Greece protests border closure to Afghans

A man from Afghanistan carrying a baby cries as he pushes against the fence at the Greece-Macedonia border near the village of Idomeni, northern Greece, during a demonstration on Monday against Macedonia’s refusal to allow Afghans to pass the border. (Photo: AFP)

Greece said on Monday it was taking action to persuade Macedonia to take in Afghan migrants as thousands remained stranded at the border and the main port in Athens.

“We have begun diplomatic moves... We believe the problem will be resolved,” junior interior minister for migration Yiannis Mouzalas said, without elaborating on what steps were being taken.

Some 5,000 refugees and migrants are stuck at the border with Macedonia after the neighbouring state on Sunday refused to allow passage to Afghans, the police said.

Another 3,000 people were blocked in Athens after landing at the port of Piraeus from the Aegean islands, a government source said, adding that officials were scrambling to find room for them.

Hungary meanwhile on Monday reported a sharp rise in the numbers of migrants breaching its southern borders in February, the first significant surge since the frontiers were sealed in 2015.

Around 1,500 migrants tried to enter the EU member state illegally fr-om Serbia in February, with 500 alone caught bet-ween Friday and Sunday, the police said. Many were economic migrants from Morocco, Iran and Pakistan, the police said. Unlike Syrians, they are unlikely to be granted asylum in Europe and face deportation.

In Germany, the government on Monday denou-nced anti-refugee protests, calling the events in which a group of people hindered asylum-seekers from getting off a bus to enter a shelter “deeply shameful”. “How cold-hearted, how coward one has to be to plant oneself in front of a refugee bus, to swear and to roar in order to scare the people sitting inside, among them several women and children,” a government spokesperson said.

On Thursday night a group of about 100 people blocked the entry to a refugee shelter in Clausnitz, a small town in Germany’s eastern state Saxony. Video footage posted online shows the crowd surrounding the bus with the refugees inside, yelling slurs and hindering the refugees from getting off.