‘One of the Hardest Nights on Lesbos’: Violence Erupts Between Greeks and Refugees

Thirty people were taken to a hospital, mostly for breathing difficulties and dizziness.

Officials on the Aegean Islands have warned for months that conditions there were untenable and tensions could boil over, and have called on the government to move some of the migrants elsewhere. The police have reported an increase in hate crimes across Greece.

The upheaval on Sunday was “one of the hardest nights on Lesbos in years,” said Spyros Galinos, the island’s mayor.

“The anger of citizens and of trapped migrants is to be expected,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that there should no tolerance for “far-right elements nor for lawlessness and anarchy.”

Greek political parties issued statements blaming the violence on far-right groups. The local office of the leftist Syriza party, which leads the country’s governing coalition, said Sunday’s attack was not because of the frustration of locals, but was “a well-organized act, with murderous intent, by specific groups of extreme-right criminal and hooligan elements that have nothing to do with the island or its traditions” and that are “known to local authorities.”

Amnesty International’s Greek chapter released a statement saying, “we demand an immediate investigation and the protection of all the victims and all the refugees on Lesbos.”

The upheaval on Lesbos came a few days after a Greek court ruled that migrants reaching the Aegean Islands from Turkey should not be prohibited from traveling to the mainland. That decision angered many refugees who are already in the island camps, who remained under “geographical restriction,” meaning that they could leave the camps, but not the islands.

Amid fears that the court ruling would undermine an agreement between Turkey and the European Union to curb the flow of refugees across the Aegean Sea, the government scrambled to respond. The state asylum agency reimposed travel restrictions on new arrivals, and Dimitris Vitsas, the migration minister, told Greek radio that refugees would be obliged to wait on the islands for their asylum applications to be processed.

Photo

A ministry official noted that a parliamentary committee on Tuesday started reviewing draft legislation aimed at speeding up the processing of asylum applications — a main reason for overcrowding in the migrant camps.

Addressing that parliamentary committee, Mr. Vitsas said that arrivals to Lesbos had almost quadrupled since 2017, noting that although daily arrivals were 54 on average last year, 206 migrants arrived on the island on Tuesday, which was “worrying.” He added that arrivals over the Greece-Turkey land border had also increased, with 340 arrivals on Tuesday.

Over all, from January to April, there were more than 7,000 arrivals to the Aegean Islands, with just 112 returned to Turkey during that period, Mr. Vitsas said.

Theodoros Alexellis, the Lesbos representative of the United Nations refugee agency, said that action should be taken immediately to ease pressure on camps, which are at triple their capacity on Lesbos. Geographical restrictions should not apply for “vulnerable” refugees, like unaccompanied children, pregnant women and victims of torture, who should be transferred to the mainland, he said.

“If the current situation continues, frustration will keep growing in the local community and in the refugee community,” he said.

The flow of refugees across the Aegean is far lower than it was at the peak of the crisis in 2016, when thousands of people tried to cross daily. But they continue to arrive faster than the government processes asylum claims, so the already cramped camps have continued to grow.

As the weather improves, the number of refugees trying to reach European shores has begun to rise again, with dozens arriving every day. Six boats reached on Monday alone, according to Mr. Alexellis.

Continue reading the main story