Greece

Calais: police have attacked 73%

Research by the charity Help Refugees and the Refugee Rights Data project has revealed the shocking extent of the police brutality, racist attacks and poor living conditions faced by migrants at a the Calais “Jungle” camp. According to the research, three-quarters of refugees in the “Jungle” camp near the French port have been the victim of violence at the hands of police. The charity also says it believes nearly half of the Calais’s refugees have also suffered violence directed at them by citizens, mostly carried out by far-right groups. The survey, which interviewed 800 inhabitants of the...

6500 people waiting at the border

Nikos Anastasiadis of DEA, the Workers’ International Left in Greece, spoke to Solidarity . Greece has accepted tens of thousands of refugees. Refugees came to Greece. Then they travel to Europe. But now the borders have closed and so most of the refugees are going to remain in Greece. There are now 6500 people waiting at the borders, which have been closed for a little more than a week. They were closed because central European countries do not want to accept more refugees. This drive is led by Austria. They would like Greece to accept all the refugees. Most of the refugees come from Syria...

Greek "communists" oppose civil partnership law

“Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right”, Woody Allen On Tuesday 22 December, the Greek Parliament ratified the Civil Union Agreement for Same-Sex Couples. The new legal framework for co-habiting couples is also a limited step (forward towards the abolition of discrimination for the LGBTQI community. The legislation makes the termination of civil partnership more difficult and provides rights to “civil partners” over inheritance, social security rights (pensions), and taxation. The government has yet to move to legislate for political marriage between persons of the same sex or the...

Greece becomes Fortress Europe frontline

Since late November, Idomeni, on the border between Greece and Macedonia, has become a real hell for thousands of refugees. The decision by the Republic of Macedonia on 19 November to close its borders to all refugees except those from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan has left thousands trapped. Almost all the NGOs who were active at Idomeni have left, due to fear for their physical integrity, leaving refugees without even a bottle of water. The “humanitarian” government of Syriza-Anel is absent as regards humanitarian aid and relief to the refugees but present with the iron heel of the riot...

Greece and the refugees: solidarity first!

Fences in Evros (on the Greek-Turkish border), Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Austria… The Calais tunnel and the “protection” of the French and UK borders… Fences in Mexico. Walls in Israel. Visible and invisible fences through the sea, through the land, though the air. Refugees and migrants demonstrating near sunbathers on a beach in Calais, on a beach in Lesbos, on a beach in Kos. Refugees and migrants with no names stacked between borders and outside the realm of geographical boundaries and temporality. In uncharted territories, people who concretise the meaning of Michel Foucault’s...

After Syriza’s betrayal, the international road to socialism?

I met Panagiotis Morakis on a quiet Sunday afternoon in a cafe near Syntagma Square in Athens shortly before Greece’s September election. He is 28 years old, was born in Athens and is currently unemployed. He left Syriza in late August to join the new radical left group, Popular Unity. Whilst we discussed for over two hours many of his friends passed by and said hello. This included Mariza, a young feminist comrade from Syriza Youth, who was to stand for Popular Unity in the 20 September elections. Morakis, like thousands of young people in Greece, has been at the sharp end of the crisis. He...

Six lessons from Greece

Greece has been one of the countries worst affected by the economic slump since 2008. It has also been where left-wing responses to the slump have been strongest. Lesson one: industrial action alone does not provide an adequate working-class answer to capitalist crisis. Greece has had over twenty general strikes since 2009. They have been important as gestures, as rallying calls, as signals, and in galvanising social forces which Syriza later benefited from. But they have not won anything. The problem is not just that they have been 24 or 48 hour actions rather than indefinite general strikes...

After Greece's election, rebuild the social resistance

In Greece’s parliamentary election of 20 September, Syriza received 35.46%, almost the same in percentage terms as January’s 36.3%. Syriza has maintained its coalition government with the right wing nationalists of Anel (Independent Greeks). In absolute terms the party lost 320,000 votes. New Democracy won 28%, almost the same as January’s 27.8%, but it lost nearly 200,000 votes. Many more people abstained this time round. In January 37% did not vote. This time it was 43.5%. Of those who went to the polling stations, 2.5% cast a blank vote. This shows the depth of disappointment among a wide...

New ex-Syriza party seeks to rally opposition

I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New. It hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before. Bertolt Brecht, “Parade of the Old New,” 1939. Bertolt Brecht’s words leave us with a bitter sweet aftertaste when we read Syriza’s central slogan for Greece’s parliamentary election on 20 September: “Getting rid of the old; winning the future; looking only forward”. The call for new parliamentary elections was a desperate attempt by the presidential team of Syriza to survive the growing...

Trauma on the Greek left

I spent four days in the sultry heat of Athens at the beginning of September. I did seven interviews with activists from across the Greek left, and met many others. Below is the first interview. I shall publish others. It was striking that many of the activists described the passing of the new memorandum in July 2015 — which will represent a further colossal decline in the living standards of the Greek people — as a form of trauma. Most regular people I came across would describe the deep disappointment they feel. The leftists foresee this disillusionment translating into a crisis of political...

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