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Greek Police Use Tear Gas During Clashes With Migrants on Island of Lesbos – Reports

© AFP 2023Frontex officials and Greek police escort migrants aboard a Turkish boat heading to Turkey from the port of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos on October 21, 2016
Frontex officials and Greek police escort migrants aboard a Turkish boat heading to Turkey from the port of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos on October 21, 2016 - Sputnik International
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Greek police used tear gas during clashes with approximately 2,000 migrants on the island of Lesbos who were protesting against poor living conditions in camps and for their asylum cases to be processed faster, the Kathimerini newspaper reported on Monday.

According to the Greek daily, the protest began at 10:30 local time (09:30 GMT) and police used tear gas to disperse migrants who built a cordon on the main road between Moria and Mitilini, the island's capital.

Migrants were protesting against squalid living conditions in camps that are stretched beyond capacity. According to the Human Rights Watch advocacy group, 16,800 people were living in the Moria Reception and Identification Centre as of 2 December. The camp has capacity for less than 3,000 people.

​Demonstrators also demanded that their asylum cases be expedited.

​On Tuesday, the European Asylum Support Office announced a deal with the Greek government to double staffing numbers in the country in order to speed up case processing.

​According to a statistical report compiled by the EU statistical office Eurostat, there were 90,200 pending asylum cases filed in Greece that were still waiting to be processed as of September 2019. Only Germany and Spain have a higher number of unresolved asylum cases.

Greece has become a hub of refugee and asylum seeker activity in recent years. According to data compiled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, over a million people have arrived in Greece claiming asylum in the European Union since 2014.

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