“Lawyer Yianna Kourtovik is familiar with Athens’ most notorious police station, Aghios Panteleimon, which in 2010 was censured by a United Nations special rapporteur. She tells me that migrants trying to bring complaints of racist violence are routinely threatened with counter-charges and held in the cells; that local supporters of Golden Dawn wander freely in and out of rooms where complainants are giving statements; that she has had to prevent a friend of accused attackers from removing evidence. “If that isn’t giving cover to Golden Dawn, I don’t know what is,” she says. A few weeks ago, she was egged by Golden Dawn outside the station while the police looked on. Then: “The other day, as I was walking down the road, two uniformed officers behind me started chanting, just loud enough for me to hear, ‘Blood! Honour! Golden Dawn!’”
Why are such allegations never investigated? The usual response from those on the left is that Golden Dawn is “the long arm of the state” – that the government tolerates it to discourage immigration and keep people in a passive state of terror. But Golden Dawn is now much more of a threat to public order than protesters against austerity. There is also the fear of further alienating a desperately underfunded, underpaid and demoralised police force. New Democracy’s Kyriazidis has led efforts to isolate Golden Dawn in parliament and, as a veteran union organiser, has intimate knowledge of the old militarised, post-junta police. But when I put the question to him, he hesitates: “Now that Golden Dawn is a legal party in parliament, we can’t do anything… If there is an investigation, it has to be done internally, to remove individuals who act in this way but not weaken the police as a whole.””
- Fear and loathing in Athens: the rise of Golden Dawn and the far right | World news | The Guardian
Why are such allegations never investigated? The usual response from those on the left is that Golden Dawn is “the long arm of the state” – that the government tolerates it to discourage immigration and keep people in a passive state of terror. But Golden Dawn is now much more of a threat to public order than protesters against austerity. There is also the fear of further alienating a desperately underfunded, underpaid and demoralised police force. New Democracy’s Kyriazidis has led efforts to isolate Golden Dawn in parliament and, as a veteran union organiser, has intimate knowledge of the old militarised, post-junta police. But when I put the question to him, he hesitates: “Now that Golden Dawn is a legal party in parliament, we can’t do anything… If there is an investigation, it has to be done internally, to remove individuals who act in this way but not weaken the police as a whole.””
- Fear and loathing in Athens: the rise of Golden Dawn and the far right | World news | The Guardian