personal report from macedonian- greek border

At the moment there are 700 roma in the state Macedonia at the border to greece. They fled during the Kosova war to Macedonia, where they were allowed to stay in different camps and private houses.

Since march, the Macedonian state tries to expell them of the country.

These people in this camp get a liter of water and a piece of bred a day, they have no access to mediacal and no sun protection. When they tried to find protection from the rain, the border police violently drove them out of their shelter.

Out of solidarity with the roma and to bring them some aid supplies, also considered to be an action against the outer EU- borders and the Schengen system, about 200 people drove from the university campus to the border. It was planned to cross over the two borders by foot and to take food, water and more over to the romas being hold in place.

Even before the greek borders the police and riot cops were expecting us. It seems pretty impossible to cross the border.

After about 2hours of negotitiations, groups of about five persons would have been allowed to pass the borders. Ten persons passed the greek borders, but were stopped before the macedonian border. One car, packed with water, was stopped about 300m before the borders.

The activists were not able to get in contact with the roma.

During the negotiations (about 4hrs), the police forces was built up and military police joined.

At the end the activists considered to erect a spontaneous no-border camp. But this plan failed because of the lack of activists.

translation of report from:
http://at.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=26065&group=webcast

by lucheni productions 10:36pm Fri Jun 20 '03
lucheni_productions at gmx.net