Migrants desperate to get off the Greek island of Kos fought each other yesterday while nearby a passenger ship chartered to house and process refugees lay empty 24 hours after it had arrived.
Outside the island’s main police station, about 50 migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran threw stones and exchanged blows as tempers boiled over in the intense mid-summer heat. Riot police stood by without intervening.
The migrants have little chance of getting aboard the ship, the Eleftherios Venizelos, as priority is being given to Syrians, who are treated as refugees as they are fleeing their country’s civil war and have greater rights under international law than economic migrants.
All have crossed the narrow stretch of water from Turkey in small boats and dinghies as they try to find a better life in Europe and leave behind either conflict or poverty.
A few hundred Asian migrants were at the police station when the brawling began, hoping to register and obtain papers which will allow them to stay temporarily in Greece.
They then want to head for the mainland in the hope of finding a route to northern Europe, where more support and jobs are available than in Greece, which is in the grip of an economic crisis.
The police station was closed off yesterday, a religious festival in Greece, but some migrants still thought those from other countries might get preferential treatment.
To rival chants of “Afghanistan!,” “Pakistan!” and “Iran!,” fists and stones flew. At least one man was kicked on the ground, while others wandered around with blood on their faces.
Riot police watched from the sidelines. “We didn’t intervene because our priority is to protect the police station,” one riot policeman told Reuters.
Later, a group of Iranians tried to break the police line blocking access to the police station. The riot police beat back the crowd with batons during the brief affray.
Just after dawn yesterday, Reuters witnesses saw three dinghies each carrying around 30 to 50 people, mainly families from Syria and Iraq as well as young men, coming ashore. Later, six men, a woman and a baby from Iran arrived, some crying and nearly fainting, after a 3-1/2 hour journey from Turkey.
