By Augustine Zenakos (Borderline Reports, 19.09.2013)
A torrent of world-wide
publicity has followed the murder of leftist musician Pavlos Fyssas by
Golden Dawn supporter Giorgos Roupakias, two nights ago. In Greece,
understandably, the discussion is even more tense. But what is missing
in this discussion -partly obscured by the horrific, if murderously
delayed, realization that this gang of thugs is out of control, and
partly purposefully concealed by the mainstream media- is that there is a
very profound sense in which Golden Dawn is not “the problem”; the
problem is rather this perverse coalition of “socialist modernizers” and
far-right nationalists, who are governing Greece ostensibly to
safeguard its “European perspective”. Next to the thugs themselves, it
is the Greek government who must bear the full responsibility not only
for Golden Dawn and its crimes, but also for the fact that a brutal,
racist, totalitarian agenda now forms a significant part of the Greek
state’s attitude towards democracy and its institutions.
It is not Golden Dawn who created
concentration camps for immigrants. Centre-left and centre-right
politicians did that. Concentration camps for immigrants, drug users and
homeless people were first talked about in pre-Olympic Greece, in 2004,
with the purpose of “improving” the image of the streets of Athens. The
Olympics were planned by the centre-left government of Kostas Simitis
and took place during the centre-right government of Kostas Karamanlis.
The first concentration camp was to be constructed in the old NATO army
base, in Aspropyrgos. The plan never materialized due to the reaction by
NGOs and left-wing parties. It was discussed again when Christos
Markogiannakis took over the Ministry of Public Order, in 2009, but
again was not put into practice. The one who finally gave life to the
idea that a modern democracy should imprison immigrants without due
process or trial in containers fenced off with barbed wire was Minister
of Public Order Michalis Chrysochoidis, a “socialist” with centre-left
PASOK, currently Minister of Transport in our coalition government. The
creation of concentration camps was hailed as a major breakthrough by
Andreas Loverdos, Minister of Public Health at the time, another
“socialist”. And the practice came into full bloom under the direction
of current Minister of Public Order Nikos Dendias, an MP for New
Democracy, a self-described “liberal”.
It is not Golden Dawn who criminalized HIV.
Centre-left politicians did that. When a group of HIV-positive women
were detained by the Greek Police, forcibly tested, charged with a
felony, imprisoned and publicly exposed, with their mug shots and
personal data published in the media, in the run-up to the country’s
2012 national elections, only for the charges to be quietly dropped by
the courts in the months that followed, it was none other than the
aforementioned Ministers Loverdos and Chrysochoidis who engineered the
whole operation.
It is not Golden Dawn who tortured hand-cuffed detainees
in police custody. Nor was it Golden Dawn who covered for the torturers
by lying in Parliament. It was the democratic police of an EU country
that did that. And it was a centre-right politician who covered it up,
Nikos Dendias yet again, who vehemently denied any wrongdoing in
Parliament, although forensic reports showed extensive beatings and even
taser gun scars on detainees. And when we interviewed him for UNFOLLOW magazine, he again denied any wrongdoing, despite the forensic reports. The Minister even said he was going to sue the Guardian over a report
on the Greek Police’s use of torture. Up to now, of course, he has done
nothing of the sort. Moreover, these incidents appear against a
background of innumerable complaints for abuse and torture by the Greek
Police, as reported by Amnesty International, which also documents 12 cases where Greece has been convicted by the European Court of Human Rights for police crimes.
And one should of course not neglect to
mention that poisonous anti-immigrant rhetoric is by no means the sole
province of Golden Dawn. It was our Prime Minister Antonis Samaras who
proposed that we should “reoccupy our cities”, that have been taken over
by illegal immigrants. It was Minister Nikos Dendias who concurred,
with the rather colorful remark that it is as if “we are standing on the
walls of Constantinople”, with the Ottoman armies about to invade. It
was Andreas Loverdos who called Golden Dawn “an authentic movement”. And
it was New Democracy MP Chrysanthos Lazaridis, the Prime Minister’s
foremost adviser, who even now, a day after the murder, blamed the Left
and the main opposition party SYRIZA in particular for “undermining
democracy”.
These examples, of which there are many
more, should make the targeting of Golden Dawn, as directed by the Greek
government only after its many attacks and murders of immigrants gave
way to the murder of a Greek, all the more transparent. It is not just
that having Makis Voridis, a prominent New Democracy MP, call Golden
Dawn a “criminal organization” is the height of hypocrisy, as Mr Voridis
was formerly a leader of the extreme nationalist party National Front,
and before that had served as secretary for the Youth Organization of
EPEN, a fascist party, having succeeded in this position Nikos
Michaloliakos, the current leader of Golden Dawn. It is that is should
become clear to all that in the erosion of Greek democracy, Golden Dawn
never was and still is not the principal culprit; this honor rather
belongs to those who have been governing Greece for the past years.
Golden Dawn’s unmistakably neonazi
constitution, the crimes of its thugs, as well as its collusion with the
Greek police, have been exhaustively documented – by Borderline Reports,
among countless others. So, even now, Golden Dawn should be dealt with
as a criminal organization, that much is certain. It would however be an
unforgivable misreading of the situation not to point out that if the
so-called “centre”, this perverse coalition of “socialist modernizers”
and far-right nationalists, who are governing Greece ostensibly to
safeguard its “European perspective”, are allowed to press on with their
attack on democratic institutions, undermining human rights and fueling
racism, with their dogma of “zero tolerance”, targeting strikers and
demonstrators more than neonazi gangs, encouraging police violence and
torture, and presenting public indignation as a precursor of fascist
brutality, and with their rhetoric of the “two extremes”,
denouncing the left-wing opposition as “terrorists”, then this
government will have succeeded in tearing apart the very fabric of Greek
society. Politicians deluded in such ways have led people to civil wars
before. We should not allow them to do it again.
_________________
The title of
this article initially was: “The Problem Is the Greek Government, Not
Golden Dawn”. It was changed after some readers pointed out that it did
not adequately reflect the main point of the article, which is not that
Golden Dawn is not a problem, but rather that the main ‘player’ in
Greece’s continuing erosion of democratic liberties is its government.
Source: BORDERLINE REPORTS, 19.09.2013
http://borderlinereports.net/2013/09/19/the-problem-is-the-greek-government-not-golden-dawn/
Σχετικά με τον συντάκτη της ανάρτησης:
Η ιστοσελίδα μας δημιουργήθηκε το 2008.Δείτε τους συντελεστές και την ταυτότητα της προσπάθειας. Επικοινωνήστε μαζί μας εδώ .
κανένα σχόλιο