagons of freight trains that heat like furnaces in the sun, and transported like cattle across the country. But every week, hundreds are not arriving in Serbia as planned.

                  Instead, their train is intercepted by a kidnapping ring. Guards wielding batons and knives are waiting for them – for the Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Libyans; for all those fleeing bloodshed and death – and when they stumble out of their metal boxes, often gasping for air and delirious with panic and thirst – they are made to march two hours north to a small ethnic Albanian village called Vaksintse.
                  'The house'

                  My investigation led me to that village. Mohammed and Ahmed's mobile phone had logged the exact GPS coordinates of the house where they were held.

                  The locals here are weary of outsiders. A few weeks ago a firefight between ethnic Albanian rebels and the Macedonian police in the nearby town of Kumanovo left 18 dead, eight of them members of Macedonia's Special Forces.

                  This has always been a part of Europe that has lived on the fringes of the law. A landscape where the mafia rule and blood ties are far stronger than any nation state.

                  Mohammed and Ahmed escaped during that attack, when the house was unexpectedly evacuated. Their captors had taken them into nearby woods where they slipped away, along with a young man from Yemen; the others were too scared to follow and remained in captivity.

                  As we approached the house the presence of a local person from our team reassured the villagers. They told us they hear shouting every night.

                  From the outside it was just as Mohammad and Ahmed had described, it was also patrolled by Afghan guards who would not let me close. The guards were reluctant to speak, and clearly thrown by someone talking to them in their own language.

                  "Are their immigrants in the house ?" I asked. "No. There is no one in here. Leave now."

                  But I had seen the backs of heads through a window – before it had been shut. The shadows of people who had fled mayhem and dictatorship and were now having to buy their freedom from gangsters – many of whom probably started life as refugees themselves.

                  We'd learned that when they were taken to "the house" they were forced to pay anywhere from €500 to €1,000 to get out and to start the lonely walk into Serbia. Syrians are charged more than others as they are deemed to be richer.
                  Albanian mafia

                  This is big business. In only a few hours in Belgrade, I met 10 different people who had been kidnapped and held by the gang – some of them in a different house to where Mohammed and Ahmed were kept.

                  A smuggler who knew about the house told me that over a thousand are extorted every week. There will be inevitable fears of connections between the gangsters and international terrorism.

                  But there are also more immediate dangers. When they started making phone calls, the villagers told us we should leave. The Afghans were one thing. But what they feared more was who was taking those calls. High powered ethnic Albanian mafia – the sort of men who can take on the Macedonian state in open combat and could be relied on to violently protect their share in the profits from human traffic.

                  We have passed on the coordinates to the house to the Macedonian police. They said they would look into our allegations. But until they do, if they ever dare, it's clear that the distant families of hostages - hundreds of men, women, and children, mostly refugees from war - are being fleeced for the last of what they have.
                  Hundreds of migrants at a time are being held by a kidnapping gang at a house in Macedonia. Reporter Ramita Navai tracked the house down.


                  Macedonia 'worst place' in Europe for migrants

                  5 June 2015 Last updated at 06:57 BST

                  Macedonia is one of the "worst places for migrants in Europe" according to several human rights groups.

                  The charity Medicins Sans Frontiers says at least 300 people are making the journey from Greece to Macedonia every day, as part of their journey into Europe.

                  Once they cross the border, they are vulnerable to police brutality and the risk of being kidnapped and ransomed by criminal gangs.

                  The country's government admits it is "struggling" to deal with migrants.

                  Dina Demrdash reports from Macedonia.
                  Macedonia is one of the "worst places for migrants in Europe" according to several human rights groups.


                  Illegal migrants abused in Macedonia - reports

                  Human rights organizations are saying that Macedonia is "one of the worst countries in Europe for migrants," BBC reported.
                  Source: B92 Friday, June 5, 2015 | 13:48
                  (Beta/AP, file)
                  (Beta/AP, file)

                  According to Doctors Without Borders, at least 300 persons died on their way from Greece to Macedonia, in a bid to reach Northern and Western Europe.

                  A migrant from Syria was quoted as saying that "even the Macedonian police" robbed them of their money and documents, and subjected them to beatings.

                  Another accused the police of torture and setting dogs on them, adding that one police officer "pointed a pistol at us."

                  "They put us in cars, take us to the border, and when they throw us out of the cars they start beating us," another said.


                  According to the BBC, the Macedonian police "has difficulties facing these problems."

                  A spokesman for the Macedonian Interior Ministry, Ivo Koteski, said recently that some policemen have are suspected of attacking illegal immigrants, while many others are have been accused of belonging to international migrant trafficking rings.

                  The report also said the UN, Macedonian human rights groups and the Office of the Citizens Ombudsman all warned about "inhumane conditions" in migrant centers.

                  The Macedonian media are quoting the British broadcaster as reporting that migrants are often kidnapped in the town of Kumanovo and held prisoner until they pay ransom, while there have also been rape cases.

                  Comment

                  • Volokin
                    Member
                    • Apr 2014
                    • 278

                    #39
                    Fair to say disturbing reports coming out of Macedonia regarding the movement of migrants through the republic towards the European Union.

                    I had no idea about the scale of migrants until now. In the first video, it's said that 8500 refugees have been detected in Macedonia, in the LAST WEEK, with hundreds passing through every day. With these numbers, there is not a whole lot the Macedonian Border Police can do, but something needs to be done.

                    Luckily, these migrants are aiming for the EU, Macedonia is not the final destination, but people are still getting stuck in the roM, trying to enter Serbia and onwards.

                    To add, thanks to the Dublin Regulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation), the EU Member State in which an asylum seeker has an application lodged, is then bound to stay in the country, and cannot go elsewhere in the EU, which really is bad news for Bulgaria and our southern neighbors. Justified by, "to reduce the number of orbiting asylum seekers, who are shuttled from member state to member state."

                    Now, I'm not exactly surprised that foreign criminal groups are able to operate in Macedonia with little restriction, but for the police to be said to have been involved in the smuggling process is embarrassing. Now I'm sure corruption at a local level is present in Macedonia and as a result, things like this can happen, but that needs to be stopped.

                    Surely it isn't that hard for the police to stop the bunch of Afghans kidnapping people along the border?

                    There is 10 minute and then 3 minute doco in the article of first two links posted. Worth a watch.

                    Comment

                    • George S.
                      Senior Member
                      • Aug 2009
                      • 10116

                      #40
                      There's confirmation that all this goes under the noses of the eu.They should be baning this sort of thing.Women are sold as slaves in the sex trade.Even children are married for money as young as 10.Women are rounded up like animals and passed through borders for money.No one cares as you hear the horror stories as how they have been kidnapped and are bartered for sex as sex slaves.
                      Last edited by George S.; 06-07-2015, 06:19 PM.
                      "Ido not want an uprising of people that would leave me at the first failure, I want revolution with citizens able to bear all the temptations to a prolonged struggle, what, because of the fierce political conditions, will be our guide or cattle to the slaughterhouse"
                      GOTSE DELCEV

                      Comment

                      • Benito
                        Junior Member
                        • May 2015
                        • 68

                        #41
                        Destination: Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Denmark. This tsunami of immigrants mean the death of western Europe!

                        Comment

                        • Volokin
                          Member
                          • Apr 2014
                          • 278

                          #42
                          Macedonian police have detained 128 illegal migrants from Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries sheltering in five houses in a village near the border with Serbia, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday.

                          Villagers had rented their houses to the migrants for 1,500 euros ($1,685) a month, ministry spokesman Vlado Kotevski said. He said four Macedonian nationals would be charged with people smuggling.

                          The early morning raid on the houses in Vaksince came a week after British Channel 4 TV broadcast a program in which it reported the migrants were being held there against their will.

                          Kotevski said the migrants had told investigators they came to Vaksince via Greece of their own free will.

                          "None of them complained of being threatened or blackmailed," Kotevski told reporters.

                          Migrants fleeing war, poverty and persecution in the Middle East and Africa are increasingly using the Balkans to reach Western Europe, as this route is deemed longer but safer than sailing across the Mediterranean, where thousands of migrants have died in rickety boats.

                          Separately to the Vaksince case, police in neighboring Serbia said on Thursday they had arrested two police officers and another six people suspected of trafficking people, for a fee, from Belgrade to Subotica, near the border with EU member Hungary.


                          This came as a result of the investigation I posted above. Nothing said about the Afghani smugglers.

                          Comment

                          • Volokin
                            Member
                            • Apr 2014
                            • 278

                            #43
                            Changes to Law on Asylum to Be Discussed at Government Session

                            The changes to the Law on Asylum, which will allow transiting immigrants to legally stay in the country for 72 hours and after that to continue their journey, will be discussed Monday at a Government session.

                            The predicted changes will allow immigrants that cross the border to acquire an approval certificate for a 72 hour stay until they leave the country or ask for refuge.

                            The current and restrictive Law on Asylum is the reason why hundreds of immigrants cross the border with Greece daily and transit through Macedonia illegally.

                            Because of their illegal status, immigrants are not allowed to use public transportation, buses or trains, and railroad paths have proven to be very dangerous. Twenty-seven immigrants have already died on the railroads because they were hit by a train.

                            Most of the immigrants that became a part of a smugglers network ended up in the Migrant Center where conditions are unbearable and inhumane, as it was reported by human rights organizations.

                            Lastly, the immigrants started to transit the country on bicycles, which have not made the journey less of a struggle.


                            This could be a good idea actually.

                            Comment

                            • Amphipolis
                              Banned
                              • Aug 2014
                              • 1328

                              #44
                              Originally posted by Volokin View Post
                              This could be a good idea actually.
                              Greece is doing something similar and it's certainly NOT a good idea. Still, you're not Greece, so maybe you're indifferent to it.

                              I believe that according to EU law, when these people are spotted in Germany, Sweden, or anywhere in EU they will be arrested and sent back... to Greece. Not Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Syria, but to Greece as it is the first EU country they entered through. Then, Greece will tell them "Go where you please, again" and so on.

                              In my opinion, the most fair and practical thing for Greece to do, was sending them back to Turkey at the first time. An additional threat that they will be imprisoned, if they return for a second time, would be a good idea. Still, Greek prisons are already full of criminal cases of illegal immigrants.

                              Comment

                              • makedonche
                                Senior Member
                                • Oct 2008
                                • 3242

                                #45
                                Originally posted by Amphipolis View Post
                                Greece is doing something similar and it's certainly NOT a good idea. Still, you're not Greece, so maybe you're indifferent to it.

                                I believe that according to EU law, when these people are spotted in Germany, Sweden, or anywhere in EU they will be arrested and sent back... to Greece. Not Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Syria, but to Greece as it is the first EU country they entered through. Then, Greece will tell them "Go where you please, again" and so on.

                                In my opinion, the most fair and practical thing for Greece to do, was sending them back to Turkey at the first time. An additional threat that they will be imprisoned, if they return for a second time, would be a good idea. Still, Greek prisons are already full of criminal cases of illegal immigrants.
                                Amphipolis
                                That's a very Greek way of dealing with the issue.....denial and pass the buck to Turkey!
                                On Delchev's sarcophagus you can read the following inscription: "We swear the future generations to bury these sacred bones in the capital of Independent Macedonia. August 1923 Illinden"

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