Thursday, September 19, 2013 4:22:21 PM
After Killing of Activist, Fears of Rising Greek Extremism
By LIZ ALDERMAN and NIKI KITSANTONIS
Published: September 19, 2013
ATHENS — European officials expressed concern on Thursday about a rise of extremism in Greece, a day after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in several Greek cities to protest the killing of an anti-fascist activist. The Greek police said the killer was a supporter of the right-wing Golden Dawn party.
Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, said “an extremely dangerous development” was emerging in Greece and in other parts of Europe. “Sections of society are becoming more radicalized, and there is a real risk that hate speech turns into violence and coldblooded murder,” he said.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Greece made another appeal for calm on Thursday, describing the killing of the activist — Pavlos Fyssas, 34, a leftist hip-hop singer — as “inhuman.” He said the government was “determined not to allow the descendants of the Nazis to poison our social life, to commit crimes, to terrorize and to undermine the foundations of the country that gave birth to democracy.”
Mr. Samaras did not say what actions the government would take, and did not comment on a suggestion advanced by the country’s public order minister, calling for changes in the laws defining criminal organizations to rein in Golden Dawn. The minister late on Thursday sent the country’s Supreme Court prosecutor a list of offenses believed to have been carried out by Golden Dawn and asked for the party to be treated as a criminal organization.
The party, whose members have been accused of criminal violence against immigrants, has gained popularity recently, especially among Greeks angered by high unemployment and economic woes. Golden Dawn has insisted that it had nothing to do with the killing of Mr. Fyssas, and has condemned the attack on him.
Tensions have been growing between Mr. Samaras’s fragile coalition government and the main leftist opposition party in Greece, Syriza, which has also been gaining in popularity. One of Mr. Samaras’s chief advisers, Chrysanthos Lazaridis, said Syriza was also engaged in political violence, and suggested that the leftist party was not part of Greece’s “constitutional axis.”
Mr. Samaras said, “Political disagreements should be solved with democratic dialogue, not inflammatory arguments or with violence, wherever it may come from.”
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/world/europe/after-killing-of-activist-fears-of-rising-greek-extremism.html
--
Greek police arrest man over death of hip-hop artist
18/09/2013 21:55 CET
Police in Greece have arrested a man in connection with the murder of hip-hop artist and anti-fascist activist Pavlos Fyssas.
The suspect is a self-confessed member of the far-right group, Golden Dawn.
Following the arrest of the 45-year-old, who has not been named, police raided a number of Golden Dawn offices in Athens.
The victim, who performed under the name of Killah P, is said to have identified his attacker after being taken to hospital.
His death has sparked huge anti-Golden Dawn protests across the Greek capital.
Fysass was ambushed as he left a cafe.
Anti-fascist activists claim police stood by as the performer was stabbed.
The killing comes days after Golden Dawn launched attacks on members of the Greek Communist Party.
Greece has become a deeply polarised country since financial crisis and support for Golden Dawn has rocketed.
Copyright © 2013 euronews
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/greek-police-arrest-man-over-death-of-greek-hip-hop-artist-/ [with embedded video report]
--
'Neo-Nazi' held over Greek musician Pavlos Fyssas death
Golden Dawn supporters held a rally in central Athens in May
A left-wing musician has been stabbed to death in the Greek capital, Athens, and the suspect is a member of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.
18 September 2013
[...]
... The victim was attacked by a group of 15 men.
A 45-year-old man, who police say has admitted supporting Golden Dawn, has confessed to the crime, the BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says.
Before being pronounced dead, the victim had identified his attacker to police.
[...]
Europe's top human rights body, the Council of Europe, has said there are grounds for Golden Dawn to be made illegal.
[...]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24141246
--
Greek police search Golden Dawn offices after man stabbed to death
Riot police officers detain protesters after clashes in the northern Greek town of Thessaloniki between police and angry anti-fascist protesters following the killing of a 35-year-old anti-racism More...
Credit: REUTERS/Alexandros Avramidis
By Yannis Behrakis and Renee Maltezou
ATHENS | Wed Sep 18, 2013 4:24pm EDT
(Reuters) - Greek police searched the offices of the Golden Dawn party on Wednesday after an anti-racism rapper was stabbed to death by a man who sympathized with the far-right group.
The killing touched a nerve in Greece, where an economic crisis has worsened social tensions, and rallies in several cities to mark the death turned violent.
A 45-year-old man was arrested and admitted to the killing, police said. Greece's citizen protection minister said the suspect was a Golden Dawn sympathizer.
Pavlos Fissas, 35, who went by the stage name Killah P, was stabbed twice in the heart and chest on Tuesday night in a brawl after a soccer match shown in a cafe in Keratsini, a working-class suburb of Athens.
Police said the offices of a political party were searched for evidence linking it to the attack, but stopped short of naming Golden Dawn. They later arrested a Golden Dawn official for a weapons offence after finding a police-style night-stick in the party's offices in Piraeus.
More than 5,000 people rallied in Athens on the spot where Fissas was stabbed. Police fired teargas at protesters who hurled stones and petrol bombs at a police station and set garbage containers on fire, Reuters witnesses said.
"The government of (Prime Minister Antonis) Samaras is the instigator by allowing murderous Golden Dawners to roam around unpunished and armed with knives," said KEERFA, the United Movement Against Racism and the Fascist Threat.
"It's time to punish the neo-Nazi murderers of Golden Dawn and to throw the Samaras government - a miserable gang of bankers, the troika (of international lenders) and neo-Nazis - into the trash."
The leader of the right-wing Independent Greeks party, Panos Kamenos, who visited the scene of the crime to pay his respects was attacked and lightly injured by a group of protesters.
Clashes between police and demonstrators were reported in two other Greek cities, Patras and Thessaloniki.
CRIMINAL
The killing of Fissas has revived calls to ban Golden Dawn, Greece's third most popular party according to recent opinion polls, which denies constant accusations of involvement in a wave of attacks on immigrants and leftists.
With an emblem resembling a swastika, the party rose from obscurity to enter parliament last year. Its leaders have denied the Holocaust and defended Greece's 1967-1974 military junta.
Golden Dawn is a "criminal organization" that should be declared illegal, the co-ruling Socialist PASOK party said.
The far-right party has condemned the killing and denied accusations by "wretched sycophants" of any involvement.
"(The accusers) are miserable and wretched not only because of their brazen lies and slander but because they are exploiting a tragic event for politicking, to win votes and to divide Greek society," Golden Dawn said in a statement.
The government plans to sharpen the law defining what a criminal organization is, said Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Dendias.
"The abominable murder in Keratsini by an attacker sympathizing with Golden Dawn, according to his own statement, illustrates, in the clearest way, the intentions of neo-Nazism," Dendias said.
(Additional reporting and writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/18/us-greece-stabbing-idUSBRE98H0ZZ20130918 [no comments yet]
--
Greece asks court to crack down on far right after rapper's killing
Sep 19, 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/19/us-greece-funeral-idUSBRE98I0WR20130919 [no comments yet]
--
Greek far-right Golden Dawn rejects Nazi label while hailing Hitler
19/09/2013 18:49 CET
Golden Dawn refers to illegal immigration into Greece as ‘the Asian danger’, and vows to fight for its own racial survival.
This common historic theme is among those central to the party which earn it the branding ‘neo-Nazi’.
Last year, it won enough support in elections for 18 members to take parliament seats in Athens.
As the economy got worse, the party had gone from tiny to the third-ranked political force in the country.
Founder Nikolaos Michaloliakos saw vote share go from less than a third of one percent to nearly seven percent. It is now surveyed at more than ten percent.
His behaviour and his party’s has been repeatedly described as hooligan-like: a Golden Dawn MP insults his political opponents calling them goats… as he is removed from the assembly he makes a ‘heil Hitler’-like gesture and he shouts out those words.
The party claims it is the salute of the late-1930s Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas.
The movement begun in 1980 became a party in the early 1990s. Michaloliakos tapped his fellow Greeks’ disgust with corruption scandals, and dressed his body language as virtuous.
“They called us ‘Nazis’ once, twice, ten times… but they can’t call us thieves! These hands may sometimes salute like this but these hands are clean, they are not dirty, they haven’t stolen anything.”
Golden Dawn describes its ideology as social nationalism, or national socialism. Critics decry its growing popularity in a country which suffered under Nazi occupation in World War Two. It distributes food to crisis-hit people, but exclusively those of Greek nationality.
The right-wing extremist members last year took vigilante action posing as keepers of order, demanding foreign street vendors prove they were in the country legally, and those who couldn’t had their stalls and emplacements destroyed.
Greece is the country where the most illegal immigrants first set foot when they enter the European Union – 80 percent. Immigrants make up ten percent of Greece’s population.
*
Related
Greece: Anti-racism rapper stabbed to death in cafe… 18/09/2013 13:28 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/greece-anti-racism-rapper-stabbed-to-death-in-cafe-brawl
Greek police arrest man over death of hip-hop artist 18/09/2013 21:55 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/greek-police-arrest-man-over-death-of-greek-hip-hop-artist- [second item from top, above]
Greek far-right candidate’s threat to foreigners… 07/03/2013 12:45 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/03/07/xyz-far-right-party-golden-dawn-video
Far-right Golden Dawn launches child indoctrination… 27/02/2013 11:43 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/02/27/far-right-golden-dawn-launches-child-indoctrination-courses
Tension rises in Athens with planned demonstrations… 18/09/2013 18:06 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/tension-rises-in-athens-with-planned-demonstrations-following-the-killing-of-
*
Copyright © 2013 euronews
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/19/greek-far-right-golden-dawn-rejects-nazi-label-while-hailing-hitler/ [with embedded video report]
--
Greece PM Antonis Samaras condemns 'neo-Nazi' killing
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said he will not let neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn "undermine" democracy.
19 September 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24158845
--
Greek PM calls for calm amid rising anger at Golden Dawn party
Anti-fascist protesters hold signs reading "Neo-Nazis Out" at a rally in Athens on Wednesday
September 19, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/18/world/europe/greece-clashes/ [with comments]
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By LIZ ALDERMAN and NIKI KITSANTONIS
Published: September 19, 2013
ATHENS — European officials expressed concern on Thursday about a rise of extremism in Greece, a day after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in several Greek cities to protest the killing of an anti-fascist activist. The Greek police said the killer was a supporter of the right-wing Golden Dawn party.
Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, said “an extremely dangerous development” was emerging in Greece and in other parts of Europe. “Sections of society are becoming more radicalized, and there is a real risk that hate speech turns into violence and coldblooded murder,” he said.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Greece made another appeal for calm on Thursday, describing the killing of the activist — Pavlos Fyssas, 34, a leftist hip-hop singer — as “inhuman.” He said the government was “determined not to allow the descendants of the Nazis to poison our social life, to commit crimes, to terrorize and to undermine the foundations of the country that gave birth to democracy.”
Mr. Samaras did not say what actions the government would take, and did not comment on a suggestion advanced by the country’s public order minister, calling for changes in the laws defining criminal organizations to rein in Golden Dawn. The minister late on Thursday sent the country’s Supreme Court prosecutor a list of offenses believed to have been carried out by Golden Dawn and asked for the party to be treated as a criminal organization.
The party, whose members have been accused of criminal violence against immigrants, has gained popularity recently, especially among Greeks angered by high unemployment and economic woes. Golden Dawn has insisted that it had nothing to do with the killing of Mr. Fyssas, and has condemned the attack on him.
Tensions have been growing between Mr. Samaras’s fragile coalition government and the main leftist opposition party in Greece, Syriza, which has also been gaining in popularity. One of Mr. Samaras’s chief advisers, Chrysanthos Lazaridis, said Syriza was also engaged in political violence, and suggested that the leftist party was not part of Greece’s “constitutional axis.”
Mr. Samaras said, “Political disagreements should be solved with democratic dialogue, not inflammatory arguments or with violence, wherever it may come from.”
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/world/europe/after-killing-of-activist-fears-of-rising-greek-extremism.html
--
Greek police arrest man over death of hip-hop artist
18/09/2013 21:55 CET
Police in Greece have arrested a man in connection with the murder of hip-hop artist and anti-fascist activist Pavlos Fyssas.
The suspect is a self-confessed member of the far-right group, Golden Dawn.
Following the arrest of the 45-year-old, who has not been named, police raided a number of Golden Dawn offices in Athens.
The victim, who performed under the name of Killah P, is said to have identified his attacker after being taken to hospital.
His death has sparked huge anti-Golden Dawn protests across the Greek capital.
Fysass was ambushed as he left a cafe.
Anti-fascist activists claim police stood by as the performer was stabbed.
The killing comes days after Golden Dawn launched attacks on members of the Greek Communist Party.
Greece has become a deeply polarised country since financial crisis and support for Golden Dawn has rocketed.
Copyright © 2013 euronews
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/greek-police-arrest-man-over-death-of-greek-hip-hop-artist-/ [with embedded video report]
--
'Neo-Nazi' held over Greek musician Pavlos Fyssas death
Golden Dawn supporters held a rally in central Athens in May
A left-wing musician has been stabbed to death in the Greek capital, Athens, and the suspect is a member of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.
18 September 2013
[...]
... The victim was attacked by a group of 15 men.
A 45-year-old man, who police say has admitted supporting Golden Dawn, has confessed to the crime, the BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says.
Before being pronounced dead, the victim had identified his attacker to police.
[...]
Europe's top human rights body, the Council of Europe, has said there are grounds for Golden Dawn to be made illegal.
[...]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24141246
--
Greek police search Golden Dawn offices after man stabbed to death
Riot police officers detain protesters after clashes in the northern Greek town of Thessaloniki between police and angry anti-fascist protesters following the killing of a 35-year-old anti-racism More...
Credit: REUTERS/Alexandros Avramidis
By Yannis Behrakis and Renee Maltezou
ATHENS | Wed Sep 18, 2013 4:24pm EDT
(Reuters) - Greek police searched the offices of the Golden Dawn party on Wednesday after an anti-racism rapper was stabbed to death by a man who sympathized with the far-right group.
The killing touched a nerve in Greece, where an economic crisis has worsened social tensions, and rallies in several cities to mark the death turned violent.
A 45-year-old man was arrested and admitted to the killing, police said. Greece's citizen protection minister said the suspect was a Golden Dawn sympathizer.
Pavlos Fissas, 35, who went by the stage name Killah P, was stabbed twice in the heart and chest on Tuesday night in a brawl after a soccer match shown in a cafe in Keratsini, a working-class suburb of Athens.
Police said the offices of a political party were searched for evidence linking it to the attack, but stopped short of naming Golden Dawn. They later arrested a Golden Dawn official for a weapons offence after finding a police-style night-stick in the party's offices in Piraeus.
More than 5,000 people rallied in Athens on the spot where Fissas was stabbed. Police fired teargas at protesters who hurled stones and petrol bombs at a police station and set garbage containers on fire, Reuters witnesses said.
"The government of (Prime Minister Antonis) Samaras is the instigator by allowing murderous Golden Dawners to roam around unpunished and armed with knives," said KEERFA, the United Movement Against Racism and the Fascist Threat.
"It's time to punish the neo-Nazi murderers of Golden Dawn and to throw the Samaras government - a miserable gang of bankers, the troika (of international lenders) and neo-Nazis - into the trash."
The leader of the right-wing Independent Greeks party, Panos Kamenos, who visited the scene of the crime to pay his respects was attacked and lightly injured by a group of protesters.
Clashes between police and demonstrators were reported in two other Greek cities, Patras and Thessaloniki.
CRIMINAL
The killing of Fissas has revived calls to ban Golden Dawn, Greece's third most popular party according to recent opinion polls, which denies constant accusations of involvement in a wave of attacks on immigrants and leftists.
With an emblem resembling a swastika, the party rose from obscurity to enter parliament last year. Its leaders have denied the Holocaust and defended Greece's 1967-1974 military junta.
Golden Dawn is a "criminal organization" that should be declared illegal, the co-ruling Socialist PASOK party said.
The far-right party has condemned the killing and denied accusations by "wretched sycophants" of any involvement.
"(The accusers) are miserable and wretched not only because of their brazen lies and slander but because they are exploiting a tragic event for politicking, to win votes and to divide Greek society," Golden Dawn said in a statement.
The government plans to sharpen the law defining what a criminal organization is, said Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Dendias.
"The abominable murder in Keratsini by an attacker sympathizing with Golden Dawn, according to his own statement, illustrates, in the clearest way, the intentions of neo-Nazism," Dendias said.
(Additional reporting and writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/18/us-greece-stabbing-idUSBRE98H0ZZ20130918 [no comments yet]
--
Greece asks court to crack down on far right after rapper's killing
Sep 19, 2013
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/19/us-greece-funeral-idUSBRE98I0WR20130919 [no comments yet]
--
Greek far-right Golden Dawn rejects Nazi label while hailing Hitler
19/09/2013 18:49 CET
Golden Dawn refers to illegal immigration into Greece as ‘the Asian danger’, and vows to fight for its own racial survival.
This common historic theme is among those central to the party which earn it the branding ‘neo-Nazi’.
Last year, it won enough support in elections for 18 members to take parliament seats in Athens.
As the economy got worse, the party had gone from tiny to the third-ranked political force in the country.
Founder Nikolaos Michaloliakos saw vote share go from less than a third of one percent to nearly seven percent. It is now surveyed at more than ten percent.
His behaviour and his party’s has been repeatedly described as hooligan-like: a Golden Dawn MP insults his political opponents calling them goats… as he is removed from the assembly he makes a ‘heil Hitler’-like gesture and he shouts out those words.
The party claims it is the salute of the late-1930s Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas.
The movement begun in 1980 became a party in the early 1990s. Michaloliakos tapped his fellow Greeks’ disgust with corruption scandals, and dressed his body language as virtuous.
“They called us ‘Nazis’ once, twice, ten times… but they can’t call us thieves! These hands may sometimes salute like this but these hands are clean, they are not dirty, they haven’t stolen anything.”
Golden Dawn describes its ideology as social nationalism, or national socialism. Critics decry its growing popularity in a country which suffered under Nazi occupation in World War Two. It distributes food to crisis-hit people, but exclusively those of Greek nationality.
The right-wing extremist members last year took vigilante action posing as keepers of order, demanding foreign street vendors prove they were in the country legally, and those who couldn’t had their stalls and emplacements destroyed.
Greece is the country where the most illegal immigrants first set foot when they enter the European Union – 80 percent. Immigrants make up ten percent of Greece’s population.
*
Related
Greece: Anti-racism rapper stabbed to death in cafe… 18/09/2013 13:28 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/greece-anti-racism-rapper-stabbed-to-death-in-cafe-brawl
Greek police arrest man over death of hip-hop artist 18/09/2013 21:55 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/greek-police-arrest-man-over-death-of-greek-hip-hop-artist- [second item from top, above]
Greek far-right candidate’s threat to foreigners… 07/03/2013 12:45 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/03/07/xyz-far-right-party-golden-dawn-video
Far-right Golden Dawn launches child indoctrination… 27/02/2013 11:43 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/02/27/far-right-golden-dawn-launches-child-indoctrination-courses
Tension rises in Athens with planned demonstrations… 18/09/2013 18:06 CET
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/18/tension-rises-in-athens-with-planned-demonstrations-following-the-killing-of-
*
Copyright © 2013 euronews
http://www.euronews.com/2013/09/19/greek-far-right-golden-dawn-rejects-nazi-label-while-hailing-hitler/ [with embedded video report]
--
Greece PM Antonis Samaras condemns 'neo-Nazi' killing
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said he will not let neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn "undermine" democracy.
19 September 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24158845
--
Greek PM calls for calm amid rising anger at Golden Dawn party
Anti-fascist protesters hold signs reading "Neo-Nazis Out" at a rally in Athens on Wednesday
September 19, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/18/world/europe/greece-clashes/ [with comments]
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
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upon the Right of Election, 1790
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