18:00 - Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo
20:00 - London, Dublin, Lisboa
21:00 - Rome, Paris, Madrid, Tirana, Berlin, Lagos
22:00 - Athens, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, Minsk, Johannesburg
23:00 - Nairobi, Baghdad, Moscow
23:30 - Tehran
00:30 - Mumbai, Delhi
04:00 - Beijing
12:00 - Los Angeles, Vancouver
13:00 - Denver, Edmonton
14:00 - Chicago, Dallas
15:00 - New York, Toronto, Kingston
16:00 - Halifax, St Johns

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The main opposition party Pasok are equally pathetic in their dealings with immigration. They have issued an eight-point plan.

Via the Athens News

1. Zero-tolerance for illegal immigration
2. Additional European Union funding and support for guarding the country’s borders
3. Implementation of international and bilateral repatriation agreements, such as the one signed with neighbouring Turkey
4. An EU-wide burden-sharing policy so that asylum seekers and refugees may be resettled in other EU member states
5. Drastic overhaul of the country’s refugee policy so as to streamline the asylum application
6. Integration of immigrants into society, granting citizenship to the children of immigrants and to all those who fulfil all the requirements and cracking down on black-market labour
7. Overseas recruitment of workers to fill seasonal job vacancies
8. Reorganisation of cities and neighbourhoods, especially those that are neglected and turning into ghettos

Point one is easy. All the parties and most of the general public feel this way. This is not a plan, it’s a statement that plays into the hands of a paranoid public who will be voting very soon.

Point two is shaky because of a history of misusing EU funding and the vast amounts of money that has disappeared into a few people’s pockets.

Point three is unworkable given the animosity between Greece and Turkey.

Point four is unworkable given that no EU country wants to accept more asylum seekers and refugees.

Point five is a joke. With a less than one percent asylum recognition rate and zero interest in actually caring about asylum seekers, how is Pasok going to sell this one to people. His party did nothing when they were in power , why should we believe that they suddenly care about vulnerable people ?

If it wasn’t so sad I would have to laugh out loud at point six. Integration into a society where so many believe that there is no such thing as a Greek Muslim, Greek Jew, Greek Bahai or Greek Athiest! Let alone Greeks that have a parent or parents from Africa, India or China! Immigrants have been campaigning for at least a decade (probably more) for their children who are born here, educated here and know no other country, to be accepted as Greek citizens. And a crack down on the illegal workforce here. Please! Greece cannot survive without illegal labour! Not just with immigrants but generally. I know SO many Greeks who work here without proper insurance, with no work records, with no contracts. You think Pasok are going to stop that ?

Point seven is ridiculous. If there are so many people here working illegally and you are going to crackdown on that, why would you then go and look overseas to recruit more people? Surely the best idea is to recruit the people already here in a proper legal manner?

Point eight? Don’t make me laugh (again). There has been little commitment to ANY urban development or “reorganisation”. There is little or no affordable housing being developped and hardly a square metre of green space being created. Why on earth should we believe that Pasok is suddenly interested in people’s living spaces and welfare ?

The only party that is making strides in the area of immigration is the far-right party Laos (up to 7% in the latest Euro elections)

On a political level, the toxic combination of swelling immigration, crime and high unemployment has propelled a growth of far-right Laos, which was the only party to garner more votes during the recent European Parliament elections than in 2004

Laos have a simplistic and populist answer to immigration here in Greece. Process illegal immigrants and asylum seekers quickly, give them travel papers and a ticket to another EU country and you’re done. They become another country’s problem not yours. Great. People here are going to love it.

No political party ACTUALLY cares about immigrants as far as I can see. It’s simply a race to see who can get rid of them the fastest.

Rant over… for now.

Technorati Tags: greece, immigration, migrants, laos, pasok, ND

I guess I’m going against the current grain by saying, that although it’s very sad that he’s dead, it hasn’t torn me apart in the same way as it has his fans. I’m shocked only because he was way too young to die.

The one short phase when MJ really got to me was when I was pregnant and he brought out “Earthsong”. Every time I heard it, I cried. Something to do with bearing a child that would grow up in the world we were destroying. And I’m sure one of the lines was ” What about baby boys?” and I was carrying one. I probably got the lyric wrong as is often the case with MJ but I still like to believe that that is what he sang. (Please don’t spoil it for me!) Anyway, it was the one Micheal video that made sense to me. The one time when I felt he was truly angry and honest.

I also loved “They don’t really care about us” (not the prison version!) and how (seriously) amazing are the drummers!

See the video here

The rhythms and the passion. Apart from that, I recognise the huge impact Jackson had on our lives in terms of pop music but his anger and honesty in these two songs are what I will always remember about him. Not the rest of the pointless ramblings. I can’t say I loved his music anymore than I can say I hated it. I’m sad that he died, in the same way that I am sad that anyone that young dies.

It is human to mourn famous people dying. It reminds us of our own mortality. I cried when Princess Diana died although I am completely against the monarchy. I’m sure this post will upset a few Michael Jackson fans out there but this is how I feel…

Sad that he’s dead but looking forward to getting back to talking about other current news…

Technorati Tags: michael, jackson, pop, music, video

Greek police cracks child porn ring

Greek police have cracked a major child porn ring operating via the Internet, with 39 people charged in connection with the case, according to a police announcement on Wednesday.

Police said a joint investigation by the Athens and Thessaloniki electronic crime squads lasted more than three months. Those under arrest included 37 Greeks and two foreign nationals. All the accused were living and working in Athens, Thessaloniki and 10 other cities around Greece.

Of the 39 people charged, 20 were caught in the act of disseminating hard-core pornographic material from their computers during a coordinated operation carried out simultaneously in several cities at once.

The investigation was begun based on information supplied by German authorities, who had tracked the electronic traces of 170 Greek Internet users in one of their own investigations, during which they discovered the existence of a file sharing network used to disseminate child porn.

Technorati Tags: greece, pornography, children, police, internet

Via Kathimerini

Two farmers from the Peloponnesian town of Nea Manolada, alleged to have tied two Bangladeshi immigrants to a motorcycle last Thursday and to have dragged them through a central square, were yesterday released on bail of 3,000 euros each. The two suspects, who are alleged to have assaulted the migrants in order to punish them for a suspected theft, were released after testifying before an investigating magistrate, on the condition that they report to local police twice a month. The migrants were also released and barred from leaving the country.

Please note that the locals who saw this horrible incident intervened and called the police.

From Kathimerini

Farmers held for cruel attack on immigrants

Two farmers from Nea Manolada, a small town in the Peloponnesian prefecture of Ileia, faced a prosecutor yesterday after allegedly tying two Bangladeshi immigrants to the back of a motorcycle on Thursday and dragging them through a central square in a bid to punish them for a suspected theft.

According to locals, who called police on witnessing the scene, the two suspects beat up the farm laborers after suspecting them of stealing sheep and goats from them. They are then alleged to have tied the migrants to the back of a motorcycle and driven through the square. Some locals intervened to stop the brutal spectacle and the migrants reportedly emerged with minor injuries. Speaking to Skai yesterday, Antonis Seretis, mayor of nearby Vouprasia, described the assault as “unacceptable and reproachable” but stressed that it was an “isolated incident.”

Also, an article about the incident in Greek

Technorati Tags: greece, immigration, migrants, abuse,

Today, I am also celebrating 15 years with the love of my life. I feel so lucky. It is not just that we are still together but that we love, respect and appreciate each other as much as ever.

So this is an open thread (I haven’t done one in a while) dedicated to love, friendship and peace. Write anything you like that is positive, hopeful or inspiring. No negativity please. Just for one post.

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend. We’re certainly going to go for it…

A review by Maya Jaggi appeared in the Independent on Friday

Last weekend I stumbled across a far-right rally in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city. The signature cadences of an aspiring fascist demagogue, and the small crowd’s robotic chants, were unmistakable even before I caught sight of the capo sawing the air at the waterfront under a statue of Alexander the Great. The dark-uniformed neo-Nazis then paraded their Greek flags through town in the run-up to this Sunday’s European elections, flinging about leaflets stamped with a swastika-like Hellenic emblem and urging that “illegal immigrants” be sent home.

Gazmend Kapllani, a prominent Greek journalist born in Albania, believes it was supporters of the same neo-Nazi group, Chrysi Avyi or Golden Dawn, who tried to beat him up two weeks ago at a public reading of this memoir. It was held in Aghios Panteleimonas, effectively a migrant ghetto in central Athens named after the “saint of charity for all”. At Thessaloniki’s book fair, Kapllani told me that he had taken refuge in a nearby house for several hours while some 20 neo-Nazis rampaged - unhindered by police - terrorising children in a playground, then blogging that they had cleared the district of “scum” like him. Earlier, an Orthodox priest was attacked for distributing food, and his church firebombed.

Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife’s translation of A Short Border Handbook could not be timelier. Born in 1967, Kapllani entered Greece with many Albanians in 1991, six years after the dictator Enver Hoxha died, and soon after the gates of the prison-state were opened. Kapllani, who had taught himself Italian and French for a clandestine window on the world, worked as a builder, cook and kiosk-attendant in Athens while learning Greek and English, studying philosophy and earning a doctorate. Now a columnist for Ta Nea, Greece’s largest-circulation left-wing newspaper, he is one of the few to have “made it”. Yet he feels a “mixture of deliverance and perplexity”, a symptom of what he terms “border syndrome”.

Read the full review here and then go and buy the book.

The timing is perfect.

Gazmend Kapllani blog (in Greek)

Technorati Tags: greece, albania, gazmend, kapllani, border, immigration, migration

Neo-fascists disrupt presentation of the first Greek-Macedonian Dictionary in Athens

Skopje and Athens, Wednesday, 03 June 2009 by Georgios N. Papadakis

The presentation of the first Greek-Macedonian dictionary was brutally disrupted last night in Athens by a group of Greek ultra-nationalists belonging to the neo-fascist organization “Hrissi Avgi” (Golden Dawn).

A few minutes after the beginning of the event, which was taking place in the Foreign Press Association in Athens, the group invaded the premises shouting “This is Greece, traitors and homosexuals get out!”, verbally and physically attacked the panellists, other participants, and the only TV crew filming the event. They also seized mobile phones and confiscated all material related with the promotion of the dictionary - books, informational leaflets and banners.

A video, released on You Tube, pictures the thugs as they take over the room, shouting in Greek: “Shame on you, it’s disgraceful what is happening here…You drug-addicts, you have the nerves to present a “Macedonian” dictionary here …We are throwing these books in the dust bin and all of you out, now! It’s over! …Let me see your mobile phones as you leave! .. You anti-Greek worms…”

The participants were effectively kept as hostages for almost half an hour and the assailants only left the building when they were informed that the police were on their way.

The police were not present at the time of the attack, although the Hrissi Avgi and other Greek “patriotic” organizations had publicly announced their intentions to stop the presentation by force.

The Greek mainstream media were also absent and the promotion was covered only by Alfa TV from the Republic of Macedonia.

Mr Athanassios Parissis, President of Greek member state committee of EBLUL, was speaking at the event and can be seen sitting at the right hand end of the table in the video.

Speaking to Eurolang today he said that: “The human rights movement in Greece, and the Macedonian activists in particular, are used to this kind of intimidation and attacks. Until yesterday we were also used to having strong police protection. Surprisingly, the moment that these attackers realized that the police were temporarily not there, they decided to act. They had a very specific plan, to terrorize and intimidate us and to stop the event, without a lot of physical violence, without blood.

He added: “We were calm, we did not react, we did not leave the room when they ordered us to, and by acting like this we effectively forced them to leave”.

The dictionary- the life’s work of the Aegean Macedonian Vasko Karadza who died in exile a few years ago- was published by “Zora” editions with the support of the Greek Member State Committee of EBLUL and the EFA-Rainbow party. It’s considered to be the most comprehensive work of its kind and it’s going to be followed soon by a Macedonian-Greek dictionary.

Keynote speakers of the presentation were Professor Victor Friedman, Department of Slavic and Balkan Languages, University of Chicago, USA and Dr. Riki van Boeschoten, Professor at the Faculty of Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly, Greece. (Eurolang 2009)

The attack can be seen on YouTube

The less than 1% recognition rate of asylum seekers in Greece (the lowest in Europe) may be about to become even less (if that’s possible!)

New asylum rules which are being put forward by the government would force asylum seekers to take their rejected claims to the Council of State. Only if they manage to overturn the original rejection, would they be able to submit a new claim. This would also mean that they would have to hire lawyers making it a difficult and expensive process.

From the Athens News

The elimination of the [appeals procedure] will deny asylum seekers the right of a genuine appeal,” the local UNHCR branch explained in a statement

The United Nations refugee Council in Athens has critisised the new proposals

In a 10-page report published in April 2008, the UNHCR said asylum seekers returned to Greece are “automatically detained” and interviewed in a language they do not understand and without being counselled on their rights during the asylum process.

What this means in real terms…

You will be one of the lucky less than 1% that is granted asylum on first application

OR

You have paid vast amounts of money to smugglers to get you to Greece. When you get here, you will try and process an asylum claim which will almost automatically be rejected. You will have no money to hire a lawyer so you will be deported.

OR

You will have paid vast amounts of money to smugglers to get you to Greece. When you get here, you will try and process an asylum claim which will almost automatically be rejected. You then manage to find enough money to hire a lawyer and take your appeal to the Council of State. They might (chances are they won’t but let’s say for the sake of argument) overturn the original rejection. You will then file another asylum claim which will almost automatically be rejected and you will be deported.

Like I said some years back (when the percentage of successful asylum claims here was a little higher at 1.9% ! ), it is best to avoid Greece if you are looking to escape torture, persecution, war, famine or oppression.

Read the full article at the Athens News here.

Technorati Tags: greece, asylum, unhcr, athens, refugees, deportation

Immigrants holding banners saying ‘Stop racist attacks; no to Islamophobia’ staged a passionate but largely peaceful demonstration in central Athens yesterday. The rally came exactly a week after a similar demonstration degenerated into violence when a small group of protesters vandalized storefronts and traffic lights.

Hundreds of immigrants and leftist sympathizers took part in an anti-racism rally in central Athens yesterday, a week after a similar demonstration prompted by the alleged defacement of a miniature Quran by a policeman escalated into clashes with riot police.

Clusters of riot police had been stationed around the city center yesterday due to fears that the migrants would clash with some 250 far-rightists who staged their own demonstration a couple of blocks away near the Athens Cathedral in protest at the growing influx of immigrants into the capital. By late last night, there had been no reports of any clashes between the two groups. One minor scuffle reportedly broke out between some migrant protesters who wanted the rally to end and others who wanted it to continue. There were reports of some minor damage to a couple of storefronts but it was unclear whether this was the work of migrant protesters or leftists who joined the rally.

Organizations representing the country’s immigrants did not participate in yesterday’s demonstration, saying that they did not want to fuel tensions or have their members branded as troublemakers. “We do not want the presence of immigrants in Aghios Panteleimonas to be linked with outbreaks of violence in the center of the capital which is also our city,” the Muslim Union of Greece said in a statement, referring to a central Athens district with a large immigrant population.

In its statement, the union also reiterated its calls for the creation of a mosque for the capital’s Muslims, something authorities promised years ago but have failed to make good on following protests by the Orthodox Church and residents at the proposed locations.

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Please email me and let me know if you have made a donation so I can thank you personally.

Thank you so much for all your support, kindness and understanding.

Via Kathimerini

Kukua Williams, born in Athens to Ghanaian parents 17 months ago, yesterday became the first child born in Greece to migrants to be registered so she can gain Greek nationality. The Municipality of Kaisariani attempted to highlight the gaping hole in the country’s legislation, which effectively leaves such children with no legal status, during a public registration yesterday. The ceremony was of symbolic nature and Kukua faces a battle to gain full citizenship.

Technorati Tags: greece, patras, immigration, afghanistan, refugees

Also this via the SE Times

Muslim associations in Athens have filed a lawsuit against a policeman who allegedly desecrated a copy of the Koran last week, media reported on Monday (May 25th). Last Thursday, the policeman allegedly took a Koran from a customer during a police check at an Athens coffee shop, ripped it apart, threw it on the floor and stomped on it. Police say the officer did not know it was Islam’s holy book. The Pakistani community in Greece called on the government to assume responsibility for the incident and demanded an apology from authorities. The incident prompted two days of protests by hundreds of Muslims in central Athens. Violent clashes with police on Friday injured at least 14 people and damage several businesses; 46 people were arrested

It has been a tense time in Athens over the past few weeks. At the beginning of May, the far-right group Chryssi Avgi staged a demonstration downtown and took the opportunity to hurl abuse (and stones etc) at immigrants squatting in a building near Ommonia.
Read this article at Athens Plus for the full story

In the last few weeks, Athens took a serious fall down the slippery slope of xenophobia and intolerance. Not that it was unexpected: For over a year, anyone who cared about the capital city and its center - as well as anyone who cared about the fate of illegal immigrants - warned that abandoning migrants to their own devices would lead to trouble. And so, last Saturday, members of the extreme right-wing Chryssi Avgi group (Golden Dawn) gathered to hurl abuse and objects at migrants squatting in the former appeals court building on Socratous Street, a block away from Omonia Square. Chryssi Avgi has been around a lot longer than the immigrants and its members need no excuse for vile and violent outbursts. But the immigration problem has become so serious that we run the risk of Chryssi Avgi’s message of hatred gaining a foothold in the mainstream

As I have said over and over again on this blog, the authorities complete lack of will to do anything at all to face the reality of the immigrant population in Greece, could never lead to anything positive. Ignoring them has not made them go away and the lack of support and respect (for example there is no official mosque in Athens) has only led to resentment and anger. Well, sadly my predictions (and those of many others who have followed the issue) are starting to come true.

Last Friday, members of the Muslim community in Athens held demonstrations following the alleged destruction of a copy of the Qur’an by a police officer. The protests led to clashes with the police and vandalism of cars and shops. Two immigrants were injured and 46 arrested.

Via Kathimerini

Muslim organizations held another, more peaceful protest in Omonia Square on Saturday. In an open letter published yesterday, the Muslim Union of Greece said that any Muslims involved in violence or looting brought shame upon their community.

On Saturday, there was an arson attack on a makeshift mosque

Police said that assailants broke a window to a basement in the neighborhood of Aghios Panteleimonas, near central Athens, at 2.45 a.m. on Saturday and then set fire to the room, which was used as a place of worship by migrants living in the area.

Five Bangladeshis who were in the room had to be rescued by the 12 firefighters who arrived at the scene and were then taken to the hospital to be treated for minor injuries

The far-right must be overjoyed at this turn of events. What better way to incite fear and anti-immigrant feeling than to point to rioting Muslims in the centre of town ? The images were relayed all over the media and those “talking heads” discussions blared on most channels. This was in sharp contrast to past reporting on any of the issues affecting immigrant communities. Anti-immigrant and especially anti-Muslim sentiment has reached boiling point.

If you go to the downtown area around Ommonia, you can clearly see that there is a problem.

A serious policy would have allowed long-term migrants to be absorbed into Greek society while keeping control over new arrivals through registration and the provision of food and lodging until they either received asylum, were absorbed into the work force through a need for labor or were deported. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people have been abandoned to their own devices in a society woefully unequipped to deal with them. The fact that hardworking, law-abiding migrants have been denied rights creates a gray area ideal for new arrivals and people prone to crime into which they can slip. In limbo, migrants fall victim to exploitation by unscrupulous Greeks and fellow migrants - from slumlords to ethnic gangsters.

From the Washington Times

Unrest in Greece’s community of Muslim immigrants is something new, analysts say.

“For so many years, they’ve been scared and defensive,” said Takis Geros, a lecturer of anthropology of the Middle East at Panteion University. “To suddenly come out in broad daylight with their faces exposed and trash 75 cars indicates a massive change in attitude.”

Muslim community organisations have appealed for calm but there needs to be some serious examination and the authorities on ALL sides need to come up with some real and long-term solutions starting with the basics of food and housing.

I will keep you updated on any developments.

Technorati Tags: greece, athens, muslims, police, riots, mosque

In other words, although he wrote extensively about the advantages of Jews being killed en masse, he didn’t really intend for any to be killed. The trouble with this argument is: how and why should we believe him? When Mein Kampf was first published in 1925, there were those who believed it was the ranting of a mad man, and that nothing would come of it. How wrong they were. If only this unmistakable warning had been heeded.

The acquittal of this man, who wrote blatantly provocative literature, which idolises those who committed the most terrible crime against humanity of all time, is the deepest possible insult to democracy. The right to speak and write freely is invaluable in a democratic society, but this right is no longer deserved when one’s words seriously hinder the freedom of others. When others are put in danger by a fellow member of society, his actions have curtailed their freedom and he has abused our liberal values.

The comments that follow are also very interesting.

Technorati Tags: greece, plevris, trial, jews, racist, facist, nazi