Golden Dawn

Greek police are ever-more openly colluding with the fascist Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi).

On an almost daily basis, Golden Dawn members and their supporters go on the rampage in the capital Athens and other towns around the country, attacking immigrants and political opponents with impunity.

Some of these attacks, often led by some of the party’s 18 parliamentary deputies, have been filmed and photographed. Police have not only turned a blind eye, but they have encouraged or participated in the attacks.

Reports attest to the fact that the police have referred citizens asking for assistance to the fascists. The Guardian newspaper recently reported on “mounting evidence that Athenians are being openly directed by police to seek help from the neo-Nazi group”.

It quoted “One victim of crime, an eloquent US-trained civil servant,” who “told the Guardian of her family’s shock at being referred to the party when her mother recently called the police following an incident involving Albanian immigrants in their downtown apartment block. ‘They immediately said if it’s an issue with immigrants go to Golden Dawn,’ said the 38-year-old, who fearing for her job and safety, spoke only on condition of anonymity.”

Active police support was critical to Golden Dawn making a breakthrough in the June general election. According to To Vima, 50 percent of police officers voted for Golden Dawn. Many police officers, particularly within the riot control department, are Golden Dawn members.

The racism exploited by Golden Dawn is whipped up by the government and the police. In August the coalition government led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras began a mass round-up of immigrants, mobilising 4,500 officers. Many of the 1,400 people lifted off the streets were singled out entirely on the basis of their skin colour and for looking “foreign”.

Last week police reported that 2,135 unregistered migrants were sent to their home countries between August and September. A total of 1,259 were deported by the Aliens Bureau, with most coming from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Albania.

During the election campaign Samaras scapegoated immigrants for the economic catastrophe being imposed by the Greek bourgeoisie and the European Union, referring to undocumented workers in Greece as an “unarmed invasion”. The government has added more security to prevent entry into the country from its border with Turkey.

This was the backdrop against which on September 7 Golden Dawn parliamentary deputy Giorgos Germenis led 40 of his party’s thugs on a rampage through a night market in Rafina, north-west of Athens. They demanded that dark-skinned merchants showed their permits and destroyed a number of their stalls. Germenis bragged, “We told the police and then we did what Golden Dawn must do.”

Another Golden Dawn MP, Panayiotis Iliopoulos, has also been linked to the attack.

After a public outcry, the police chief on duty at Rafina’s main police headquarters has been suspended.

Another attack took place in Missolonghi, in western Greece. Led by deputy Costas Barbarousis, Golden Dawn members smashed fruit and vegetable market stalls owned by immigrants. A police officer reportedly took part in this attack and has been suspended pending an investigation.

Last year, a former police minister confirmed that Golden Dawn regularly collude with the police, admitting the fascists had carried out “joint actions and assisted Greek police.”

One anti-racism campaigner told the Financial Times this month, “We get reports their members [Golden Dawn] are involved in protection rackets, sometimes in collusion with the police.”

In June, Egyptian fishermen were severely beaten in Perama, outside Piraeus. One of the victims stated that one of the assailants wore a Golden Dawn T-shirt. Just hours earlier Golden Dawn MP, Ioannis Lagos, had stated in a speech, “Egyptian fishermen will be held accountable by the Golden Dawn, and by the Greek people for their activity.”

Despite laws against inciting racial violence, Lagos escaped prosecution.

These are just a handful of the hundreds of racist attacks this year, which have nearly doubled from the same period last year. Some have resulted in killings.

The media have played a central role in bolstering Golden Dawn. Since the election, the fascists have been regularly feted on TV and radio shows, with party deputies becoming permanent fixtures.

An important element in this promotion is the attempt to oppose the development of working class opposition to the government’s unprecedented austerity measures. One columnist in the right-wing daily Kathimerini stated, “Those of us believing in democracy owe a big 'thank you' to Golden Dawn,” adding: “it is an opportunity for legality to confront the quasi-legitimate violence of the left.”

On September 10, Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias was forced to announce that Greek police would withdraw state bodyguards granted to Golden Dawn MPs. After the attack on the Rafina market, Dendias called on the authorities to file charges against the two MPs. While a police statement agreed it would carry out the instruction, it noted that guards would continue to protect party leader Nikos Michaloliakos and Golden Dawn’s offices.

Dendias’ move is at most a thin cover for an on-going relationship between Golden Dawn and the police and the top echelons of the state.

Dendias has publicly stated that the problem of immigration is greater than Greece’s financial problems, while Samaras said this month that those coming to Greece from Africa, South Asia and now Syria create “major distress”. Asked about close ties between Golden Dawn and the police, he said of the latter, “I’m very happy with the way they’ve done their job.”

It is not only the conservative New Democracy led by Samaras that is legitimising assaults on immigrant workers and youth. It is aided and abetted by its coalition partners, the social democratic PASOK and DIMAR, the Democratic Left party that split off from the bourgeois “left” SYRIZA coalition in 2010.

In scenes reminiscent of the Nazi occupation of Greece, the coalition decided last month to transport a group of 400 immigrants into a disused military camp on the outskirts of Corinth. Golden Dawn members in the city whipped up anti-immigrant hysteria, with Michaloliakos asking demagogically, “Why should Greek taxpayers subsidise a fully-catered stay in a holiday camp for people we don’t want?”

Fully aware of the atrocious and inhuman conditions that faced the immigrants, the PASOK mayor of the city, Alexandros Pnevmatikos, also registered his party’s protest at their arrival. He immediately ordered the camp’s water supply cut off for several hours as a reprisal.

Pnevmatikos stated, “It was unacceptable for the ministry to send all these people here without even discussing it with the city authorities,” adding: “There’s a big backlash in the city because of fears of a mass escape by immigrants trying to get to the port and on to a ship for Italy ... They shouldn’t be staying here.”

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with fascist Golden Dawn group

Another good article on same subject. Translated from french with google, sorry for bad english.

http://www.rue89.com/2012/09/17/en-grec ... =50&page=2

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with fascist Golden Dawn group

Greek anti-fascist protesters 'tortured by police' after Golden Dawn clash

Fifteen people arrested in Athens says they were subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation

Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.

Members of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other protesters inside the same police station.
Protester injured during arrest in Greece A protester shows his injuries

Several of the protesters arrested after the first demonstration on Sunday 30 September told the Guardian they were slapped and hit by a police officer while five or six others watched, were spat on and "used as ashtrays" because they "stank", and were kept awake all night with torches and lasers being shone in their eyes.
injuries fromth e Greek police Bruising on the protester's leg

Some said they were burned on the arms with a cigarette lighter, and they said police officers videoed them on their mobile phones and threatened to post the pictures on the internet and give their home addresses to Golden Dawn, which has a track record of political violence.

Golden Dawn's popularity has surged since the June election, when it won 18 seats in parliament; it recently came third in several opinion polls, behind the conservative New Democracy and the leftwing party Syriza.

Last month the Guardian reported that victims of crime have been told by police officers to seek help from Golden Dawn, who then felt obliged to make donations to the group.

One of the two women among them said the officers used crude sexual insults and pulled her head back by the hair when she tried to avoid being filmed. The protesters said they were denied drinking water and access to lawyers for 19 hours. "We were so thirsty we drank water from the toilets," she said.

One man with a bleeding head wound and a broken arm that he said had been sustained during his arrest alleged the police continued to beat him in GADA and refused him medical treatment until the next morning. Another said the police forced his legs apart and kicked him in the testicles during the arrest.

"They spat on me and said we would die like our grandfathers in the civil war," he said.

A third said he was hit on the spine with a Taser as he tried to run away; the burn mark is still visible. "It's like an electric shock," he said. "My legs were paralysed for a few minutes and I fell. They handcuffed me behind my back and started hitting and kicking me in the ribs and the head. Then they told me to stand up, but I couldn't, so they pulled me up by the chain while standing on my shin. They kept kicking and punching me for five blocks to the patrol car."

The protesters asked that their names not be published, for fear of reprisals from the police or Golden Dawn.

A second group of protesters also said they were "tortured" at GADA. "We all had to go past an officer who made us strip naked in the corridor, bend over and open our back passage in front of everyone else who was there," one of them told the Guardian. "He did whatever he wanted with us – slapped us, hit us, told us not to look at him, not to sit cross-legged. Other officers who came by did nothing.

"All we could do was look at each other out of the corners of our eyes to give each other courage. He had us there for more than two hours. He would take phone calls on his mobile and say, 'I'm at work and I'm fucking them, I'm fucking them up well'. In the end only four of us were charged, with resisting arrest. It was a day out of the past, out of the colonels' junta."

In response to the allegations, Christos Manouras, press spokesman for the Hellenic police, said: "There was no use of force by police officers against anyone in GADA. The Greek police examine and investigate in depth every single report regarding the use of violence by police officers; if there are any responsibilities arising, the police take the imposed disciplinary action against the officers responsible. There is no doubt that the Greek police always respect human rights and don't use violence."

Sunday's protest was called after a Tanzanian community centre was vandalised by a group of 80-100 people in a central Athens neighbourhood near Aghios Panteleimon, a stronghold of Golden Dawn where there have been many violent attacks on immigrants.

According to protesters, about 150 people rode through the neighbourhood on motorcycles handing out leaflets. They said the front of the parade encountered two or three men in black Golden Dawn T-shirts, and a fight broke out. A large number of police immediately swooped on them from the surrounding streets.

According to Manouras: "During the motorcycle protest there were clashes between demonstrators and local residents. The police intervened to prevent the situation from deteriorating and restore public order. There might have been some minor injuries, during the clashes between residents, protesters and police."

Marina Daliani, a lawyer for one of the Athens 15, said they had been charged with "disturbing the peace with covered faces" (because they were wearing motorcycle helmets), and with grievous bodily harm against two people. But, she said, no evidence of such harm had so far been submitted. They have now been released on bail of €3,000 (£2,400) each.

According to Charis Ladis, a lawyer for another of the protesters, the sustained mistreatment of Greeks in police custody has been rare until this year: "This case shows that a page has been turned. Until now there was an assumption that someone who was arrested, even violently, would be safe in custody. But these young people have all said they lived through an interminable dark night.

Dimitris Katsaris, a lawyer for four of the protesters, said his clients had suffered Abu Ghraib-style humiliation, referring to the detention centre where Iraqi detainees were tortured by US soldiers during the Iraq war. "This is not just a case of police brutality of the kind you hear about now and then in every European country. This is happening daily. We have the pictures, we have the evidence of what happens to people getting arrested protesting against the rise of the neo-Nazi party in Greece. This is the new face of the police, with the collaboration of the justice system."

One of the arrested protesters, a quiet man in his 30s standing by himself, said: "Journalists here don't report these things. You have to tell them what's happening here, in this country that suffered so much from Nazism. No one will pay attention unless you report these things abroad."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oc ... ure-police

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with fascist Golden Dawn group

Athens: Third antifascist motorcycle demo clashed with neo-Nazis; police attacked the demo in retaliation

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aGrW_ZTHPNY[/video]

The night of September 15th saw the first motorcycle patrol through Athens centre with flypostering and protest chants against neo-Nazi attacks. On September 22nd another antifa motorcycle demo was realized successfully.

In the evening of Sunday, September 30th, a third antifascist intervention–motorcycle patrol passed through downtown locations, but was soon hindered by fascist scum. Consequently, comrades trashed nearly three neo-Nazis close to Phylis street in the sector of Aghios Panteleimonas, downtown Athens. At approximately 9pm, while one of the fascists was still lying wounded on the ground, the demo’s last motorcycles were attacked in retaliation by several thugs of the DELTA motorcycle police unit.

Almost all of the antifascists on motorbikes were chased and attacked, first in the vicinity of Amerikis square (not far from the Tanzanian community centre, which was ransacked by fascists only a few days ago), then on Alexandras avenue, but also as they were heading back to Exarchia. There, also, a couple of youths were persecuted and detained by cops. Several motorbikes were left behind and eventually confiscated by the police. Soon thereafter, many comrades gathered in the central Athenian squats in defense of the sites.

Among an unconfirmed number of comrades injured by cops, one antifascist was seriously wounded. Nearly 23 people who took part in the action were initially reported missing. Among them, 15 were arrested at different locations and held in the police headquarters on Alexandras Avenue, without access to any lawyer.

A gathering was called for Monday noon, October 1st, at Evelpidon courts in solidarity with the arrestees. The proceeding was delayed and finally postponed for Thursday, while the gathering was attended by more than 300 comrades. In the evening, various police units attacked furiously the supporters inside the courtyard and persecuted them in nearby streets, resulting to numerous detentions —4 were later turned into arrests.

The 15 antifascists that were arrested on 30/9 are still held in the police headquarters —due to appear in Evelpidon courts in the morning of Thursday 4/10. The 4 comrades arrested on 1/10 will be held in the police headquarters until Friday 5/10, when they will probably undergo trial in Evelpidon courts.

Antifascists who took part in the action have not yet released their own version of events, but notified there is a need to raise more than 10,000euros for legal expenses and monetary bails. Furthermore, in the late evening of Wednesday 3/10, they called for an open assembly in the Polytechnic School to discuss latest updates on the 15 arrestees of the antifascist intervention-patrol (30/9), the 4 arrestees of the solidarity gathering in Evelpidon courts (1/10) and upcoming actions. The assembly was attended by more than 300 supporters.

On the same night, a video of the intervention on 30/9 was released, containing footage shortly before the repressive strike. In addition, all 19 hostages in the police headquarters sent out a first reportback:

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
A few words from the detention cells on the 7th floor of the Athens police headquarters

Although three days have already passed since our arrest during the antifascist motorcycle demo and flypostering (on Sunday 30/9), we think it’s good to clear up a few things even now.

After a manifest call-out on Sunday 30/9, an antifascist motorcycle demo and flypostering took place in downtown Athens, which started off from Exarchia. This demonstration came as a response to fascist pogroms and attacks against immigrants that are carried out in several areas of central Athens by fascist gangs, who are disguised as ‘committees of residents or shopkeepers’ and act with the assistance of official state gangs.

Right now, we’re not interested in analyzing or explaining here the given and hackneyed relation of Golden Dawn/Chrissi Avgi with the Greek Police.

Just after the patrol was attacked by Goldendawners(-citizens), there was an onslaught by cops of the DELTA motorcycle police unit, who followed the rear of the demo but also drove parallel alleys.

In the end 15 antifascist fighters were caught, both women and men. They were injured to various parts of their bodies, like the head, arms and legs, while cops also used taser guns (electroshock weapons).

We were brought to the 6th floor of the Athens police headquarters, in front of the department of state constitution protection, where the night was accompanied by beatings, threats, hair pulling, and burnings from the DELTA teams who took our picture for their private photo albums while keeping watch to us.

Threats such as ‘Now that we know who you are, we will bury you just like your grandparents in the Civil War’ are indicative of the terrorism that the cretin praetors of the DELTA teams tried to inflict on us. At the same time, we were not allowed to communicate with lawyers or doctors for 19 consecutive hours. The next day, after they made a transfer–show in order to take our suspect profiles, they ultimately brought us to the courts of the former Evelpidon military school.

While we still remained at the courts, anti-riot police forces attacked the gathered solidaritarians, beating up fiercely many of them. A total of 25 people were detained, and ultimately 4 arrestees were indicted. From the moment of their arrest, they were transferred onto the 6th floor of the police headquarters, where cops implemented a similar tactic of intimidation, including humiliating body searches. After an unprecedented vengeful decision, the temporary detention of the 4 arrestees was prolonged for three more days (until Friday), while the temporary detention of the 15 initial arrestees was extended until Thursday.

They brought us to the detention cells on the 7th floor of the police headquarters, in an overcrowded ward (intended for 30 people, while at the moment 80 people ‘live’ there in incredibly squalid conditions), in an attempt to ‘break our nerves’. However, we encountered a truly exceptional feeling of solidarity from people that have been ‘forgotten’ up to three months in this place.

Amidst the ‘economic crisis’ more and more people are driven to poverty and destitution, social cannibalism is being rewarded as virtue, fascism is raising its head in our localities and neighbourhoods, the State’s offensive is being intensified at all levels; amidst this period, options that promote self-organization, solidarity, comradeship and direct action are those that can not only stand in the way of fear, which they try to impose on our lives, but as the prospect of a different social organization.

You need to deeply grasp what fascism is really about.
Fascism won’t simply die on its own; you need to trash it.

Arrestees of 30/9 and 1/10
(Some among us, proud progenies of anarcho-communist brigands/symmorites.)

http://contrainfo.espiv.net/

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with neo-nazi Golden Dawn group

Yup those fuckers also opened a local chapter in Montreal but we're already taking care of them.

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with neo-nazi Golden Dawn group

Today on CBC:

Video here:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/watch/News/ID=2289890058

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with neo-nazi Golden Dawn group

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrA7UhKodYQ[/video]

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with neo-nazi Golden Dawn group

No-gods-no-masters.com will be donating $200 to the antifascists comrades detained and tortured by the greek police

English communiqué will be coming when i have time
unless someone would help me to translate this ? http://www.ni-dieu-ni-maitre.com/blog/n ... tes-grecs/

I am very busy working full-time on the new version of the shop. Our printing company changed the way it handles order processing so i need to rewrite everything from scratch. I have been working full-time on it and right now i have around 80% of all the work finished. The new version should be released in around 2 weeks.

 

Re: ACAB Greek police collude with neo-nazi Golden Dawn group

http://no-gods-no-masters.com/blog/