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Rapid-Response: Migrant Crisis at the Greek-Macedonian border - The View from the Ground with photographer John Rudoff

Events | Headline and Cultural Forums

Portland photographer and photojournalist John Rudoff has recently returned from Greece, where in April he photographed the plight of the refugees stranded in Greece by border closures.

The EU deal with Turkey (deporting irregular migrants crossing Greece  from Turkey) went into effect in March effectively leaving more than 12,000 migrants stranded in a makeshift refugee camp near Indomeni.  Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece recently warned that the EU's migration policies risked turning his country into a “warehouse for souls.”  Human Rights Watch's Peter Bouckaert underscores this: “The failure of the European Union to tackle the refugee crisis fairly and responsibly has led to cascading restrictions at borders, with asylum seekers and migrants facing greater risks of abuse and exploitation...Desperate people who are the wrong nationality are being denied the right to move on, beaten by border guards if they try to cross, and preyed upon by smugglers.”

The increased restrictions have left thousands who do not meet these requirements in a devastating state of limbo in Greece, including asylum seekers and migrants from Iranians, Libyans, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Moroccans, Algerians, Bangladeshis, Palestinians (from Lebanon and Gaza), Somalis, and Eritreans who had traveled to Greece via Turkey.  In recent weeks, tensions  have erupted into violence as FYROM (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) authorities fired tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets at refugees protesting at Greek-FYROM border. Is there an end in sight? What is to become of the EU's open borders?  Will international pressure move EU leaders to revise their decisions?

Join us for Rudoff's moving multimedia look at the human face of this continuing crisis and the "on the ground" effects of the EU's policies  - including riveting documentation captured in and near Idomeni and Polikastro, at the FYROM border; and at the port of Piraeus and the "hotspot" camp at Skaramangas, both near Athens.



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