The rocky road that runs past tired houses surrounded by meager plots of land, in this remote region of eastern Greece, comes up against the high, imposing fence.
Thick metal bars 5m high wind along the gray waters of the Evros River which marks the border with Turkey. A Greek flag flutters in the wind, next to the one with 12 yellow stars on a blue background. Here ends the European Union.
Erected in 2020, this metal wall, monitored like milk on fire by soldiers equipped with cameras, high-tech radars and drones, aims to prevent migrants from entering the EU.
On an electoral tour of the region in view of the May 21 legislative elections, Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reaffirmed his desire to extend this fence, already 37.5 km long, by 35 km, by the end of the year. .
By 2026, Athens is aiming for an extension of 100 km.
For Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who chose to run in this border constituency of Evros, the work aims to prevent a repeat of the "invasion", "the" attack", in his words, of February-March 2020.
In yet another showdown with the Europeans, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then encouraged Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis to try their luck in the EU.
In the agricultural villages of Evros, the extension of this metal wall seems to satisfy almost everyone even if tongues, when they loosen up, often prefer to remain anonymous.
"I have lived here for 45 years and I see that the flows have stopped since the construction of the fence", welcomes Athanasios Pemousis, the president of the town of Poros.
"Before, they (migrants, editor's note) passed through, especially during the summer months, there were too many people", he recalls while admitting that these people posed "no particular problem".
Last year, Greece prevented the entry into its territory of 265,000 migrants, according to the Minister of Civil Protection, Takis Theodorikakos.
In the Devetzi pastry shop, on the village square of Phères, a customer is agitated. "If the fence hadn't been built, we would have been in Kabul here!" Says this 50-year-old who refuses to reveal his identity.
He remembers the arrival of many migrants three years ago.
"We went (to the border area) with our guns. We had to secure our houses. We fired two or three times in the air, that's all," he said.
In March 2020, AFP had collected testimonies from locals, in particular hunters, crisscrossing the sector to alert the police in the event of the passage of migrants from Turkey.
In this region which stretches from the Bulgarian-Turkish border to the Evros delta 200 km below, Greece is accused by NGOs, with supporting testimony, of practicing illegal refoulement of people seeking asylum. in the EU. Athens has always denied such practices.
Last October, 92 men were found naked in a field in the region. Athens had implicated Ankara, assuring that the Turks had stripped them of their personal effects before throwing them on the Greek side, which Turkey had denied.
The Greek government estimates the cost of the work to extend the fence at some 100 million euros, which it intends to finance alone if its European partners refuse to put their hands in the wallet.
Within the Twenty-Seven, the construction of fences and walls to repel people seeking asylum is not unanimous.
For Nikos Hadjimagioglou, who owns the Phères perfumery, the money already invested in this metal wall has been "for a good cause".
Before him, "we saw foreigners passing by. Not one or two people. Groups of 50 or 100. Every day. Someone who is not from here cannot understand", calmly assures this man of 33 years.
"But the biggest problem in the region is not immigrants," he tempers.
This remote area, located three hours by road from Thessaloniki, the northern metropolis, and militarized, suffers from a lack of economic activity.
"If you ask me if I prefer (the installation of) a fence or a factory, I prefer a factory (...) It's obvious."
However, the fence poses some problems, underlines Mr. Pemousis, in particular for the breeders who used to let their animals drink the water of the river.
As for the farmers who can no longer irrigate their land properly, the Evros is behind the impassable fence.
03/04/2023 14:37:03 - Pheres (Greece) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
