Petros, your comments have become extremely annoying to people here and serve no purpose other than to simply disagree with whatever I (or anyone else) posts. I am sure you will cry censorship or cowardice or something, but…so be it. The truth is that people have become bored with trying to respond to your sarcastic and belligerent comments and they are not contributing to any valuable discussion. I also consider some of your opinions to be offensive and I am no longer willing to host your hostility here. I would therefore, ask you to refrain from posting here in future. Thank you. DD

Since you are so tolerant of the Tsiganoi and you care so much about them, tell me Panayote, where do you live, and how many Tsiganoi live in your neighborhood? What would your neighbors say if you told them that a band of Tsiganoi is coming to settle near you? Just don’t tell me that you live in a place like Maroussi…

…Do you?

All of the locations within Attica are underdeveloped neighbourhoods, some with a traditional presence of Athinganoi (or Tsiganoi, as the paper names them – neither Gypsies nor Roma!) like Agia Varvara and Zefyri, some with more recent arrivals. There is no mention of anybody seeking a loan in Maroussi or Vouliagmeni. Doesn’t make you wonder a bit? Are you sure that the folks of Aspropyrgos are more intolerant of these people rather than the folks in Maroussi? Do you have any idea of what would happen if a band of Tsiganoi took the initiative to settle in Maroussi? Just try to make such a thought.

Anyway, the second conclusion is that, while Attica makes up at least the 1/3 of the total Greek population (more likely 4/10), the total recipients of loans in Attica is less than half of the loans in the rest of the country. Another striking detail is that while Herakleion does not seem to offer many opportunities, a much smaller nearby settlement with a strikingly refugee name offers hospitality to more than tenfold the number Herakleion offers!

Another intriguing detail that I already mentioned is the use of the name “Tsiganoi” in the official document itself. The folks in my neighboring Herakleia rebelled just because of that some years ago, and they refused to take the money. More recently I was informed that local folks, possibly including Balamoi (you know who these are eh?) had requested loans in order to build homes, but forgot to mention that they already had a home, and just needed a home for their summer vacations!

Anyway Panayote, I see that you are struggling for no apparent reason. Do you want to find homes? There are plenty of them all around Greece that can be purchased and repaired at a low cost, if you’d bother to open your eyes and see tham as many legal and illegal immigrants have done already. I am talking of solid homes like mine, not the shacks like your home or your office dear…

…Honestly!

to see that in Herakleia they have no problem getting housing loans as gypsies once again although they do not qualify as destitute, and are allotted more than the Aspropyrgos destitute ones and the Patras and …and…

What is common between a bunch of folks who live on top of garbage in the middle of Athens and Patrai and Herakleion, another bunch of folks in Aspropyrgos who have a school especially for their own children, another bunch of folks in my native Serres whose village has the most educated (graduated from college) citizens per capita in the whole of Greece. If you don’t know about the last group, you can ask Papadakis of Antenna (if he still works there, but you know that TV presenter that I am talking about, don’t you?), and yet another bunch of folks in Herakleia near my native Serres who was chasing away some E.U. folks who advocated equal opportunities – as well as the funds that they were promising – because, as they said: “We are NOT gypsies, we are Athinganoi”!!! All of the above came as a result of lifelong loathing and segregation, and history shows that some folks managed to do more than overcome other peoples’ loathing on their own, as long as the found themselves in a favourable environment…

So Panayote, what makes the Pontians feel rightly neglected, and why are the Roma also neglected? Why aren’t my native gypsies not feeling neglected – not even feeling Gypsies! – and manage to survive without your or mine or anybodys’ assistance? All that despite being neglected as much as everybody who lives so far from Athens where all the big decisions are being taken…

Please post follow-ups on this story.

But the prevailing racist stereotypes on the Roma cannot be overcome with just one NGO trying that.

We did ask the state, we did ask the reluctant if not absent in the field of Roma rights Ombudsman, we did ask the deputies of the region, inclduing those who supposedly have “sensitivities” such as Pangalos (PASOK) and Leventis (Syn) to do that, we did ask the leading PASOK person in charge of education at the time Damanaki (with a long history of advocating for the Roma wehn in Syn) to take such initiatives, but they all refused. Even if the officila PASOK humna rights section issued a very good statement out of their HQ.

So the racist Pontioi leaders, who control multifold more votes than the Roma often not even voting in Aspropyrgos if voting at all, carried the day.

Incidentally it is not the refinery issue but more in general Pontioi also and rightly feel neglected and it is a well known pattern internatioanlly to go from frusrtation to racism, as they all want you to belive that your problems are due not to the leading parties but to the Roma, or elsewhere and at another time to the Jews, to the Greeks, to the Turks, to the Bulgarians, to the Albanians, to the Hutus, to the Tutsies, etc.

When a mayor of a little village somewhere in the Peloponesse ordered that all Albanians should follow a strict curfew – be home before the sun falls or else – the presenter of a TV show from the state TV (Reportaz xwris suvora) bothered to visit the local cafe where Greeks and Albanians drunk their refreshments in neighboring tables and presented the story of the Greeks who immigrated to the U.S.A. and faced the same or even worse treatment. In the end all realized how silly was that measure, but you have to actually go and put pressure at the source – those parents who oppose the Roma as if they are a disease – if you want to see results. The mayor is probably following the sentiment of the locals, and he shall do whatever the locals pressure him to do.

Aspropyrgos is a VERY difficult place to live, surrounded by oil refineries that produce a variety of toxic stuff that spread all around. According to old information that I recall from my memory. a couple of those oil refineries should have closed according to E.U. directives because they are too close to inhabited areas and the national highway that leads to the Isthmus. The owners oppose that move by bribing the local and national authorities, and the latter redirect the anger of the locals to other recipients, you know what I mean…

DD thanks for the wonderful post and you are right about last year, except that it was much worse, as our lawyer ended up arrested while advocating the Roma access to school and is awaiting trial.

See our report at:
http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr/upl.....nglish.doc

and copy from there all that is relevant to answer our friends here.