WATCH: Migrants passing through Macedonia receive beating by Macedonian riot police
Footage of nearly 100 migrants including children being arrested, transported to a police station and then dragged out of a prison is being broadcast around the world.
The migrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, have been whisked away from a humanitarian tent camp by a firetruck and driven to a police station.
They were then handcuffed, subjected to two hours of beatings and directed out the police station through a winding passage to a prison inside the Greek capital of Athens.
Once inside, a teargas explosion forced the immigrants to walk in front of tear gas bombs and grenades.
After being subjected to another wave of beatings, the migrants were then transferred to a police station inside the walls of the Parliament building.
The detainees’ ordeal continued inside the prison compound, where they were stripped naked and dragged inside by police officers.
The video has gone viral as they were woken up by a guard to be led to the prison courtyard where they are stripped of their underwear.
On the way to the prison the migrants were ordered to march naked through the old prison blocks, in which they were met by more police and beatings.
The footage showed one man, bearded and with his hoodie pulled over his head, being asked “Do you have anything to say to Macedonia?” before the policeman replies “Shut up or you’ll be next.”
All the detainees wore white medical gowns over their heads to prevent them from being burned by the powermoke.
Following the teargas explosion, migrants were led to a lockup to be fed, taken back to the prison where they were further mistreated.
In the video, one of the men can be heard saying: “If we say anything we’ll be taken back to the police station… where we’ll be beaten with equipment.”
Adding “Are you aware we are inmates?”, another migrant says, looking into the camera: “I am saying if you don’t stop this we’ll fight.”
Macedonia is one of Europe’s largest transit countries, a route for migrants reaching the EU via Greece from Turkey. About one million migrants and refugees reached the Greek islands between 2015 and 2017 via the nearby Turkish coast.
But hundreds of them try to travel from Greece to the rest of Europe through Macedonia and this year thousands of migrants are making their way to the Western Balkan country.
In May last year, Macedonia reportedly suspended the registration of asylum seekers and migrants on a 100-km stretch of border.
Since the beginning of this year, Macedonia has required asylum seekers to hand over their identification cards and passports, and repatriated about 80 people and detained hundreds more.
The same month, Macedonia was angered when it learned that the UNHCR was implementing a programme to distribute biometric chips.
The European Union said Macedonia had agreed to make improvements to its policy, including registration of refugees and migrants.
But because of the new rules, some people have been arrested for illegally entering the country.
EU leaders call for reunification, both for adults and children, with a family in their own country.
“The main obligation is to reunite children with their families, but also for adults. We expect that everybody will respect the decision,” said Europe’s migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who visited Macedonia this week.
“The Macedonian authorities have shown their commitment to proceed with family reunification.”
In the U.S., some members of Congress and ex-Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger have urged Macedonia to change its migration rules, urging it to stop migrants being detained and forcing them to travel on the main roads to the capital city.
U.S. senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Blumenthal said their opposition to the detention and forced deportation of refugees was “deeply frustrating”.
Blumenthal said in a statement: “Citizens of the United States do not legally detain, and may not forcibly repatriate, refugees.”
He called on the Macedonian government to “immediately suspend its new blanket enforcement of arbitrary border-crossing rules.”
So far over 70,000 asylum seekers have applied for asylum in the last two years at the main UN refugee agency camp in Athens – the makeshift Moria facility.
On one day in January 2018 more than 16,000 people – mainly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans – arrived at Moria.
It is not the first time that migrants have been filmed being kicked and beaten by police.
As recently as April, President Trump accused the Macedonian police of beating people at a migrant camp in the capital.
But President Jovo Viktorovovs,
