Some 1,500 Muslims took to the streets of Athens on May 21 in a protest prompted by reports that a police officer tore up a copy of the Koran while checking the identity papers of four Syrian (or, by some accounts, Iraqi) immigrants. Marchers chanted "Allah is great" and carried banners reading "Hands off immigrants." Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd when violence broke out. Most of the protesters were from Pakistan or Afghanistan. Immigrants from Asia try to enter Greece daily. Last year Greek authorities arrested some 150,000 for entering the country illegally. (AlJazeera [2], Radio Netherlands [3], May 22)
See our last posts on Greece [4] and the politics of European immigration [5].
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