Greek original

Post-election nightmare: Working immigrants threatened by pogroms

Deliberate acts of hate by “brave lads” have been reported throughout Greece, focusing on businesses paying wages to foreigners. At the same time, an increase of victims of racist violence seek emergency help at hospitals.

Picture caption: Treating wounds from knives, bullets and from beatings have increased in some hospitals, amounting to even ten in one shift, whereas in previous years, incidents were rare. Statistically, three out of ten cases must be hospitalized for further treatment.
Recently hate raids by members of the Golden Dawn have taken place in work places where immigrants are employed. Far right wing members shouting threats about the “day after” the elections, have already visited industries in Evia, factories in Sterea Ellada and farmers’ markets in Attiki, warning the foreign workers and their employers that “there will not be a good end” in the case employment continues. After the security sector, Nikos Michaloliakos’ “brave lads” are undertaking the role of …job inspectors.

Members of this organization are trying to take advantage of the high unemployment rate in Greek families to promise them jobs!
The Golden Dawn has posted announcements on their website inviting the core regional members to report industrial units and hotels employing foreigners -even legally- in order to fire them to employ Greeks and at the same time, boycott any businesses employing immigrants.

Fear

These new “announcements” from this organization has businessmen afraid for the worse, who either “hide” their employees they don’t want to lose or fire them to avoid being themselves or their companies targeted any further.

Specifically, the posts from the Evia-Viotia and also the Dodekanissa regions state “large industrial and hotel units “nab” subsidies, supposedly in order to create places of employment for Greek families but instead fire Greeks to employ illegal immigrants. We call on Greeks who have proof of such illegalities in the Prefectures of Evia and Viotia to contact the number 69… in order to report those illegal businesses. The reports may be anonymous using a concealed number. Golden Dawn takes responsibility for the report”.

The announcement

The posted announcement supposedly refers to “black market labour” but the pro-fascist activities refer to those cases where “mostly foreign underpaid trainees, beyond the legal 17% quota are employed, resulting in Greek head of the household to be unemployed…”. Nevertheless, pogroms have begun at the expense of businesses employing legal foreign employees.

Also in this respect is the strike against the Egyptian fishermen at Perama and the subsequent message from the candidate parliament-member for Golden Dawn in the Piraeus B region, Yiannis Lagos, a few days after the incident, “Egyptian immigrants at Ichthioskala, Keratsini will answer to Golden Dawn”. They demand the same goes for those employed in fields, nurseries and farmers’ markets or wherever the working immigrant comes face to face with them. A characteristic example is the recent case occurring at the petrol station in Peania where a Pakistani citizen worked legally. Golden Dawn members went to the shop, beat him violently, intimidated his wife and even broke their childrens’ bicycles that happened to be at the station at that time. The threat they screamed was “we don’t want to see you working here again”…

Job inspection of … foreigners

“Avengers” dressed in black entrap at metro and subway

“Sunday’s Ethnos” has daily reports that at metro and subway stations, avengers dressed in black “trap” working immigrants. They are stopped and, after taking any money they have on them, are attacked and have their papers ripped! There are quite a lot of these incidences but foreigners are afraid to report them to the police. Up to now, these “charitable acts” from the henchmen don’t seem to “pan out” though. According to information, at a business in Lamia the pressure from Golden Dawn coercing the owner was so great, he had to fire some of the immigrants he employed. The ad he published to find new Greek employees this time, didn’t succeed, because nobody wanted that type of employment.

After these developments, the businessman rehired the immigrants he had been forced to fire… But other than pogroms, golden dawn members call on the like-minded to boycott any enterprises employing foreigners. “Does a foreigner deliver your meals from the pizzeria or restaurant? Don’t accept the order, tell him to leave and tell him the reason. Do you go to the petrol station for petrol and see a foreigner (usually pakistaniafghanis)? Don’t put petrol. Do you go to the farmers’ market and there’s a foreigner at the bench? Don’t buy, go to another bench where there are only Greeks”, they state in a post. A …paid commentary answers: “Was it nice when we wanted immigrants to do jobs because we see ourselves as bosses? When we were condenscending towards manual labour, who would go to work at a petrol station, food delivery, construction? Even now, nobody wants to go…”. states one of them.

MARIA PSARA
mapsara@pegasus.gr

Daily phenomenon in the emergency room

Rapidly increasing “wounded due to racial violence”

A rapid increase nowadays of doctors treating “the wounded due to racial violence” in emergency rooms daily, a phenomenon “in total proportion” to the recent audacious far-right wing, in groups or isolated, attacks operating in ruthless gangs, permanent members or acting in separate groups, spreading terror to mainly beat unsuspecting foreigners! Places of health have not officially registered “violent incidents” since doctors are limited to their care, though they have themselves the possibility, not only to distinguish the characteristics of the wounds but it happens that the wounded themselves or their escorts often state it as so.

Shocking data

A new institution, the Registrar of Violent Racist Acts Network, cooperating with the National Committee for Human Rights, the High Commission of the UN and 18 non-government organizations, has been very active during the past eight months and has recorded in their first report shocking data on the extent and amount of the problem. Especially at the Polikliniki, because of its geographical position in the centre of Athens, serious cases with knife, bullet and beating wounds, which in previous years were quite rare and now only in this hospital, have reached two to three a day!

“They come to the emergency room alone or carried by others, wounded by clashes, beatings and by evidently planned attacks, often knifed, many with bruises or other wounds in a frequency that we didn’t have in previous years” explains the Hospital Administrator, Pantelis Amoyrgis to the “Sunday Ethnos”. “Days when the Hospital G. Gennimatas is on duty, serving more than 1,000 emergency patients, about 10 recorded cases, mainly foreigners, as victims of racist violence without calculating the many wounded as in the February events, where we had 55 wounded and 9 hospitalized”, explains the Georgios Papadopoulos Hospital Administrator.
Statistically three out of ten cases involve serious wounds needing hospitalization for further treatment. The rise in violent racist incidents is confirmed by the National Centre for Emergency Assistance (EKAB). “Despite the fact that we don’t officially record the cases, the results are evident from three coordinators’ estimates that in comparison to last year, the ambulances of EKAB made many more trips of this nature to the hospitals”, said Dimitris Pirros, Director of EKAB Medical Services to the Sunday Ethnos.
63 attacks in 2 months

“We treat victims daily, after being attacked by a group, that wound immigrants without provocation, using knives, crowbars and knuckledusters”, states Nikitas Kanakis, President of the Doctors of the World to Sunday’s Ethnos.
Only in two months, 63 violent racist attacks were recorded, according to the Registrar of Violent Racist Acts Network.

YIANNIS KRITIKOS