on Sunday. “I was beaten and kicked heavily.”
“This lasted a while,” he said, sharing an image of his head bandaged up. “I am (kinda) OK,” he wrote on the
same day as the attack. “The refugees though are still sitting in the boat. Plastic bottles are [being] thrown at
them”
The Foreign Press Association of Greece said after the assault that “certain groups on the island of Lesbos
move in an organised manner to intimate and attack journalists covering the flow of refugees and migrants
arriving from Turkey”.
They said: “At least two colleagues have already suffered such attacks, resulting in grave injury, pursuits and
misappropriation or damage of their equipment.” The island has seen more refugees approaching its shore
after Turkey announced that it would open its border with Europe and let migrants leave the country.
Turkey is already home to more than 3 million Syrian refugees, and the country fears that renewed violence
in Syria’s northwest will see many more crossing over. Crowds gathered at its border with Greece after
people heard the crossing points would open, and Greek authorities fired teargas and stun grenades to try
and push them back.
Police said that at least 1,000 migrants had reached Greece’s eastern Aegean islands since Sunday morning,
and their arrival has been met with resistance by some residents and authorities. On Sunday, a group of
locals gathered as a migrant boat arrived in Lesbos, shouting at those onboard and pushing their dinghy
away from the shore for around an hour.
Video footage emerged the next day showing Greek coastguards seemingly trying to capsize a boat that
had arrived off the shore and hitting the people onboard with sticks. A Syrian child drowned at sea on
Monday while trying to reach Lesbos, officials said, marking the first official casualty since Turkey opened
its borders last week. It was unclear if the child was on the same boat in the video.
More than 20,000 asylum seekers are currently living on Lesbos, many forced to stay in one overcrowded
camp, Moria, which was originally intended to accommodate fewer than 3,000 people.