MIGRANTS mobbing the Macedonian border with Greece broke through police lines yesterday as a panic-fuelled rush to reach Hungary before a deadline to build a fence triggers a new exodus.
Guards using batons and teargas were overwhelmed on the Balkans border and thousands escaped north across the muddy fields in a rush to get to western Europe.
The race against time before Hungary completes the 109-mile fence along its border with Serbia has seen migrants scramble to cross the Mediterranean and Greece in days.
“We hear that the situation on the Hungarian border is getting worse by the day and that the fence will be completed soon, so we are all rushing to get there as quick as possible,” said Obeida, 23, a refugee from the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo.
Obeida and a group of other Syrian young men landed on the Greek island of Kos last week. With the assistance of local officials, they travelled to Macedonia. Their aim is to reach Germany and claim asylum there.
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Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, has set the end of this month as the deadline for the completion of the £70m fence. The number of people crossing into Hungary from Serbia on their way to countries such as Germany has tripled to more than 1,500 a day since the announcement.
It is a journey that is helped by Greek officials eager to ensure that their bankrupt country does not bear the burden of the migrants landing from Syria and elsewhere.
“Greek authorities hastily register the people and then ship them towards Macedonia. They don’t take their fingerprints or check their identity in any way,” said Paul Ronzheimer, a German journalist who is documenting the group’s trip to his country.
Macedonia, with a population of 2m, has been struggling to deal with the sudden influx of migrants. Its authorities give those who succeed in crossing the border a 72-hour permit that allows them free passage to Serbia.
The number of trains servicing the 140-mile route was increased from three to five on Saturday to ease their passage.
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Faced with the dramatic rise in the influx, Macedonia closed its border with Greece on Thursday, leaving thousands of migrants trapped in no man’s land. Those that could slept in tents and makeshift huts; others slept rough on the muddy ground.
Clashes soon followed with the frustrated travellers, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency and call in the army.
Dozens were given first aid by the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières. Many were sent to hospital.
After complaints from UN agencies and human rights groups, Macedonia began to allow in small groups before finally losing control during yesterday’s stampede.
“We cannot hermetically seal the border but we are trying to maintain order,” said a Macedonian government spokesman.
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“The Greek authorities are pushing over 3,000 people a day across the border into our country and we just can’t cope with that amount of migrants.”
Obeida and his group managed to make it into Macedonia just before the border was sealed late on Thursday.
The group has already reached Belgrade, Serbia’s capital and is making preparations to cross into Hungary.
From there they will travel towards a village in east Germany, where they believe their asylum applications will be processed swiftly.
During their perilous journey, the Syrians have been relying on underground services set up by their communities and co-ordinated via social networks and mobile applications such as WhatsApp.
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Crossing Hungary still represents a risk for the Syrians. The refugees’ biggest fear as they travel on is to be fingerprinted in Hungary as they would then be forced under EU rules to request asylum there.
“There are police officers behind the Hungarian border that want to take our fingerprints and if they do that, we will not be able to seek asylum in Germany,” Obeida said.
“The Germans would then send us back to Hungary but nobody wants to stay there.”
Additional reporting: Borjan Jovanovski in Gevgelija
Burden to be shared
The European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, is ready to unveil a German-backed plan to tackle migration by sharing the burden across the EU, writes Bojan Pancevski.
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At a meeting in Berlin tomorrow, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and President François Hollande of France will hail the scheme for the automatic relocation of migrants as the “only solution” to Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Britain has an opt-out, but is expected to come under political pressure to take part.
Martin Patzelt, a senior MP from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party who is hosting two refugees from Eritrea in his home, said Britain’s reputation as a “compassionate nation” was at stake, adding: “One cannot just sit grumpily in the corner and ignore the problem.”
Juncker’s proposals will involve mandatory refugee quotas for EU countries as part of an emergency mechanism automatically triggered once a country claims to be overburdened by migratory pressures.
A similar plan proposed by Juncker in May failed to win the backing of European leaders who refused to vote on it. But now Germany, which takes 40% of all asylum seekers coming into the EU, is putting pressure on other member states to take their share.
The commission intends to use a different procedure this time, involving the European parliament, which will oblige member states to vote on the plan.