The situation at the border crossings Gevgelija and Kumanovo for the period: 22.02.2016 – 28.02.2016

The weekly report on the situation at the border crossings Gevgelija and Kumanovo includes the following topics: Available facilities and conditions at the camp and Institutional treatment.

Gevgelija

Available facilities and conditions

In the course of this week only 2,406 certificates for expressed intention to submit a request for recognition of the right to asylum were issued, which is 46% less compared to last week, when 4.465 certificates were issued. This decline is due to the introduction of stricter checks at the Greek-Macedonian border and reduced filtering of refugees who do not posses proper documents.  It is symptomatic that not a single refugees of Afghan origin was allowed to enter this week.

Twice in the course of the week, the border with Greece was temporarily closed.

The hygiene maintenance in the camp is becoming an alarming problem, bearing in mind the large number of refugees who are staying in the camp for prolonged periods of time. They often clean the tents themselves. The personal hygiene of the refugees is also a problem, due to the lack of clean clothes and the possibility to take regular baths. Cases of scabies have already been observed among  the refugees.

The Helsinki Committee appeals for urgent measures to be taken, as well as coordination between the competent institutions in order to prevent the spreading of contagious diseases in the camp.

Two new containers were brought to the camp, which will be used for registration of the refugees. Two more tents are to be brought, each of them having four registration windows, meaning that a total of 16 registration tents will be in operation.

On 26.06.2016, the Minister of Interior, Oliver Spasovski, together with the Minister of Interior of the Czech Republic, Milan Hovanec, paid a visit to the camp.

Institutional treatment

In the course of the week an increased deployment of the members of the Special Support Unit under the Ministry of Interior was observed. Members of the Austrian police are also present in the camp, apart from the Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Serbian Police.

Starting from 24.02.2016, new software for registration of the refugees started to be used, in order to make the registration faster and more efficient.

On two occasions in the course of the week, around 700 refugees were on board the train and waited for more than 5 hours for the train to depart (23 and 24.02.2016). The train was held due to the large number of refugees stranded in Tabanovce and the need to first organize them in order to receive the new groups. In the meantime, the refugees who had boarded the train were not able to get out. The train on 24.02.2016 was sent back to Gevgelija, the refugees got down in the camp and stayed there for more than 4 days. 150 more refugees arrived in the oncoming days, making up for a total of 900 people.

The Helsinki Committee demands better coordination by Macedonian Railroads and the competent institutions in the camps, in order to avoid the lengthy, unnecessary delays of the train and spare the refugees from enduring the bad conditions in the train for extended periods of time.

On 23.02.2016, a group of around 70 refugees from Iran and Lebanon were sent back from the Serbian side due to not having proper documents. They were later transported to the Greek side, along with 9 more refugees from Afghanistan who were caught up in the nearby fields.

Kumanovo

Available facilities and conditions

The hygiene in the camp is an at alarming level due to the large number of refugees stranded in the camp for several days already, and their personal hygiene is also becoming a concern. In the absence of showers, in the course of the week the refugees are given towels and plastic buckets filled with water in order to be able to wash their children and their clothes. The Crisis Management Center, together with the NGOs on-field get coordinated to take measures to prevent contagious diseases from spreading by disinfecting, distributing lice shampoo, removing the dirty clothes, etc.

Institutional treatment

At the start of the week, apart from the 650 refugees from Afghanistan who were already in the camp, approximately 320 refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were brought by the police, after being caught up on the illegal roads in the vicinity of the village of Lojane. Together with them, the number of refugees in the camp reached 1000 people. In the course of the week, several groups were sent back from the Serbian border again, while several others were allowed to cross, leading to constant fluctuations in the number of refugees in the camp. The refugees are being accommodated in all off the facilities in the camp, so that they can all be provided a shelter.

In an isolated incident, three persons coming from Afghanistan, who got back to Macedonia from Bulgaria through illegal roads, were physically assaulted in the village of Vaksince by Pakistani groups living and acting there. Two of them, one of whom is a juvenile aged 16, were taken to the General Hospital in Kumanovo with serious injuries (fractured and crushed bones), after the report of the local residents, while there is no information about the third person. The police officers visited them in the hospital and took their statements about the assault.

In another case, on the road to the village of Miratovce, a person was found in a seriously bad condition. No one knows how this person arrived there. After the intervention of the Red Cross, the person was taken to the General Hospital in Kumanovo.

On 22.02.2016, around 7 pm, the Special Support Unit under MoI was deployed in the camp, and formed a cordon in the middle of the camp in order to direct the refugees who arrived on train from Gevgelija directly on the road to Serbia. The refugees who were in the camp were closed in the tents in order to avoid contact with the new groups that were arriving, until they had proceeded toward the Serbian border. This practice was repeated in the course of the week.

In the buffer zone between the Macedonian and Serbian border  77 refugees from Syria and Iraq are stranded without being allowed to proceed towards Serbia, nor go back to the camp in Tabanovce. They are exposed to cruel conditions without any access to the basic necessities of life. Representatives of UNHCR asked for tents to be set up in that area too, so that the people could have some kind of shelter.

On 24.02.2016, a group of about 20 refugees originating from Afghanistan, who had set off from Greece, was discovered in a cargo train. The refugees were sheltered in the camp and provided with humanitarian and medical aid.

About 120 refugees from Iraq were sent back to the camp in Gevgelija on 26.02.2012, in order to get proper documents issued.

The local peddlers selling cigarettes and other products, have recently started selling alcohol to the refugees in the camp. The police intervened on several occasions when there were physical clashes and arguments between refugees who were intoxicated.

The refugees who spend more than two days in the camp are issued new documents, i.e. certificates of expressed intent to submit a request for recognition of the right to asylum, considering the fact that they run out of the 72 hours envisaged for seeking asylum.

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This report is made possible by the generous support of the Foundation Open Society Institute (FOSI) within the project „Improvement of the rights protection for migrants and asylum seekers in the Republic of Macedonia“. The contents are the responsibility of the Helsinki Committee for Human rights of the Republic of Macedonia and do not necessarily reflect the views of FOSI.