A Greek Humanitarian Gesture to Migrants

Greece has ruled out using teargas against thousands of migrants in order to disperse them, and in lieu of that, the oldest democracy has instead made a humanitarian offer to migrants to move them from the rough of the fields at the Macedonia border and into Greek-built shelters.

Hoping to empty the unsanitary makeshift camp near the town of Idomeni, where some 14,000 migrants remain trapped since European borders were closed in the Balkans, Nikos Toskas, a Greek deputy minister, reasoned: "We have to persuade them (the migrants to move) and we can't do that using tear gas. Half the people there are women and children," the Associated Press(AP) reported earlier this morning.

Greek authorities have confirmed that some 800 migrants have agreed so far to move from the unsanitary rough of the fields to government built shelters. The Greeks are hoping that the growing numbers at the camp on the Macedonia border could be voluntarily rehoused in dwellings within two weeks. 

And with this humanly gesture, Greece has set a new kind of understanding and empathy for those displaced by conflict and uprooted from their native lands.