North Aegean

The council of the North Aegean Region on Tuesday voted to take legal action against a legislative act announced by the government to expropriate land and properties on five islands for the creation of detention centers for asylum seekers.

The council also agreed to suspend all cooperation with the government until it repeals the  legislative act that will enforce the measures.

Between September 2019 and January 2020, the government transferred 14,750 people to the mainland, even as 36,000 new arrivals crossed the Aegean to Greece from Turkey, according to UNHCR data.

The regional governor of the Northern Aegean, Kostas Moutzouris submitted a new call on Wednesday to declare a state of emergency on three islands, following two days of protest marches by asylum seekers demanding better living conditions and a quicker asylum procedure, and attacks by extremists in Lesvos.

Migrants stranded on Lesvos protested against the dreadful conditions at the Moria reception center and the slow processing of asylum requests for a second day Tuesday as the government turned down a request for a state of emergency to be declared on the eastern Aegean island.

Authorities will reportedly investigate whether the violence that broke out during Monday's march on the Aegean island of Lesvos by hundreds of angry migrants and refugees from the notorious Moria camp was deliberate and not just a response to the presence of police blocking the road to the island's capital.

Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis suggested on Monday that the clashes that broke out between police and refugees near a migrant camp in Lesvos may have been incited by unnamed individuals.

Police on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos clashed with protesters on Monday as they sought to prevent a march of some 2,000 migrants and refugees from the Moria camp from reaching the capital Mytilini.

A Skai journalist recently alleged that a foreign member of a nongovernment organization based on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos told him he could not take pictures inside the Moria reception center without the organization's permission.

The Greek government's response to the accumulated indignation reflected in the large protest rallies on the islands of Lesvos, Chios and Samos in the northern Aegean on Wednesday, where residents and business owners protested against the creation of new more restrictive reception centers and the overcrowding at the existing camps, cannot just be a demagogic appeasement involving conciliatory r

A meeting between Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis and officials from the three Greek Aegean islands hosting the largest number of refugees and migrants concluded with an initiative to hold regular meetings to examine developments on the islands and inform them on the government's plans.