Roundup: Macedonia puts up fence on border with Greece, migrants storm on police

Total of 18 Macedonian police officers were injured Saturday afternoon, when migrants trying to enter Macedonia from Greece started to throw rocks at the police forces securing the border line, Macedonian Ministry of Interior informed.

According to the police, the migrants started to throw rocks with the purpose to breach the police line and forcefully enter the country. Two police officers suffered more severe injuries in the head and several police and army vehicles were demolished. The police managed to restore the order at the border line.

The newest incidents started on Saturday when the Macedonian Army started to raise the fence at the border with Greece in an attempt to channel the migrant flow through a single border crossing.

“The Coordinative Body in charge with the dealing with the migrant crisis took the decision to start building the fence this morning, based on the conclusions of the National Security Council taken two weeks ago. The goal is to channelize the migrant flow, to direct them through a single crossing so we can have more efficient registration,” the spokesperson of the Macedonian Army Toni Janevski told Xinhua in Skopje.

The wired fence is three meters high and will be completed in several days. Macedonian authorities will leave open only the so-called Point 59 on the border where all migrants should pass in order to register and continue their journey.

Still, not all of them will be able to reach Europe through this gate. Since last week Macedonian security forces allow transit only to the migrants from the countries where there is an immediate security risk – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Others are qualified as “economic migrants” and are advised to return to their homeland. But the nationals of Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, Morocco, Bangladesh and many other countries demand to be allowed to transit towards Western Europe and have no plans to turn back. Their number is constantly rising.

Macedonian citizens have divided opinion about the building of the fence on the border with Greece.

“I think it should have been done earlier. Look what happened in Paris. We have to protect ourselves somehow and honestly I don’t feel safe at all with such a huge number of migrants going through our country,” Mitko Stojanovski from Skopje told Xinhua.

Monika Ivanovska disagrees: “We are in the 21st century! Instead of erasing the borders we are closing ourselves additionally. Those poor people have nowhere to go. They just want a chance at normal and better life, a chance to reach Europe. Almost no one of them decides to stay here,” she adds.

The measure to put a fence at the border was authorized by the Macedonian National Security Council at the meeting held in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

"The Security Council would like to stress that setting up the fence is not with the purpose to close the border, but to canalize and limit the flow, accordingly to the number of migrants that will be further accepted by the European countries which are their final destination," the Security Council, body presided by the Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, announced after the meeting. Enditem