Ahoi,
we send you a report about the last days in Preševo.
Please spread!
Solidarity to all refugees and migrants!
Report Preševo 10.-12. November
This is a report about the last days in Preševo. This report is a report
about inhuman conditions, failing NGO’s and police violence.
According to the information from the Danish Refugee Council (the only
NGO that seems to be working somehow), both the 10th and the 11th of
November, 10.000-11.000 refugees and migrants reached Preševo. We did
not get the chance to estimate ourselves the number, as the queuing
situation itself demanded our total attention, but the numbers
correspond to those the activists in Ilomeni collected.
The camp is in the middle of a residential area and the camp is
excessively small so that the queue is on the main street of town. The
number of provided toilets is ridiculous: 8 in total for all waiting
refugees, half of them almost impossible to access, as they are located
between two barricaded areas. Yesterday two of the four accessible ones
were closed. Police generally often refuses demands for going to the
toilet. The waiting time is long: up to 13 hours, for some even two
days, situation abused by the taxi drivers that convince/force people
more easily to get in their car. The situation in the waiting line is
unbearable. Due to all this, refugees and migrants sleeping on the
street faced even more humiliating conditions than “usual”. That means
sleeping on the street happens every night to a large number of persons,
even in “calmer” days especially women, kids and families, cannot queue
as the situation is too dangerous in the queue. To make sure they don’t
get hurt, parents often leave their kids waiting alone on the street.
Few of the refugees and migrants have tents, some don’t even have
blankets. The nights are very cold and none of the present NGOs
distributes blankets. The volunteers do not have enough, and they do not
have enough warm clothes neither as Serbia makes it almost impossible to
enter the country with donations. As there are no other sleeping option
than the street, trash and excrements surround the sleeping bodies.
Today a police officer demanded refugees to clean up saying that they
could skip the cage they were in in return.
UNHCR demanded us for money in order to pay persons who do not have any
for the transport to Croatia. Besides that, they almost never leave the
camp. In theory, they can be called, but in none of the catastrophic
situations, they showed up. Medicins Sans Frontières closed during the
night for some hours. The access to their tent was anyway blocked also
before because of the crowd and police who did not let pass anybody. The
doctors never came to the crowd even if people fainted.
The local police does not have control over the situation at all, the
situation is therefore very tense but besides some individuals who are
aggressive, they are somewhat approachable. Those who are not local are
much more aggressive. Communication is a big problem: almost nobody
speaks Arabic, Farsi or English. In exceptional cases they use a
translator, who yesterday shouted racist comments in Arabic and in
English over the megaphone directed to a group of migrants. The 10th of
November, 20 policemen were present in total. Their shift lasts for over
24 hours. The same day, the Žandarmerija (Serbian special unit to
prevent terrorism) arrived for 6 hours to support them doing crowd
control. The result: none. Since yesterday night (11th) the police
presence increased, with no other result than having more aggressive
police and Žandarmerija. They try to control the people by verbal
violence, by beating people with truncheon and tent poles and by the use
of taser.
The situation is a catastrophe: fences build big cage-like areas in
which the “crowd” that “needs to be controlled” stands squeezed for
hours, pregnant women and kids within them, without being able to move
or to go to the toilet, with no water or food. People who faint in the
cages are somehow transported next to the fences by the crowd and hauled
out by supporters. Again: no doctors present, it’s supporters providing
first aid. The people in the first line are pressed against the fences.
To have less pressure lots of them throw their bags over the fence. When
the police then opens the fences, people who have been waiting for hours
sprint forward. Lots of them fall over the luggage and are run over by
the people from the back, pressing to get forward. Families are
separated in a brutal way, which increases the panic as nobody tells
them they can reunite after the registration. Sometimes the fences give
in and the people burst out. Police then hits whoever is in front with
truncheons.
We observed how the Police tried to control the situation by forcing
people (beating and threatening with tasers) to sit down. They could
than only “go” out of the cage one by one, moving forward on their
knees. Everybody who tried to stand up was beaten, even persons with
children on their back.
It is obvious that the police is overstrained and does not have the
situation under control: the leading Žandarmerija officer demanded us
for solutions for the “crowd control”. It is obvious that the
registration camp of Preševo is not a safe place, where humans are
treated as humans. It is obvious that Serbia does not respect the human
rights of refugees and migrants and that official NGOs do not do
anything to avoid that.
Whoever is on the way to Preševo needs to be prepared on sleeping on the
street and to stand for long hours. Make sure to have enough to eat and
to drink.
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