The latest attack on the squatting movement in Greece is the preamble for a massive operation of housing dispossession by the right-wing government.
“Since New Democracy was elected with a “law and order” agenda last July, the police have been acting like an occupation army in Greek cities, routinely violating human rights and dignity. Arbitrary detentions, torture, beatings, teargas attacks, raids in cinemas and nightclubs, public humiliation, verbal abuse, have been the order of the day.
Even so, as long as the arbitrary violence of the police was directed towards protesters, youth, students, squatters, homosexuals, immigrants or the marginalized, the reaction of the public opinion to daily gross human rights violations was at best timid. Sadly, such abhorrent practices are made possible by the active or passive support of a part of Greek society who have been convinced that in the battle against the internal enemy all means are legitimate, even the violation of constitutional rights and human dignity. Indares himself, in press statements after he was released pending trial, appeared confused as to what really hit him. He is obviously appalled by the campaign of defamation against him, but he seems to consider himself the innocent victim of a just war. In the leaked audio recording of the moment of his arrest, he is heard reproaching the police of “acting like anarchists,” even though the possibility that anarchists break into his home, beat him up and kidnap him is non-existent. In his desire to remain equidistant, Indares does not acknowledge the arbitrary nature of police repression nor the reality-distorting function of the mass media, as long as peace-loving, hard-working, everyday people like him remain immune from this violence.But it is precisely peace-loving everyday citizens like him who have most to lose in this new cycle of dispossession in Greece.“