The humane approach to people who are fleeing war must be our imperative, but at the same time, there can be no compromise when it comes to the safety of our own citizens and the country, said Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski at the the opening of the International Conference “Migration and Refugee Flows in Transit Countries: Security Implications”, organized by the Institute of geo-strategic Research and Foreign Policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the current chair of the Central European Initiative (CEI) which will be held today and tomorrow in Skopje.
Spasovski said that from the one million of refugees who have come to Europe this year, almost 620,000 have passed through the territory of Macedonia.
“In less than a month, 9,000 migrants transited through our country per day. Migrants enter the country on the basis of documents prepared by the Greek authorities, which is basically a statement on their origin, with incomplete or inaccurate data, so we can not confirm whether a person has transited through the country, “said Minister Spasovski, in a statement by the MOI.
According to the Interior Minister, this situation has possibly created a vacuum of radical individuals and groups who moved along with the migrants, and the danger of human trafficking, especially children, because there were tight security measures to tackle the current crisis and the risks of terrorism, many children were left to human trafficking.
“The current security risks now may be small, but the potential ones, of course, become significant if we do not appropriately respond to this refugee and migrant wave,” said Spasovski.
