Hundreds of third country nationals, many identified as Afghans, have congregated on a northern Greece border post after the government of the neighboring former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM) announced that it would not allow the entrance to the former under the status of refugees.
Moreover, Skopje said it would not allow the passage of people without passports or ID cards issued from the countries from which they claim to hail, stating that paper travel documents issued by Greek authorities to people that landed on various Greek isles from the opposite Turkish coast are not sufficient.
Greek police said some 2,000 people were congregated at the Idomeni border post trying to gain access to fYRoM, as part of a journey to further destinations in northern and western Europe – part of the ongoing refugee crisis that has generated heated debate within the Union. Another 3,000 people, all from various Mideast and developing world countries, remained in buses that brought them from other parts of Greece.
The issue of who constitutes a war refugee fleeing conflict in Syria and Iraq and who has merely entered Greece from Turkey as a would-be economic migrant to Europe has often exasperated remains unresolved.
