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In Vathy, in the overcrowded migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, news agencies are reporting that riots have broken out. Fires were started and the police were met with stones and protests when they arrived to break up the unrest.

Accordingto the German press agency dpa, local media reported that the Greek police setoff tear gas to try and calm the protests at the Greek island camp of Vathy onThursday morning.

Migrantsare reported to have started fires and thrown stones at the police in protest at the overcrowded conditions in the camp.Schools in a 600-meter radius from the camp were reportedly evacuated becauseof the smoke from the fires.

Dpa saysthat the protests are thought to have come this time from the African community in the camp who have beendemanding for days that they be transferred to the Greek mainland.

Similar clashes in October

InfoMigrants reported that similar clashes broke outin the same camp in October2019. At that point the trouble stemmed from a mass brawl between Afghan andSyrian residents, which forced police to use tear gas to disperse the crowd.

At thattime, the medical charity, Doctors without Borders (MSF) said that almost halfof the camps inhabitants were women and children. In November, the International Presidentof MSF Christos Christou tweeted after visiting Samos that he had seen a protractedstate of human tragedy.

Numbers keep increasing

Accordingto the UNHCRs latest data, more than 71,000 migrants have arrived in Greecethis year alone. Although the Greek government has been making efforts totransfer people from overcrowded accommodation on the islands to the Greekmainland, there are still some 40,500 refugees and migrants residing on theAegean islands. The majority of that population is from Afghanistan (around45%), Syria (20%) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (6%).

Theauthorities have been transferring around 1,000 people every week to themainland but more people continue to arrive. In the week 9-15 December almost2,000 people arrived with a little more than 1,000 on Lesbos and 208 on theisland of Samos.

On December10, MSF Germany posted pictures of a makeshift room in the Vathy camp. They tweeted in German: This is a bathroom.Difficult to believe dont you think? What is even more difficult to believe isthat this bathroom is where three small children have to shower, and thatthis bathroom is in Europe. This is the sad reality of life for around 2,500 childrenliving in the Vathy camp on Samos.

Tense situation

Samosmayor Georgios Stantzos has been speaking out for months about securityproblems related to the overcrowding in the camps, according to the Germanweekly newspaper Die Zeit. On December 18, an English language local websiteGreekReporter posted a video from Samos24.grin which Stantzos was filmed inthe town square chasing migrants and shouting Go the F**k Away. GreekReporter added that his intervention followed a police operation to dispersea demonstration on the square.

The mayorreportedly told Greek Reporter that he regretted using foul language but saidthat it was a knee-jerk response to an incident which could have turned veryviolent. It was a human response to a very tense situation. The mayor addedthat the migrants had been blocked from occupying the square and that on theway to their demonstration they had vandalized at least five cars.

Stantzossaid that his reactions and those of his fellow islanders were not racist andthat he was just against the few migrants who were intent on creating trouble.Stantzos told Greek reporter that the overcrowding had become a human rightsproblem [and] a law and order issue as severe delinquency problems arise.

ManosLogothetis, government commissioner for migration in Greece told the GermanFunke media group on Wednesday: The crisis is happening now, and it is serious.

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Riots in overcrowded Greek migrant camp on Samos - InfoMigrants