Far-right Golden Dawn party filling vacuum for those neglected by state after MPs elected to fight ‘immigrant scum’
Greece‘s far-right Golden Dawn party is increasingly assuming the role of law enforcement officers on the streets of the bankrupt country, with mounting evidence that Athenians are being openly directed by police to seek help from the neo-Nazi group, analysts, activists and lawyers say.
In return, a growing number of Greek crime victims have come to see the party, whose symbol bears an uncanny resemblance to the swastika, as a “protector”.
One victim of crime, an eloquent US-trained civil servant, told the Guardian of her family’s shock at being referred to the party when her mother recently called the police following an incident involving Albanian immigrants in their downtown apartment block.
“They immediately said if it’s an issue with immigrants go to Golden Dawn,” said the 38-year-old, who fearing for her job and safety, spoke only on condition of anonymity. “We don’t condone Golden Dawn but there is an acute social problem that has come with the breakdown of feeling of security among lower and middle class people in the urban centre,” she said. “If the police and official mechanism can’t deliver and there is no recourse to justice, then you have to turn to other maverick solutions.”
Other Greeks with similar experiences said the far-rightists, catapulted into parliament on a ticket of tackling “immigrant scum” were simply doing the job of a defunct state that had left a growing number feeling overwhelmed by a “sense of powerlessness”. “Nature hates vacuums and Golden Dawn is just filling a vacuum that no other party is addressing,” one woman lamented. “It gives ‘little people’ a sense that they can survive, that they are safe in their own homes.” MORE
NEW RUSSIAN REGULATIONS: NO RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE IF POLICE ARE BEATING YOU
MOSCOW - The question of whether or not citizens in Russia have the right to defend themselves if they are being beaten by police was taken up by the Supreme Court in June.The case came just after a large protest on May 6 that was marred by several police beatings. In regulations released soon after, the Court clarified that Russian citizens have the right to defend themselves if the police are using “indisputably illegal force.”However, even that caveat seems to have disappeared from the final regulations that were released late last month. Indeed a closer look at those regulations make clear that Russian citizens do not have the right to react or defend themselves from police officers who are attacking them, including during street protests, even if they are in danger of bodily injury.According to Pavel Chikov, head of the human rights organization Agora, the court’s regulations are an invitation for the police to be violent. “I personally only know of one case in modern history when police actions during a protest event were declared illegal,” he said. “I think that after these new regulations the police will never be charged with doing something illegal.” The one instance Chikov said he knew of when a police officer’s conduct was judged illegal happened in 2010 in St. Petersburg, when a police officer hit a protester with a club, and was sentenced to three years in prison as a result.
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