(For clickable links, scarfalonius)

A last anecdote - a friend of mine once told me a story about these clubs in Athens, there are several, where naked kids dance on the bars and can be had for a fee. Blonde kids fetch a premium.

These places are obviously hush hush. But somehow I don’t think it would require too much effort to find them.

Anybody want to do that?

These are all in Greek -

http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/print_article.php?e=A&f=17522&m=N19&aa=1

http://www.hri.org/E/2001/01-01-27.dir/keimena/greece/greece3.htm

http://www.anthropos.gr/show_news.asp?Id=7142

http://www.epohi.gr/yre_diary_issues_2962003.htm

http://www.amnesty.org.gr/library/report2005/greece.htm

These are in English -

http://www.dream.net.gr/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1734

http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/0AC5E76ECD6E126BC12570BA0030ABF6?opendocument

http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/0/ad9b0339463e6b10c1256f78003c1a78?Opendocument

http://www2.unog.ch/news2/documents/newsen/cat04034e.htm

http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/hrcommittee/greece2005.html

http://www.diversity-online.org/ps1.asp?ItemID=748

Sorry, I don’t know anything about inserting proper links. Diva? Where’s the tutorial? In the meantime, copy/paste.

As diva pointed out, this particular case isn’t about left or right - though there’s a notable ABSENCE of conservative sites that covered this story. It’s about children.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what happened. Somebody in the Greek government thought it’d be a good idea to make it seem like Greece was tackling the issue of street children. They pushed through the program, it got approved, a bunch of mediocrities were hired to oversee a program with a minimum of funding. Somebody yelled at somebody, the funding dried up, and poof.

Will somebody go to jail? No.

Most street kids are gone, anyway. The Whatever Mafia has taken over that racket. Private enterprise wins again.

hello scarfalonius,

i have a personal interest in this story,

are there any addresses and or info

i can visit to accumulate opinion

can also take alook down

thank you
=== zardoz===

It’s pretty damning. The charges about the missing children were first brought by an NGO called Terre des Hommes, and were reported by the British newspaper The Independent a few months later.

Evidently, Agia Varvara was a program set up with EU funding to get all the street children off the streets. A building in central Athens was made available as a sort of orphanage.

It looks to me like the Athens police simply rounded up as many of these kids as they could find and dumped them in Agia Varvara. The ombudsman’s report uses pretty strong language in describing the chaos of the place - inadequate facilities, lack of administration, no security etc.

There’s something peculiar in the charges listed by Terre des Hommes, and I’ll nose around some more on this one. It says

‘…πολλά απο τα παιδιά αυτά είχαν επανακτηθεί από δουλεμπόρους, που πλήρωναν μέχρι και το ποσό 500 Ευρώ για να αποσπάσουν τα παιδιά απο το ίδρυμα με σκοπό την οικονομική εκμετάλλευση, τη χρήση τους στην πορνεία ή την πώληση οργάνων τους.’

‘…many of the children were extracted from traffickers, who paid up to 500 euros to get the kids out of the institution for the purpose of economic expoitation - prostitution or the sale of their organs.’

Wow. What I find curious is that the passage is vague about WHO got the money. It doesn’t really suggest the people at Agia Varvara sold the kids, but…what is it suggesting?

I’d bet it’s a bit mixed up - the traffickers paid the parents in Albania to rent the children, bring them to Athens and beg, probably some prostitution went on as well. Organ theft sounds a bit much. Then when the kids got sent to Agia Varvara, they just walked out.

No apologies needed ,
our world is difficult enough
each of us trying to help in his own way
and finding walls
each of us giving our trust and having it stepped on
think nuthin of it ,
i dont know what to do either
have some people in media and guv positions
i’d like to ask them though,

=== zardoz ===

could you describe the full name of the ag, varvara institution?
id like to look this situation up.?

————z

2 - The “clean-up” before the Olympic games (and now in Patras for the European City of Culture) is a different issue. These children went missing between 1998 and 2002.

3 - The goings I am not sure. I assume from what Juan Miguel Petit wrote in his report that the goings were pretty unmonitored leaving these children vulnerable to being taken away, trafficked and goodness knows what else.

4 - No where do I say these children were taken to Albania. Only that the four that were found where located there according to the report.

I hope that clarifies some issues for you. You say “somethin doesnt tie down”. Do you believe that this is not true? That the records of these children have been made up? For what reason? To be honest with you I think even one missing child is too many, let alone 496 in four years. This is gross incompetence and failure of a programme set up to protect vulnerable children.

mS D,D, questions ?

1-you are talking about trafficked chidren who we would meet on the street at cross sections, that would wash our car wind sheilds ..?

2-which all disappeared before and up to the olympic games..?

2a- and now have been replaced in majority by pakistani population washing our windsheilds..?

3_the comings and goings of the children you say CAME into AG. VARVARA, and then the goings ?
were did the state take
the children..?

4- the goings were all to be taken to albania..?
are you very sure ms DD..?

OF COURSE IM SHOCKED BUT SOMETHIN DOESNT TIE DOWN…
THIS is the first time i have heard
the wereabouts of these children,,

ZARDOZ