#rbnews weekly show 06 July 2013 - The failure(s) of democracy in Greece

This week on the #rbnews international show, we asked lawyer Crystali Bourcha from the Movement for the Liberties and Democratic Rights of our Times (Greek acronym KEDDE) and journalist Mariniki Alevizopoulou from Unfollow Magazine to comment on the items that we included in our news bulletin of the week, which all seem to point towards the failure of democracy in Greece.

You can listen to the podcast and read the news bulletin after the jump.
The interviews were taken by phone. We apologize for the poor quality of the sound, especially in the case of our interview with Crystali Bourcha. For some unexplainable reason, the recording device was particularly intent to add parasites to her speech. 

#rbnews weekly bulletin 01-07 June 2013

Prepared by the #rbnews international team, translated by @IrateGreek 

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

Turkish Kurd asylum seeker abducted in Athens and handed over to Turkish authorities

Source

Posted by @IrateGreek

The Movement "Expel Racism" reported yesterday (01 June 2013) that, according to information given by the Turkish police to his lawyers and relatives, Bulut Yayla , a Turkish Kurd asylum seeker in Greece, is now in police custody in Turkey [Update: Lawyers for Refugees and Migrants' Rights report that he was handed over to the police in Edirne. He is now held by the antiterrorism unit in Istanbul after being handed by his Greek-speaking kidnappers to another team that spoke both Greek and Turkish, and then to another that spoke Turkish and English.]. He was abducted in downtown Athens in the evening of 30 May by five men who dragged him in a car and had been unheard from since.

An urgent press release dated 31 May and co-signed by the Greek Council for Refugees, the Social Support Network for Refugees and Migrants, the Team of Lawyers for Refugee and Migrant Rights and the Solidarity Committee for Political Prisoners in Turkey and Kurdistan describe events surrounding his disappearance as follows:

#rbnews weekly bulletin 25-31 May 2013

Prepared by the #rbnews international team, translated by @IrateGreek

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

Racist attacks in downtown Thessaloniki

Press release of the Antiracist Initiative of Thessaloniki - Antifascist Assembly for solidarity - NAFTHA - 31 May 2013

Translated by @IrateGreek

Bloody racist attacks against immigrants took place on Saturday 25 May for the first time in downtown Thessaloniki, highlighting in our city as well the level of barbarism that can result from the rise of racism and fascism. Two immigrants were stabbed, one of them to the neck, in two different parts of the city, and have already reported to the police that their attackers hurled racist threats at them before attacking them.

Specifically, on Saturday 25 May around midday, a group of Greeks heckled African street vendors in the area around Aristotelous square and Tsimiski street [translator's note: the most central area of downtown Thessaloniki], threatening that if they didn't leave the country, they'd kill them. At 4pm, according to eyewitnesses, two persons on a motorbike drove near a 39-year-old vendor from Rwanda and one of them tried to stab him in the neck. The migrant pulled back, thus avoiding the worst but with a light wound to the jugular. He was transferred to the Ippokrateion hospital where his wound was stitched up, while he gave his deposition about the incident to the police.

#rbnews weekly bulletin 18-24 May 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews international show 25 May 2013: The Human Library against racism

Today on #rbnews international, we continued our series on fascism and anti-fascism in Greece with an interview with Zoe. Zoe is a member of the Human Library project in Greece, an anti-racist initiative in which books are people who have been victims of racism and readers are people who are trying to challenge their own prejudices against the "other".

You can contact the Human Library on Twitter, Facebook (their second page is here), by e-mail (humanlibrarygr (at) gmail.com or info (at) humanlibrary.gr) or through their website.

And you can listen to the podcast, as usual, after the jump.

Amnesty International: the situation of human rights in Greece is deteriorating

Posted by @IrateGreek

The Greek chapter of Amnesty International organized a press conference to present the organization's annual report in front of the Aliens' Department in Athens today. This symbolic choice reflects Amnesty's key findings about the situation of human rights in Greece in 2013:

"Allegations of human rights abuses by police, including torture and excessive use of force continued throughout the year. Migrants and asylum seekers faced impediments in registering their asylum applications and were often detained in substandard conditions. Hate crime on the basis of race and ethnicity escalated dramatically."

Greek Helsinki Monitor: "Some people support freedom of speech... only for racist speech"

The Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) issued today a press release ahead of a trial tomorrow involving three of its officials as well as three officials from the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (CBJCG), who are accused of false accusations, witness perjury and libel by Kostas Plevris. Plevris is widely considered as the theoretician of neo-Nazism in Greece and was sued by the GHM and the CBJCG for his book Jews: The Whole Truth. A first tribunal had found him guilty of antisemitism  in 2007, but the sentence was overturned on appeal in 2009 in a decision that was ratified by the Supreme Court in 2010. The Supreme Court decision was deemed scandalous by many, given the contents of the book, which includes for instance chapters titled "The religion of the Jews: crime and misanthropy" or "The Holocaust: evidence of a lie" (you can listen to last Saturday's #rbnews international show on laws against racism in Greece for context on this matter).

"Anonymous" threats against the Muslim Association of Greece: "there will be blood"

Posted by @IrateGreek 

Our friends over at OmniaTV informed us through the hashtag #rbnews this morning that the Muslim Association of Greece received a letter of "anonymous" threats in Greek, English and Arabic. The quotation marks are due to the fact that, while unsigned, the writing paper features a page-wide logo of Golden dawn.

You can read for yourself the text of the letter after the jump.

The Muslim Association issued a press release in Greek and English, which we reproduce below.

#rbnews weekly bulletin 11-17 May 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews international show 18 May 2013: The letter, spirit and (lack of) enforcement of laws against racism in Greece

In this week's edition of the #rbnews international show, we continued our series about fascism and antifascism in Greece with an interview with @Chiguire79. @Chiguire79 is a lawyer and friend of radiobubble, and he explained to us the existing legal framework against racism and its shortcomings but also what we can expect from the new proposed bill against racism, which was finally brought to parliament yesterday.

You can read more about the proposed bill here. You can also find the rest of the shows in this series under the tag fascism and antifascism series.

And of course, you can listen to the podcast after the jump.

14-year-old Ismael from Afghanistan, a victim of racist violence

Posted by @IrateGreek

14-year-old Ismael from Afghanistan was assaulted on Easter Monday in Athens by men in black who slashed his face with a broken bottle of beer. You can watch below his description of the attack in a video released by Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) and read the English translation of the dialogue. 

A timeline of fascist activity in Greece over the past year

On the occasion of the anniversary of the May 2012 elections, in which Greece's neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn entered parliament with 7% of the vote, @galaxyarchis prepared a timeline of the most important events related to the rise of fascism in modern Greece.

#rbnews weekly bulletin 04-10 May 2013

Prepared by the #rbnews international team, translated by @IrateGreek

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

6 May 2012 - 6 May 2013: one year from the Greek general elections of May 2012

By @galaxyarchis, translated from Greek by @anarresti, corrections by @IrateGreek

By Spyros Derveniotis
Translation: "Dirty immigrants, dying
where the Greeks eat!

Greece recently had two very important political anniversaries. More specifically, May 6th, 2013, marked three years since the adoption of the Memorandum which caused the greatest political rearrangements in the country's recent history, and one year since the 2012 general elections, when those dramatic changes were first expressed through the ballot box. Greek society is living in a period where political time is condensed to such a degree, that the changes occurring every month and every week can hardly be conceived by its collective consciousness. Since the May 2012 elections, which did not lead to the formation of a new government but to repeat elections a month later, the country's image and its political landscape kept changing at a rapid pace until today. In light of a greater tribute to the one year anniversary since last June's elections, when today's three-party coalition government came to power, we take a look at the facts and data which changed in this past year, starting from last May's elections.

Greece: a new, tougher law against racism?

By @IrateGreek

Greek media hailed on 07 May 2013 a proposed new bill against racism that was reportedly prepared by the Ministry of Justice and will be submitted to parliament after the Easter holiday. According to news reports (see e.g. here, here, here and here), the new bill proposes much harsher penalties for all forms of hate speech, with prison sentences ranging from 3 to 6 years and fines up to €20,000, while deprivation of political rights would be considered in certain cases. Discussion of this bill began in the public debate as it was announced that parliament would discuss lifting the immunity of Golden Dawn MP Germenis following his assault on Mayor of Athens Kaminis last week during a food distribution "for Greeks only" organized by Golden Dawn.

Police disperse Golden Dawn food distribution for Greeks only in Athens

Greece's neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn had announced that it would conduct a food distribution for Greeks only ahead of orthodox Easter on Thursday 2 May in Syntagma square, Athens. This follows the pattern of all Golden Dawn socially-oriented actions, which aim at conspicuously excluding immigrants.

The Mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, stated on Wednesday that he would take all necessary measures to prevent the food distribution from happening on the grounds that it is a racist, discriminatory operation intended not to relieve people living in poverty but to provide Golden Dawn with a photo-op. 

#rbnews weekly bulletin 20-26 April 2013

The text companion to this week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.

#rbnews "weekly" bulletin 6-19 April 2013

Prepared by the #rbnews international team, translated by @IrateGreek

The text companion to this week's and last week's #rbnews international show is now online. You can read it after the jump.