Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and European Parliament President Martin Schulz are on the island of Lesbos to visit areas where refugees have flooded onto the island. Greece hopes that the visit by the European official will help activate forces at a European level to support Greece’s efforts in dealing with the refugees and back a humanitarian refugee policy.

The situation on Lesbos is explosive due to the seamen’s strike as there are over 15,000 documented refugees that are trapped there whereas a number of dead refugees who did not survive the dangerous crossing cannot be buried. The island held a three-day mourning period over the large number of refugees who died. As a highly symbolic gesture, an interfaith prayer was held on Wednesday in memory of the hundreds of refugees and migrants who have perished in the Aegean while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece.

From early on Thursday morning, a number of protestors gathering outside the Municipality of Mytilene (Lesbos) managed to get in and stage a sit-in. They hung a black banner that says: “The Aegean is filled with migrant bodies, Europeans are also murderers of nations.”

Schulz comes to Lesbos as a time when refugees who have money to spare are staying at cheap hotels, however thousands of women and children are living on the streets, parks or tents pitched at the island’s port.

Tsipras and Schulz are visiting the reception center of Morias where they will talk with representatives and local authorities.