Things are getting mighty ugly in the cradle of Western civilization. Flooded by refugees or economic migrants (take your pick) with strange clothes and customs from as far afield as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, the Hellenes have gone way beyond Amis-esque adumbrations on teaching the aliens to shape up and are beginning to react like a nation truly under siege from the barbarian hoards. (Before writing in to inform me of what a racist I am, the word "barbarian" comes from the Greek bárbaros, meaning "the sound foreigners make" But why are so many unwelcome foreigners heading for Europe? Could it have anything to do with what the "War on Terror" is doing to places as far afield as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia? Just what is going in Christopher Hitchens's favorite Mediterranean nation?
GREECE: State Itself Becoming Xenophobic By Apostolis Fotiadis
"I can see migrants are the source of many problems," says Maria Nafpliotou, an employee at a music store in the city centre. "Nobody is happy to see them living around here, but I doubt slaying them is a solution."
She says this as she looks out into Omonia square at a demonstration called last week by a group of far-right organisations going under the name 'Residents committees against the invasion of aliens in our country'.
The hundreds of demonstrators flew the Greek flag, played music by Wagner as did the Nazis once, and sang radical marching tunes. 'Blood, Honour, Golden Dawn' went one slogan, Golden Dawn being the name of the most notorious fascist group in the country. The demonstrators attack foreigners, journalists or just anyone who dared show disapproval of the demonstration.
Police stood passively between the extremists and leftist counter- demonstrators, restricting themselves to calming down the angry mob now and then. Their casual way of dealing with the neo-Nazis was unmistakable.
Such demonstrations are not common in Athens, and could be dismissed as isolated events were it not for growing signs over the past few months of an imminent wave of xenophobia in Greece.
Several violent attacks against economic migrants have been reported around Athens city centre during the last month, most notably targeting the Pakistani community.
"The debate about deterioration of migration into a crisis is increasingly taking place in a very negative climate," says Spyros Rizakos, legal representative of the NGO Aitima based in Patra city 250 km southwest of Athens. Thousands of refugees from Afghanistan and Somalia live there in inhumane conditions.
"Nobody discusses what drives thousands of people to such abject conditions, and what the responsibility of the Greek state is for that," Rizakos told IPS. "We illegally do not implement European directives for reception and integration, and have effectively shut the majority of migrants out of asylum procedures; this country is literally a workshop of social exclusion for foreigners."
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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