Evros river: Tales of loss of life and despair on the threshold of Europe

The our bodies are in overall chanced on 1/2 bare. They’ve been in the Evros, the river dividing Greece from Turkey, for weeks. And the currents or the fish like taken their attire.

Generally there are deepest effects – a pair of glasses, a series of beads, a bracelet – that can offer a clue to a persons identity.

Nonetheless in overall they continue to be unidentified, kept right here at a properly being facility morgue in the northeast Greek metropolis of Alexandroupolis – silent witnesses to the impart of a refugee’s lunge.

« It be very sophisticated because now we like ladies, now we like diminutive boys, ladies, now we like formative years, » Pavlos Pavlidis, a forensic pathologist at Alexandroupolis’ in vogue properly being facility,  suggested Al Jazeera.

Lethal crossing

The land border between Greece and Turkey, a nearly 200km frontier largely fashioned by the Evros, has viewed elevated web site visitors for the reason that European Union and Turkey struck a deal to end down the route into Europe by the Aegean sea.

The UN said Turkish authorities on the land border with Greece intercepted practically 20,seven-hundred other folks between January and September this one year, compared to 7,500 reported for the identical length last one year.

Primarily based completely on the UN’s refugee company, an estimated 4,300 other folks had arrived this one year on the Evros Greek-Turkish land border by the stay of October. Bigger than 800 crossed the usage of this route in October alone.

Alternatively, attempting to faulty Evros can de deadly.

« It became once so harmful, so frigid, » recalled Martin Jafari, an Afghan refugee who said that he lost three chums while attempting to faulty the border. 

« They were three of my most difficult chums, » he suggested Al Jazeera. « We were out in the open … We did no longer like any meals or attire. »  

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from Alexandroupolis, said hypothermia became once the motive of many deaths on the Evros. About a of the our bodies like been « chanced on by fishermen in the shallows », or « in outbuildings, 1/2 eaten by wild dogs ».

Refugees are forced into the river thanks to a double-barbed wire fence on the border, paid for by the EU to withhold refugees out, Lee said.

« They faulty either in the hands of unlawful smuggling gangs or by themselves, » he added.

« It be in actual fact harmful either method, and all yet again exposes the dearth of safe routes on the perimeters of the EU for refugees. »

Reporting by Laurence Lee on the Greek-Turkish border