When a Greek prime minister visits a far-flung corner of the country he is traditionally welcomed with open arms. But any hope that Alexis Tsipras will be given the same reception when he arrives on Lesbos – the Aegean island long on the frontline of Europe’s migrant crisis – has been firmly dispelled.



Instead of the red carpet, locals have rolled out protest banners, announced a mass protest, shuttered shops and staged a general strike. Far from its usually jovial self, the port capital of Mytilene resembled a ghost town, reinforced and ringed by riot police, ahead of the visit late on Thursday.

“The people of Lesbos are exhausted,” the island’s mayor, Spyros Galinos, said. “Kindness has turned to anger … and where there is anger there is room for all sorts of extremism.”

Three years after almost a million migrants and refugees landed on Lesbos’s shores in dinghies from Turkey, the compassion with which they were greeted has all but run its course.

Less than two weeks ago, in the most vicious assault yet, irate locals led by far-right anti-immigrant activists, attacked Afghans in Mytilene’s central square as they camped out in protest against their enforced confinement on the island. Some screamed “burn them alive” as they set upon the migrants, who included women and children, with burning bins and flares.

Galinos worries about similar incidents. So, too, do human rights groups who have opposed the left-led Greek government’s policy of containing refugees and migrants on the country’s outlying Aegean islands. Though downplayed as an act of extremists, the attack reflected the growing animus between locals and refugees on Lesbos.

Riot police try to keep local protesters away from migrants during clashes in Mytilene. Photograph: Eurokinissi/REX/Shutterstock

“The rhythm of our lives has been shattered by refugees and migrants who now number a third of our population,” said the mayor. “Fear prevails. Women are afraid to leave their homes at night, children are kept locked up indoors because parents are afraid to let them go out and play. No community would put up with this.”

Frontex, the EU’s border agency, said on Wednesday that refugee arrivals on Greece’s north Aegean islands had increased by 17% over the past month. Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the agency, told Germany’s Bild newspaper the rise was due to refugees fleeing Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Their arrival has placed further burden on Lesbos, where an estimated 9,000 migrants and refugees are currently stranded under the terms of a controversial deal the EU reached with Turkey that prevents asylum seekers travelling to the mainland if they succeed in getting to Greece.

The vast majority are housed in an overcrowded hillside camp in Moria, three miles (5km) outside Mytilene. More than 6,000 men, women and children are trapped in facilities on other islands close to the Turkish coast including Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros.

“Commerce and investment has come to a standstill,” said Evangelos Myrsinias, who heads the local chamber of commerce. “On these islands we feel very neglected, very abandoned with frustration compounded by the decision to raise VAT which after everything we’ve been through will drastically raise the cost of living.”

In a move aimed at placating locals, ministers dispatched to the island in advance of Tsipras delivering a keynote speech at a regional development conference, pledged that numbers would be reduced in overcrowded reception centres. By September, migrant numbers on all five islands would be slashed from 15,500 to 6,500, the migration minister, Dimitris Vitsas, said.

“I cannot say when everything will happen but we will move forward,” he told residents. “We are dragging our feet forward but hopefully that will improve,.” Several camps on the mainland would be reopened to accommodate arrivals who were also streaming across Greece’s land border with Turkey, he said.

Locals described the move as woefully inadequate after three years in which the island has seen its tourism industry devastated. “We need relief now. Society, and I’m being polite, has reached its limits,” said Panayios Paparisvas, who heads the trade association in Mytilene.

“The message we want to send to Tsipras and all his ministers here is ‘enough is enough.’ Addressing a conference about development when people are hungry is absurd. The islands are really suffering and the government has to respond before it is too late.”