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Thessaloniki mayor says activists at university sitin ‘want to create chaos’

Thessaloniki mayor says activists at university sitin ‘want to create chaos’

After activists camping on the grounds of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University brought hundreds of migrants onto the site and vandalized several buses, the city’s mayor told Kathimerini that he believes they are intentionally trying to cause problems.

“It’s clear that they want to create chaos,” Yiannis Boutaris said about Greek and foreign supporters of the No Border Camp pro-refugee movement who have organized the sitin at two faculties. Around 1,000 people have been on the site since the weekend and have been joined by hundreds of migrants brought to the campus by activists from reception centers in the broader area.

“Why didn’t they go to protest at the border with Skopje,” Boutaris said, referring to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. “They know that it’s only here that there is tolerance for anarchic situations,” he added in an apparent dig at the government.

On Monday night, according to local reports, a group of around 40 people spray-painted several city buses with graffiti and slogans reading “Fight borders.”

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