DIDYMOTEICHO, Greece — This time of year, the Evros river runs broad and icy, its banks muddy and remote. It’s a formidable sight for migrants reaching Turkey’s land border with Greece, but not formidable enough to stop people who have already come so far in their bid to make it to a new life in Europe.
“It was horribly cold,” said Kevin Mohamadi, 37, an Iranian who said he crossed the river after paying smugglers. “We were a group of 16, including Afghan families with four children each, and crossed in two boatloads. Then we had to walk through forests for four hours, to avoid being caught.”
A year after the uncontrolled influx of more than 1 million refugees and economic migrants to debt-hobbled Greece, this border region is again seeing rising flows of migrants. It’s largely due to a legal loophole: restrictions imposed in March to curb new arrivals by sea in the Greek islands don’t apply to the land border.
That means that anyone entering here is far ahead of island arrivals in the queue for refugee relocation to other European countries, and those who do not qualify for asylum could even be spared deportation that they would otherwise face under the deal between the European Union and Turkey.
Also, despite the river crossing, the discomfort and danger pales when compared with the sea journey to the islands.
“The refugees usually cross in boats,” said Panagiotis Ageladarakis, mayor of the border village of Amorio, about 1.5 km from the river. “At its widest the river is about 150 meters across, but there are narrower points, and Turks ferry them over. ... Then they walk to our villages. It’s a regular sight.”
Figures on arrivals here are far from complete. The only statistics released are of people who are caught with the smugglers they pay to ferry them over the Evros, which runs along most of the 180-km border. There is no information on migrants who make it across without the help of smugglers, nor for those who are smuggled successfully across and taken further into Greece or elsewhere in Europe.
But even the few numbers that do exist show a rapid upward trend. About 655 people — largely Syrians — were arrested with 33 smugglers in October, double the figure for September. — AP
