Going nowhere: 13,000 refugees still stuck in Europe's biggest waiting room

[webfact]

Going nowhere: 13,000 refugees still stuck in Europe's biggest waiting room



"I escaped from the war in Syria, not to find another death here in this camp"

IDOMENI: -- As EU leaders and Turkey seek solutions to the migration crisis, far from the comfortable conference rooms of Brussels, blocked at a border marked by cold, filth and despair, at least 13,000 men, women and children wait.

Macedonian authorities are allowing only a handful of refugees through each day to continue their journey to northern Europe.

The rest remain at Idomeni on the Greek side of the frontier – now a giant, ever-growing holding pen for people who thought they had left hell on earth behind.

“I escaped from the war in Syria, not to find another death here in this camp, under the rain and in the cold” said one young man.

“We sleep on the ground. It is a miserable situation. I don’t know…why we are here?”

With food in short supply, the daily routine means standing for hours for a sandwich and an orange. And then back to the tent to wait – and hope.

Weary, one little girl said: “There is nothing in the tent. There are queues everywhere. You have to queue for everything. To eat, to get washed, you have to queue.”

Many children are getting sick.

But the courage and resilience of the young is astounding, with the simplest of pleasures such as basic drawing materials, brightening up their day.

“We watch a lot of children here who play in the garbage. So we do this with a pen and a piece of paper. We play with them and they are so happy with that,” said volunteer Rober Astorgano.

It is a brief light in the darkness for children who have already been through so much.

Children, and their parents, who are still going nowhere.

Lotte Leicht of Human Rights Watch sent her own message to EU leaders.

-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2016-03-08

[SOTIRIOS]

...not invited to the 'flood dry run party' in Paris.....???

[jaidam]

“We sleep on the ground. It is a miserable situation. I don’t know…why we are here?”

You are here because you were in fear for your life in your own country, which is why you abandoned your wife, kids, elderly relatives to their dire fate and paid people smugglers a fortune for your passage to Europe. To be honest I'm surprised you have forgotten that fact, your life was in grave danger. When you speak like you did above it is almost as if you are a chancer that fancies life on easy street lapping up the infidels welfare payments. Of course that could not be the case and to suggest so would be abusive, non PC bla bla, which is why I am not suggesting that you are such a person.

[fanof3d]

“We sleep on the ground. It is a miserable situation. I don’t know…why we are here?”

You are here because you were in fear for your life in your own country, which is why you abandoned your wife, kids, elderly relatives to their dire fate and paid people smugglers a fortune for your passage to Europe. To be honest I'm surprised you have forgotten that fact, your life was in grave danger. When you speak like you did above it is almost as if you are a chancer that fancies life on easy street lapping up the infidels welfare payments. Of course that could not be the case and to suggest so would be abusive, non PC bla bla, which is why I am not suggesting that you are such a person.

You got 1 thing right. Most of these refugees were in fear of their lives as would be anyone but please don't be so naive to think that anything but a very SMALL percentage paid anyone a "fortune" for passage anywhere. They were running in fear WITH their wives, kids and relatives. Yes, of course many got left behind but their from Syria. If you know anything about Syria, there aren't too many people with fortunes of anything.....mostly war riddled memories and horrible experiences. This entire situation is a complete mess. This is a direct outcome of war and political/religious unrest which displaces people. Other countries attempted to help but clearly had no plan of execution. I strongly condone the idiots out there from other Middle Eastern and N. African countries that have been raping women and disrespecting the countries that are attempting to help them but that's another story. For the families who were courageous enough to leave .....they had no idea what would happen to them. I'm sure they thought they we're headed for greener pastures but that simply wasn't the case. We've (for what every reason) let ISIL terrorize, execute and further impoverish this county for a very long time now... to the point the people that are there now have no food, drinking water and in many cases electricity. Until ISIL is wiped out and their country is stabilized and rebuilt to some degree, they won't be heading back like some are doing in Iraq/Afghanistan and other countries with loads of refugees. I guess I'm just disappointed that so many countries allowed all of this chaos without precise plans of execution. Germany wanted to help but was totally unprepared for such a crisis and now your seeing the results. I'm shocked that the leaders of these countries haven't come together in an emergency meeting to figure it out......and so the saga continues.