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Smuggling Rife as Refugees Cross Closed Balkan Route
[AnNahar] Mohamad Jomaa breathlessly recounts his covert journey from Greece to Macedonia: a 10-day trek through the mountains, getting robbed by local "mafia" and handing over costly bribes to police.While the so-called "Balkan route" is now officially closed to migrants, hundreds are still finding ways to cross it every day -- whether furtively by foot or in the hands of smuggling gangs. "Maybe today or tomorrow I'm going to Serbia, walking again. I don't care (about) police or mafia or anything, I want to go to Germany," says Jomaa, 20, a law student from Syria. He and his four travelling companions, other Syrian and Iraqi young men, are spending a couple of days recovering at the Tabanovce refugee centre in northern Macedonia before readying for their next leg north to Belgrade. They tell of intense haggling and deals struck at the camp between refugees desperate to leave and the smugglers who visit at nightfall. "It's a bazaar here," jokes floppy-haired Jomaa. After countries along the Balkan route shut their borders to migrants back in March, around 1,500 people were stuck at Tabanovce. Now just a few hundred remain as those who are able have left. Before the border lockdown, when thousands were passing through Macedonia each day, "we didn't know who is poor and who is rich," says Driton Maliqi from Legis, a Macedonian NGO working with refugees. But the ones still here are clearly poor, "because people who have money, they manage to go," he says, adding that some get cash wired to a nearby town from their families. - 'Smuggler channels' - The camp's numbers are boosted by those using Tabanovce as a quick stop-off point on their way to Serbia and beyond. They arrive from Greece, where thousands have been detained in overcrowded camps for weeks as they wait for asylum under a shaky EU-Turkey deal -- spurring some to just get up and leave. "Even though the Balkan road is closed, we can say that every day new refugees are arriving, but everyone knows they are coming in smuggler channels," says Maliqi. Gangs smuggling migrants to Europe raked in up to $6 billion in 2015 alone, according to a joint report released on Tuesday by Interpol and the EU's law enforcement agency Europol. More than 90 percent of migrants use smugglers at some point on their journey -- paying an average of 3,000 to 6,000 euros -- and that percentage is expected to rise this year, the report says. It warns of a likely increase in migrants being targeted for labour or sexual exploitation as a way to repay their debts. Posted by: trailing wife 2016-05-22 |
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