Greek police evict immigrants from Athens
Greek police arresting women and children
Following the operation “Xenos Zeus” Greek police arrested on Saturday 4, August 2012 in Athens 4.900 persons of which 1.130 were brought in for questioning. The police in a press release of the same day claimed that “national survival” was at stake for debt-choked Greece. The aim of the operation was “to send them back to their countries of origin, close the borders and ensure that Athens returns to being a lawful city with a quality of life,” police spokesman Christos Manouras said. 88 of the arrested are planned to be deported on Sunday August 5 in the night from Athens airport. The majority of them are from Pakistan.
Operation Xenios Zeus, ironically named after the name of the king of the ancient Greek gods in his role as protector of guests, mobilised 2,000 police in Athens and another 1,800 on Greece’s eastern border with Turkey.
Manouras said the deportation of illegal immigrants was a necessity for national survival.
“We must send the message that Greece cannot afford work and hospitality” to would-be immigrants, he said. On Wednesday police said they were tripling the number of guards along Greece’s border with Turkey to 1,800 to ward off any influx of Syrian refugees.
The Athens sweep operation launched on Thursday came as creditors from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank meet with Greek officials to discuss the further budget cuts needed to unlock the next tranche of aid in September, worth 11.5 billion euros.
Four months ago, Athens ran a similar eviction operation in conjunction with a number of city halls.
Right-wing Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who took power in June at the head of a broad coalition, pledged during his election campaign to “win back the cities” and stop the “invasion” of immigrants.
The police arrested migrants and refugees without checking their papers first, as the¥ have done before many times. Among the arrested are also asylum seekers and persons whose deportation is clearly not feasible (such as people from Eritrea, Afghanistan etc.). As reported in the news some of the arrested were transferred to Komotini and Xanthi city, others were brought to the detention centre of Amigdaleza and to the main Alien Police Directorate Petrou Ralli in Athens. Some others were released as they were holding valid papers.
mainstream news enforcing the sweep operation with their propaganda…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-LnF3aWiRA
source in english: AFP
Athens news / in English
bbc
associated press
deutsche welle
Sources in Greek
tvxs
left.gr
ta nea
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by the United African Women Organization, Greece
We women, involved in United African Women Organization, Greece, express our deep concern, protest and anger for any type of clean – up actions that are in progress in the centre of Athens and other Greek regions.
Manny of us, years ago, have taken the road of exile, had in mind a distant country, Greece, where people honoured and respected the “stranger” as a holy person. Than, we became this “stranger” and during our evening classes, after work, we learned that there is an old god, to assist us in the difficult struggle for survival: the “Xenios Zeus.”
Today we hear that the old god he changed his mind and doesn’t want to protect us anymore.
We have always tried to build bridges between immigrant communities and the Greek society.
To seek what unites us, rather than what divides us and to highlight it.
To struggle with the Greeks, both men and women against poverty, absurdity as a single, dynamic community that claims their lawful rights.
In spite of those who cut the bridges, we want to continue to fight for the natural right of every person to safety, dignity and peaceful coexistence.
Each “sweep” that was preceded, allegedly as a clean-up, (like people are garbage and need to be swept). we women of Africa who live in Greece, want to turn it into a sweep against hate speech, pogroms, violence and fascist beliefs.
We do not want to defeat racism.
We do not want to loose all hope.
We do not want to start again from scratch a fight that should have been finished.
READ A LETTER BY SOME NEIGHBOURS fROM INDYMEDIA ATHENS
They spit in our faces…
“Xenios Zeus”. Athens. In the noon of Saturday August 4 in an atmosphere of heat and non-existent traffic. An empty silent city. Groups of fascists uniformed and not remove from the cities body with surgical gloves every living and dark colored organism.
A methodical and well-planned pogrom in a desperate silence. Posters, texts, demonstrations, riots, arrests, assemblies, but the crucial moment only shame and despair. A crashing weakness.
Cops, men and women, from patrol cars, bikes, white ‘conventional’ vans, sit and enjoy their coffee at a cafe on the Acharnon Street at the height of St. Nicholas. They have fun. Just next to them are standing about twenty immigrants immobilized next to a closed kiosk, almost hidden, waiting to be “received” and transferred to prison.
In 3rd Septemvriou Street the fifty immigrants corralled together in a crowd behind a chain in front of the exit of OTE (Greek telecommunication company), silently looking around, maybe some help would appear. No. Very little people are around. They either drink coffee in the square or comment: “Even if they catch them, hey will let them go again.”
The same picture all over the town. The rotten meat with in uniform and with national symbols is everywhere. They enter migrants shops in Acharnon Street where they arrest even customers, in apartment buildings around Marnis Street, waiting for the “prey” outside of the train stations of Ano Patissia, Victoria Square, in Omonia, lurking in the shadows of Alexandra Streets’ sideways in case any immigrant comes out of side of the field of Paidion tou Areos Park, they patrol up and down in Patission Street etc. At different corners, always in silence, you see groups of immigrants and around them their headhunters.
This is not a common repressive police operation. It is a central policy choice of current “democracy” for a fascist “Kristallnacht”, with preparation and calculated details. While the people were gone for a swim, it was the chance to “relieve” with a spectacle of “security” and humiliation of “the other” those who stayed back in town to swear their fate.
The goal is not only to vanish the immigrants from the city, to arrest them, to make them disappear from the eyes of the people. The goal is to exterminate them physically and mentally so that they can not even stay at home or go out or to seek food, or look for work or – even more – so that they can not enter the country. The goal is that they should not live.
We, the living, have to give an overwhelming response. We must not only repay the spitting, we have to drown them within their own shit.
The Neighbours
indymedia athens
READ MORE PRESS RELEASES PROTESTING AGAINST THE SWEEP
human rights watch (english)
amnesty international (english)
pro asyl (german)