{"id":328086,"date":"2016-03-18T04:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T03:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/a-story-from-the-macedonian-border\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:03:25","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:03:25","slug":"a-story-from-the-macedonian-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/a-story-from-the-macedonian-border\/","title":{"rendered":"A story from the Macedonian border"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1458313908\"<\/a>Thousands of refugees with hopes of crossing the Greek border live under tents in mud<\/strong>. The \u201cmirage\u201d is to reach Europe. Dolores Poletto <\/strong>is Croation. She works twice a week with Caritas Macedonia and lives in the focolare community in Skopje. She reports what she saw along the border. \u201cI was at the refugee camp in Gevgelija, Macedonia with some colleagues from Caritas. It was an informal visit. On the other side of the border was a sea of people. We also crossed the border between Greece and Macedonia.\u201d Closed Borders. <\/strong>The humanitarian crisis that refugees are enduring in Greece, Macedonia and Serbia is the result of the closing of border crossings along the Balkans migration route. On March 9, Slovenian authorities closed the borde<\/strong>r. Croatia has also announced that it will close its border and Serbia immediately announced the same. According to the most recent data \u2013 but the numbers are estimates \u2013 there are now some 14 thousand refugees at the Macedonian border. In Greece there are more than 34 thousand. Idomeni is like a funnel<\/strong>. The same thing is happening here that we have seen happening for months in Calais at the French border on the English Channel. The migrants arrive after having crossed through Greece and the Aegean on overloaded boats. \u201cA multitude of people,\u201d Dolores says. \u201cThey arrive in very poor condition . . . We\u2019re on the border where before they crossed into Macedonia. People want to be as close as possible, so curtains have been put up behind the railway station.\u201d Along with the mud, there is also the cold. <\/strong>\u201cThe daytime temperature is comfortable, rising as high as 18 degrees (C), but in the evening it drops to 2-3 degrees.\u201d Living conditions in the camp deteriorate daily. Along with the cold, food is scarce and hygienic conditions are appalling. \u00a0<\/strong> Many stand in line waiting for food,\u201d <\/strong>Dolores says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to describe what their psychological state is like under such conditions. Many say that they\u2019re from Syria. All of them would like to go to Germany, Austria . . . They have only one question for us: \u201cWhen will the border open?\u201d They\u2019re prepared to do anything, so long as they reach their goal . . . ready even to die. \u201cYou know, I just heard news of 3 refugees who starved to death trying to cross illegally between Macedonia and Greece. This is so sad.\u201d Caritas has been on the scene since the beginning, along \u00a0with many other NGOs. <\/strong>\u201cThey\u2019re waiting, hoping to cross the border,\u201d Dolores explains. \u201cThat\u2019s why they don\u2019t want to move to more suitable camps. It\u2019s difficult to help them.\u201d The border police are here ensuring that no one crosses the border, in accordance with agreements made with Europe. When faced with this \u201cimpasse . . . you feel completely helpless.\u201d <\/strong>Dolores has been deeply affected by this experience on the border. \u201cWe can stay with them on the Cross; I\u2019m not able to forget those images. There are quite a few journalists there. I spoke with several of them and returned home to watch the news reports on TV. I said that if I had watched them without having visited that place, they would only have only been another series of daily news reports, but now after having touched it with my own hands, it feels more like a live wound on humanity\u2019s body.\u201d \u00a0<\/strong> Source: SIR<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italian Religious Information Service (SIR) interview with Dolores Poletto from the Focolare Movement in Skopje, Macedonia. Her account of the refugees stranded in Idomeni, Greece: \u201cIn that cold and mud I saw a humanity that was wounded.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}