Greek vigilantes patrol border with Turkey
EVROS, Greece — The farmers and pensioners wore black clothes and heavy boots, imitating Greece’s special forces, and trod along a rural road on a night patrol looking for migrants trying to cross the northern land border with Turkey. “We’ll get you next time!” they shouted at a small group of men who had made it over and fled.
Two hundred miles to the south, on the border island of Lesbos, locals angrily blocked a dinghy full of migrants from Turkey, including a pregnant woman and children, from getting off on a pier. “No more!” they yelled, cursing. On land and at sea, one thing is clear along Greece’s meandering border with Turkey: This is not 2015 anymore. Then, while much of Europe was convulsed with anger and fear as more than 1 million asylum-seekers poured in from distant wars, Greeks helped rescue refugees at sea, or greeted them with empathy as they traversed the country en route to northern Europe.
The citizens of the island of Lesbos were even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Now, the reaction is overt hostility. A new center-right Greek government has temporarily suspended accepting asylum applications and pledged to summarily expel those who come in order to discourage migrants. And ordinary citizens, many of whom who are fed up, are taking matters into their own hands.
Villagers from border towns are forming civilian patrols to round up migrants. Islanders have set up roadblocks to stop migrants from reaching refugee camps. Others have physically attacked aid workers and journalists, accusing them of helping migrants.
Turkey, itself home to more than 3 million Syrian refugees, has opened the gates to thousands of migrants to enter Greece as it tries to pressure Europe for help in the conflict in Syria.
The Greek government has responded with a crackdown, shutting the borders, deploying the army and drumming up a wartime rhetoric against Turkey, which it accuses of orchestrating an invasion.
Refugee camps on Lesbos, and other islands, continue to expand and fester. They have spilled into local communities where residents feel they have gotten little support from the government or the European Union. Relatively few of the migrants have been moved on to the mainland, and fewer still have been moved from Greece, to alleviate the burden. There is no resolution in sight.
Instead, thousands more continued to arrive, even after Turkey had mostly cut off the flow of desperate asylum-seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, as part of an agreement with the EU.
“When the Syrians started coming five years ago, we gave clothes, we cooked for them, we bounced their babies,” said a woman named Fotini who lives in Moria village, bordering the notorious refugee camp on Lesbos, where more than 15,000 migrants are hosted in facilities designed for 3,000.
“Five years of solidarity,” she added. “We can’t take it any more. We want our lives back.”
Some of the more violent groups seemed to have been mobilized by known far-right extremists, but it was evident that the movement against migrants enjoyed broader social support in the borderlands.
The Greek army has not mobilized the national guard. But it has put the borders on high alert, with hundreds of additional troops patrolling, and repelling, migrants and leaving the vast green delta of the Evros River, part of the northern frontier, feeling like it is on war footing.
The scuffling at the border has been violent. Migrants and local Turkish officials said at least two people were shot and killed on March 2 by Greek security forces, who also used tear gas as they attempted to push the migrants back into Turkey.
Turkey’s interior minister this week encouraged migrants to cross anywhere they could along the border, not necessarily at authorized points, and said that Turkey would deploy a thousand special forces police officers with Zodiac boats to prevent pushbacks.
Greece called the allegations of killings and violent pushbacks “fake news.”
“Turkey has become an official trafficker of migrants to the European Union, and Greece does not accept this situation,” said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece.
“The problem is an asymmetric threat and illegal invasion of thousands of people that threatens our territory,” Mitsotakis said.
The Turkish threats have given rise to a sense of panic among ordinary Greeks, bolstered by wall-towall coverage of events on Greek national networks.
On Wednesday, no new dinghies arrived. At least eight navy and coast guard vessels were patrolling the stretch of coastline on the island’s north, and strong winds blew, making the 6-mile stretch of water choppy with waves.
“Since we got rid of the NGOs there have been no new migrants coming,” one man said at the Moria village roadblock. “Is that a coincidence? No. That’s it, we’re done, we’re taking back control.”