Issue No. 594
Features
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Features |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Gates to Greece
As racist right-wing parties pick up support across northern Europe, one immigrant-swamped corner of southern Europe is resisting the rhetoric of hate. Or is it? Iason Athanasiadis in Athens looks for answers
When 23-year old drug-addict Pantelis Kazakos picked up his shotgun on an October evening in 1999 and embarked on a shooting spree in downtown Athens he left behind him a trail of twitching, moaning human devastation. The massacre's final tally was two dead, seven injured.
At court, the defendant claimed he was unrepentant. Wearing a large crucifix around his neck, he stated, "I offered a service to the nation".
It was more a wake-up call that Kazakos offered Greece. The shootings sent shock waves through society and were condemned by politicians and public alike. In a country with hard-to-police shores where, according to estimates, 10 per cent of the 11 million population is foreign, the ringing censures that greeted the massacre were taken as proof that Greeks are engaging with immigrants instead of feeling alienated from them. Unlike Europe's affluent northern countries that have recently appeared to be leading the racist political chorus, Greece has remained cautiously welcome towards foreigners, despite acquiring its high immigrant population in just the last 10 years.
"Greek society was very closed and no one thought that this would change after Greece entered the EU," says Florinda Rojas Rodriguez, the UNHCR (United Nations High Council for Refugees) representative in Athens. "But accession opened the doors for the refugees to come in."
That meant that the government was forced to increase the number of reception centres for newly-arrived immigrants in Greece. It launched a campaign aimed at integrating those who received asylum status and dispelling the impression that they are all economic migrants looking to take jobs from Greece's unemployed. But, although the number of reception centres has risen from one in 1999 to seven today, there has been little progress elsewhere. Rodriguez points out that, "There is xenophobia within Athens, but in general people feel sentimental about refugees. Arriving refugees are often received and clothed by locals even before the government arrives on the scene."
On the whole, Greeks are sympathetic towards foreigners. There are several reasons for this. People in northern Europe have received greater numbers of foreigners than southern countries and the low birth rates in the Mediterranean, coupled with the need for young people to replenish the population and support the growing old-age demographic, means that there is more tolerance of foreigners.
"Perhaps we are reminded of World War II and hearing parents and relatives talk about the hardships they endured then. That would explain the outpouring of sympathy towards the newcomers," says Manos Megalokonomos, the president of the Greek Council for Refugees. "Greece is a society in which the experience of receiving immigrants rather than being them is novel. We have always had a feeling that we were the weak ones and so there has been no problem in identifying with the refugee. Psychologically, we're still at that stage."
Ioannis Maggriotis, the Greek deputy foreign minister, agrees. "Greece experienced mass immigration at the beginning of last century as millions left, a trend that continued until the 1970s. Greeks learned what it means to be an immigrant and this helped foster a tolerant atmosphere."
One of the most potent flashpoints in northern European countries -- the state welfare system -- has failed to ignite in Greece, possibly because Greeks do not hold government benefits "in any high esteem", as Megalokonomos notes. "But also, it's too early to start making predictions about where Greek society stands on the issue."
The country, in fact, appears to be reaching saturation point and, should the situation not be dealt with effectively, racism may rear its head soon. On several occasions, when villagers took recently- arrived refugees and cared for them until the authorities could mobilise, the public's instinctive response has been to sympathise with the newcomers. This gut-reaction has swiftly been followed by an outcry, stoked by sensationalist media coverage, over the government's muted reaction.
"Good intentions exist and the government is willing to do more but there is a dichotomy between the willingness to help and actually helping," says Rodriguez. The result is that local populations are feeling fatigued at repeatedly having to rescue and care for needy people," she says.
Rojas believes that the Kazakos affair was "an isolated incident that had nothing to do with Greeks' true attitude to refugees," and warns against a jittery Greek government clamping down on genuine refugees.
But her calls seem in vain. Two weeks ago, Greek Interior Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis declared, "There's no more space for economic migrants in the country... because any more will lead to a climate of insecurity that only results in alienation and violence against them."
And these are not the first signs that all is not going well. Despite Greeks often viewing themselves as liberal and progressive, chauvinistic strains appear to be ingrained in the national psyche and bubbling away not too far from the surface of Greek society.
The popular reaction to foreigners is mixed. As Nicholas Voulelis, the managing director of the Athens News Agency who was born in Egypt's thriving Greek community and emigrated to Greece in the 1960s, says: "On the popular level you have an almost schizophrenic reality where the public often hates Albanians and Turks because they're Muslim but loves the Palestinians. They despise Muslim FYROM (Macedonian) nationals but love their Greek Orthodox counterparts. And Muslim Kurds get the sympathy vote because they are persecuted by the Turks. It's a potent mix of racism, populism and xenophobia."
Accusations that Albanians -- Greece's largest foreign demographic at half a million -- are worthless scroungers and criminals, abound. Urban centres, where the stakes are highest and unemployment soars, can be hotbeds of prejudice. The Greeks may complain about foreigners but, as Rodriguez points out, "They are here because we need them, because Greeks don't touch the jobs that they do."
In the countryside, where the pace of life is more forgiving and the farmers have been sated by generous EU subsidies, attitudes towards foreigners have been more muted and reactions towards them vary.
"In some areas in Greece there is dissatisfaction with refugees, depending on whether they contribute to the local economy or local crime figures," Megalokonomos says, adding, "Being anti- foreigner in Greece is more likely to be expressed through exaggerated responses than organised political action. Perhaps someone, into whose garden an Albanian has jumped in to steal an orange, will pick up a shotgun and chase him away. However, there is no organised opposition to them, probably because the government started, about a year ago, to legalise and assimilate them into Greek society."
About half a million immigrants who have entered legalisation proceedings, received a card that enables them to work and send their children to school. However, even illegal immigrants' children are encouraged to go to school -- which illustrates how Greek society is far ahead of the government in accepting foreigners. Those who lack a birth certificate have been given ad-hoc status, which has worked against ghettoisation and the creation of a two- track society. The other side of the coin is that many Greeks complain that the newcomers slow down lessons and disadvantage their own children in the later competition for jobs.
On the political front, the Greek political landscape is devoid of the right-wing parties that litter Western Europe. Political parties peddling the anti-foreigner message that currently resounds from the Atlantic to the Black Sea are thin on the ground. The only exception is a politician named Karatzaferis, a bizarre figure who was a DJ in the 1970s and evolved into a rabid racist and founder of the populist Laos (the people) Party that he uses as a vehicle to promote his hate rhetoric. But support for Karatzaferis -- who has adapted Le Pen's slogans to contemporary Greek reality -- remains minute.
The reason for this is not as comforting as some might think. "The nationalists, racists and populists are present in every mainstream party. PASOK and Nea Dimokratia have members of parliament who, should one hear them expounding their views about immigrants, would be at a loss to guess to which party they belong," says Voulelis.
Foreigners, despite their wide diffusion in Greek society, are tolerated because of a clear understanding that they are there to do the jobs that a nation grown fat on EU subsidies no longer has to stoop to performing. As Voulelis says, "Albanians do all the jobs that Greeks won't touch. Athens is full of Philippino women -- every 'good' house has one. Of course, progressive Greek liberals usually have Somali or Ethiopian domestics," he grins.
It is wholly possible for today's well-off Greek to wake up to a breakfast prepared by a Philippino maid, have a window-cleaning encounter at the traffic lights with a Bangladeshi, be hassled for change in the street by Gypsy kids, offered bootleg CDs by Nigerians and have an Albanian plumber fix his leaking tap.
But it would be highly unorthodox for the same Greek to socialise with foreigners. This is largely due to the fact that, in their vast majority, foreigners in Greece remain in the lower social echelons, except for a tiny number of imported white-collar workers who occupy prestigious high-end jobs and salaries.
In this respect, Greek society remains hermetically sealed and the ideal that Greeks should consort only with Greeks persists.
Megalokonomos believes that foreigners are not likely to be accepted into the mainstream anytime soon, "Something that is markedly different is not easily acceptable, especially by a people with a very exact culture," he says. "The Greek is OK with a foreigner doing the more menial, but no less essential tasks, that he will not touch," he says, identifying the limit to the relationship.
Former cadre and minister of New Democracy, Stefanos Manos, is more succinct: "Immigrants are God's blessing; we need them because they work with one third of a Greek worker's wages, because they cannot go on strike, they cannot form unions, they can do nothing."
The makeup of Greek society began to change when Greece stopped being a convenient entry-point into Europe and became a place where the thousands of economic migrants and refugees that wash up on the country's shores every year could settle and start a family in.
Sometime in the mid 1990s, foreigners ceased viewing Greece as a transit country to wealthier, northern European countries. A high percentage of the estimated 750,000 illegal immigrants that have crossed the country's borders in the past three years, seeking an EU gateway, decided that living in Greece was not such a bad deal after all and settled there. More than 250,000 illegal immigrants are expected to sneak into the country this year.
As Greece shifts from being an entryway into the promised land to becoming the promised land itself, will people such as Kazakos constitute an example of the 'New Greek'? Lacking memory of the hardship his parent's generation experienced and westernised beyond any recognition, will he turn against those people who, whether asylum-seekers or labourers, attempt to carve a better future for themselves in his country? As Rodriguez says, "It's better to prevent the problem than run after it. We have to educate people and explain why this person is here, what his background is and what made him come here, to a place that is alien to him and whose language he doesn't speak."
But the immigrant also has responsibilities. "We also have to tell them that you have rights but you also have obligations. You have to adapt yourself to the country that opened up its doors for you," Rodriguez adds. "But, ultimately, we have to establish a system of helping them in their own country instead of giving them charity here."
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
