Neos Kosmos in collaboration with Lost Athina visited Idomeni to create a video that captures the conditions at the enormous camp along with first hand accounts of refugees and their message to the world.

 

Just an hour’s drive from the Macedonian capital Thessaloniki lies Idomeni, a tiny village that few people had heard of until recently.

It sits right on the Greece – FYROM border where most of its estimated 154 inhabitants farm the fertile land that surrounds this bleak outpost.

Those muddy fields have now become the temporary home for approximately 14,000 refugees, stranded in Idomeni following a decision by FYROM to close its borders.

The landscape is dotted with colourful tents, makeshift medical facilities, media vans, buses and motorhomes used by volunteers who have driven in from every corner of Europe to come and help with what is the biggest humanitarian crisis the continent has faced in decades.

Mothers are giving birth in tents, the sick and elderly wait for hours to receive basic medical assistance, people form giant lines just to get a little food, fire wood or some warm clothing. There is nowhere for them to shower and not nearly enough portable toilets to handle so many people. Authorities are concerned there could be lives lost if more resources aren’t made available.

The refugees are exhausted, hungry and frustrated by the uncertainty of their future.

Most have escaped the war in Syria, others are fleeing turmoil and persecution in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq.

Now they sit and wait for news on the train tracks where the train from Thessaloniki would once pass as it headed through Skopje to Belgrade.

Each day some of them get together to protest, mostly peacefully, to the FYROM officials on the other side to open the borders. In return the FYROM officials use water canons to keep them away from the barbed wire fencing that separates the two nations. On Tuesday, while we were there filming, one man on a hunger strike fainted and had medical staff rushing to help him. Two other men set themselves on fire in protest, willing to sacrifice their own lives to champion their cause and give their families a chance of making it through.

Most refugees we approach are happy to speak to us, they want to share their story in the hope that someone will listen and help.

They are extremely grateful to Greece for all that the country has done to accommodate them, but they ask that the borders open so that they might continue their journey towards other European states.

“Shukran Yunan, thank you Greece for the help,” says Ahmed, a 24-year old Syrian, who is starting a fire in one of the fields adjacent to the train tracks.

“We understand Greece has done all it can to help, but we do not want to stay here, we try to go to Germany where we have family.”

Germany seems to be the destination of choice among most refugees here.

“I wish in this moment to go to my son in Germany and that the border is opened, that’s the best thing for me and my family,” says Fatima Ahmad, a mother who is traveling with her husband and three other children as part of a group of three families.

On the other side of the tracks we meet a Kurdish family of six from Iraq, then a group of five Afghan males traveling together, followed by Arshan, an Irani man making this arduous journey alone. Having publicly opposed the regime in Iran he is now seeking asylum and does not want to be filmed or give his full name.

He says Europe is his only hope, going back to Iran would mean imprisonment or worse, when all he wants to do is live in peace.

“This is what all of us here want, we are tired, tired of war, tired of fighting, we want to live somewhere safe.”