(AFP) Police on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday fired tear gas at hundreds of migrants protesting against tougher new asylum rules, officials said.
Brandishing makeshift signs with the word “freedom,” some 2,000 men and women walked out of the overpopulated camp of Moria to demonstrate.
The protesters walked some seven kilometres (4.3 miles) towards the port capital of Mytilene, but were blocked by police outside the town.
“A significant backlog of pending applications and serious delays in asylum procedures have been a major contributing factor to the dangerously overcrowded conditions we see on the islands,” Boris Cheshirkov, Greece spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, said in a statement to AFP.
