he sun is sweltering and tempers are flaring inside Macedonia. They’ve safely made it across the border, despite police wielding batons and firing tear gas, but hundreds of people have been waiting all day -- some for days on end -- next to this crumbling
yellow train station in Gevgelija.
With deportation papers issued by Macedonian police, refugees can legally leave the border area and travel through the country. But lines to get papers are long and the trains, few. “If they need police, they can have some from our country!” jokes 21-year-old Karam, a computer engineering student from Iraq. His papers still haven’t been processed. So he waits.
“I’m pregnant,” a woman screams, crouched in the shade beneath a tree. “These conditions are inhumane!”
In the distance, the Red Cross begins building a few makeshift shelters and a shower station so travelers can bathe. But those, along with a state-built refugee camp that will be managed by the UN refugee agency and other aid groups, won’t be complete for several more weeks. Right now, there’s no shelter in sight from the blazing midday heat.
While some Macedonians fear the steady stream of destitute refugees and migrants will bring theft, disease and chaos, many others have stepped up to help. Lawyer Mersiha Smailovic and accountant Jasmin Redzepi, both volunteers with the NGO Legis, give medical aid and pass out food, clothing, shoes and hygiene kits to people in Gevgelija.
The refugee crisis hits close to home for Smailovic, who says her Bosniak grandparents fled the wrath of the largely anti-Muslim Chetnik movement in 1962, running from what is now Serbia to Macedonia. And decades later during the Bosnian War, tens of thousands of her predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic group were killed and thousands more displaced.
“I know how it is to be a refugee,” she says, her emerald green headscarf matching her flowing dress. “How to run from war and how to be frightened.”
The married couple also served as investigators for Human Rights Watch’s recent report on Macedonia’s infamous Gazi Baba detention facility. There, refugees and migrants say, they were beaten and forced to sleep on the floor with little to eat and no access to legal representation until late July, when the government released all detainees.
“There have been hundreds of crimes by Macedonian police and mafia,” Redzepi says, shaking his head in disgust.
People Just Like Us
Gevgelija, Macedonia
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Riot police only allow a small number of refugees and migrants aboard the train on Aug. 19, 2015 in Gevgelija, Macedonia. Once on the packed Soviet-era train in refugee-only cars, they are transported to the border with Serbia, where they cross on foot.
Then there’s Stefan Markovski, a 24-year-old student and author who has lived in Gevgelija all his life, who says he couldn’t stand by and watch refugees suffering.
In April, when 14 Somali and Afghan refugees in Macedonia were hit by a train and killed -- not the first accident of its kind -- Markovski put up dozens of laminated paper signs in English, Arabic and French along 50 miles of tracks from Gevgelija to Veles warning people of the train’s dangers.
“The migrants were walking on the railroads because they were afraid of police on the road,” he explains, sitting inside a restaurant next to the station that’s one of many barring refugees from entering. “We felt people were unnecessarily being exposed to risk and dying.”
The UN refugee agency later adopted his idea, taking over the initiative and putting up metal reflective signs. Then, in mid-June, Macedonia began allowing refugees and migrants to take trains, halting the flow of people moving along the tracks.
As a result, the Gevgelija train station and surrounding area have become a massive, open-air refugee camp.
“People sleep in front of my house,” says Markovski. “My mother feeds them whenever she sees them. I understand the migrants -- it’s survival instincts.”
When it’s nearly time for the next train headed to the Serbian border to pull out from the station, crowds surge onto the tracks, begging to get seats. Riot police block the way, only allowing a small number of people onboard. Three train cars are reserved for tourists and locals, the rest already packed with hundreds of refugees and migrants. There aren’t enough seats, so many men stand, allowing the women and children to sit for the five-hour trip.
For the lucky, bliss: “I got on the train!” shouts 23-year-old Syrian student Alaa over the roar of the locomotive and the animated conversations of others who made it onboard. “I’m so happy right now.”
The hopeful young man, who worked in retail sales back home in Syria, made it on with all of his cousins. They would not become one of the many families split up indefinitely at train stations and border crossings. They’re one step closer to Germany, where he hopes to finish school.
Alaa says he’s grown used to the filthy, uncomfortably cramped conditions along the route. “There were 92 of us in the cattle truck in Izmir,” he recalls, bumping shoulders with several men standing with him in the aisle. “And 52 people on my dinghy.”
He surveys the Communist-era train car, overflowing with tired passengers packed like sardines. Body odor, from days without access to showers, hangs heavy in the air. The train’s blue velour seats look soiled with decades of dirt.
Passengers poke their heads out the half-opened windows, the crisp air hitting their faces as the train barrels past lush farmland and misty mountaintops. As the sun sets, the train’s interior glows red. Then comes the starry night sky.
Onward to Serbia.
A train filled with refugees and migrants speeds through the night from Gevgelija, Macedonia, to the other side of the country on Aug. 19, 2015. Many exhausted refugees get their first moments of rest in days on the foul-smelling Soviet-era train. They have a tiring trek ahead of them across the Serbian border.