Macedonia lets in vulnerable refugees

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BELGRADE: Macedonia said on Friday it would allow a limited number of “vulnerable” migrants to enter the country, after it sealed its border with Greece to them, leaving thousands of refugees stuck in no-man’s land. “A limited number of illegal migrants in vulnerable categories are allowed to enter Macedonia and they may be provided aid in accordance with the state’s capacities,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement. It did not say what the vulnerable categories were. The decision came after hundreds streamed across the border. Police issued temporary transit documents to 181 migrants, mostly from Syria, Bangladesh and Pakistan, wanting to cross the small Balkan country on their way to northern Europe in the last 24 hours, the statement said. Before Macedonia declared a state of emergency on its southern border on Thursday it was issuing an average of 1,300 such documents a day, it added. Earlier in the day Macedonia deployed its army and police used stun grenades to stop thousands of migrants from entering the country via Greece, its Interior Ministry said, a day after declaring a state of emergency over Europe’s immigration crisis. A crowd of at least 3,000 migrants gathered at the border where Macedonian police, with refugees laying on rails to stop train traffic, the MIA news service reported. Police fired stun grenades to drive the crowd back in the no-man’s land, Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski said. A team from aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres tweeted that 10 people were injured and it was treating those hit by “shrapnel” from the blasts. “We have the right to protect our borders,” Kotevski said by phone from the capital Skopje. “We want to respect international conventions and human rights, but our capacities are limited, and no one is helping us.” Two Syrian refugees injured in clashes were hospitalised in Greece and are in stable condition, the state-run Athens News Agency reported. Macedonia has appealed to Frontex, the European Union border management agency, for help, Kotevski said. More than 40,000 migrants have arrived in the country of 2 million people, in the past two months, with most wanting to continue to richer EU countries. Kotevski said Greek authorities had lowered controls and transported migrants to the frontier. Greece has struggled to deal with refugees for months traversing the narrow straits from Turkey to the Greek islands of Lesvos, Kos and Chios. Almost eight in 10 come from Syria or Afghanistan, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In neighboring Bulgaria, the government said it may deploy its army to its borders, while Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek and his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz urged the EU to strengthen its external frontier and pay more attention to the Balkan route, they told reporters in Linz, Austria. “These narrow-minded games won’t work,” Gerald Knaus, founder of the Berlin-based European Stability Initiative, said by phone. “We need a European-wide policy. All the countries should get together and bear their part of the burden.” “The problem will get bigger and bigger,” Dimitar Bechev, the chairman of the European Policy Institute in Sofia, said by phone. “I won’t be surprised if at some point this results in xenophobic outbursts and be used by xenophobic parties.” Agencies