Antiracist demo attacked by fascists in Athens / Update on the arson attack against synagogue in Chania

source:  libcom article.

for the synagogue incident see this post.

Antiracist demo attacked by fascists in Athens

A local antiracist demo in Ampelokipoi, Athens, came under attack by fascist thugs, leading to the hospitalisation of one woman. More than 40 fascists have been detained. The attack marks a climax of fascist violence which has also led to the torching of Chania’s Synagogue.

On Saturday 23 January an anti-racist demo of the Cultural Centre of Ambelokipoi in Athens was fiercely attacked by a fascist group of so-called “autonomous nationalists”. The demo was organised as a response to continuing disturbance of the functioning of the 50 year old Centre by fascist thugs who tried to burn it down last week. Before the official start-time of the demo, at 12, when only the organisers were in Panormou square, 40 fascist thugs attacked them with sticks leading to the wounding of three people, amongst which a 50 year old woman who has been hospitalised. During the attack riot police forces stationed in the square stood by watching, even moving aside to let the fascists strike. Nevertheless, the demostrators managed to counterattack chasing the fascists, despite police efforts to stop them.

Thr police finally intervened only after it became known that an MP was also amongst the people attacked. The police intervention has led to 44 detentions of fascists, who are being interrogated at the police headquarters.

The attack comes in a climax of similar moves that have been growing ever since the government announced a law that will legalise hundreds of thousands of second generation immigrants giving them the right to vote. The extreme-right has launched a campaign of hate in order to halt the procedure.

Ambelokipoi, the area where the attack took place, has a long record of fascist action, with leafleting at schools of the area coming under frequent attacks, once even at gun-point. This does not however mean that the neighbourhood is fascist as such. In fact, after the 50 year old woman was taken to the near by Red Cross Hospital, doctors and nurses came down to the street to join the demo in protest to the fascist violence. The demo formed a protest march towards the Athens police HQ which is also in the area.

The Coalition of Radical Left MP who participated in the demo has declared that “For one more time fascists are acting in the open with the toleration of the police against any kind of protest against racism and xenophobia. This terrorism will not pass. Fascism will not take root in this country”. The Left wing labour union umbrella “Autonomous Intervention” denounced the “Uncontrollable activity of neofascist groups which are provoking the democratic and anti-fascist sentiments of the people”.

It must be noted that recently Spartakos, the 30 year old “Network of Free Conscripts”, revealed that the Ministry of National Defense has been organising paramilitary training camps in Chalkdiki, where ex-soldiers and other militaristic elements have been trained in “counterterrorist” operations. After the revelations, Spartacus has come under the spotlight of the fascist parliamentary party LAOS, which has demanded from the Ministry the containment of the group. Spartakos has denounced efforts of detaining its members during leafleting, and has further revealed that a secret General Stuff document describing in detail the Network’s totally legal day-to-day activities has come to the Network’s possession.

Moreover, the escalation of fascist violence has inculded the torching of the Chania Synagogue which destroyed thousands of rare manuscripts and books. Regarding the torching (twice in one month), the police has arrested 1 greek and 2 british citizens as part of the anti-Semitic group that perpetrated the attack. The greek has confessed, while the british are denying any involvement in the act; 2 US citizens are also wanted for the same case. However, the police is refusing to follow the link to the torching of the Immigrant Social Centre of the city which occurred within the same time. Swastikas were found painted in the torched Immigrant Centre, while a slate of soap believed to be the group’s signature was found in the torched Synagogue.

The arrests come as a rare incident in a country where fascist action is tolerated by the state to the degree that it is often believed that fascist groups are in fact parastate terror organisations, similar to the ones kept by the state until the end of the junta.

Update: According to the bourgeois media, 35 of the detainees have been declared arrested and will be persecuted for “breach of the peace”. It is indicative of the state’s stance towards the fascists that although one person was hospitalised during their attack, the thugs are not accused for human injuries etc. “Breach of the peace” is the most harmless accusation possible under the circumstances. It is also indicative that, as revealed by photos published on the web, the fascists are not being persecuted under the anti-hood law, though they are visibly arrested while wearing full-face masks. Unlike the usual police brutality towards anarchists and the left, or in fact any common protester, the cops did not even use their batons against their ideological colleagues.

Update2: According to the bourgeois media, the final outcome of the interrogations has been the arrest of all 44 fascists. Apart from the initial charge for “breach of the peace” initially suggested, the state persecutor has also charged them with the anti-hood law, attempt to cause bodily damage, illegal carrying of weapons and illegal use of weapons. Two of the 44 have been also charged with dangerous bodily damage, and one of them with dangerous bodily damage and threat. 8 of them are also accused with insulting the authorities and moral culpability for all the above acts. All 44 remain in custody awaiting their appearance before the state interrogator.

It is estimated by some radical cyrcles that the so-called “autonomous nationalists” are a splinter group of the neonazi paramilitary Golden Dawn which is under the direct control of the state. In this perspective the wave of attacks recently could be part of an inter-fascist antagonism, while the arrest of the 44 could signal a purge of fascists who try to break away from the direct control of the national service of information (EYP).

Arson attacks against the Synagogue in Hania, Crete

This is a translation of a  press release by the Forum of Migrants in Crete.  More about the arson attacks at http://abravanel.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/second-arson-in-hania-synagogue/

Hania, Crete January 18 2010.

Once again racist hate armed the hand of those who target the core of the rights OF US ALL.

The synagogue was for the second time in a few days engulfed in the flames of hatred.

We immigrants of Chania, with different religions, languages, places of origin, condemn all acts of racial hatred and all acts of violence and violation of religious rights. At the same time we fight for those things that are yet to be done  in our area (eg a Muslim cemetery).

Xenophobic, racist messages have been sent throughout Greece recently by both obscure circles and official parliamentary and political spheres, in response to the economic crisis or the new bill on immigration and citizenship; these have become the “official” ideology alibis of the fascist gangs in Chania and all over the country, as well as their political coverage for inciting crimes against immigrants and Greek people who act in solidarity, as well as for attacks on social spaces of resistance, or “different” religions.

They are the same political wings, of course, who despite the ideological alibi they offer for the burning of a Synagogue, they have not a single word to say about the massacre of hundreds of deaths in Gaza, one year ago; not a word for the on-going crime against the people who for so many years are imprisoned and are being murdered in their very homeland due to the criminal aggression of the Israeli ARMY.

We immigrants active in the Forum of Immigrants in Crete, we are determined to stand side by side with every Hania resident who does not want these phenomena to grow roots here; we will struggle to keep our town humane.

Muslims in Greece’s Capital Demand Mosque from the New Government

source: http://www.balkantravellers.com/en/read/article/1508

8 October 2009 | Thousands of Muslims in Athens appealed for the construction of a mosque to Greece’s new government in the framework of the international congress dedicated to Muslim communities and their cultural identity.

The congress took place for the first time in the country, the national Ta Nea newspaper reported today.

Athens is the only European capital, which has neither a mosque nor a cemetery for Muslims, the representative of the Afghan Muslims residing in Greece told the publication.

He added that, for the time being, Muslims in Athens are forced to pray in improvised “mosques,” such as garages, basements and apartments.

Successive Greek governments have failed to honour their commitment to establish a mosque in Athens for the last 30 years, the Greek newspaper Eleftheros Typos wrote in the spring, also noting that there were over 100 illegal makeshift prayer halls located between Omonia Square and the poor neighbourhoods, between the capital and Piraeus.

“In the last decade, with the arrival of large numbers of illegal immigrants, the Muslim population has grown rapidly, and now more than 700,000 people have to contend with the chronic lack of facilities in which to practice their religion,” the publication noted.

Talks of building a mosque in the Greek capital started as early as 1978, when the king of Saudi Arabia, Khaled, obtained a commitment from the prime minister at the time, Constantine Karamanlis, to build a mosque in the city’s northern suburbs.

Later, in the run-up to the Olympics, the prospect of the arrival of a large contingent of Muslim athletes resulted in a plan in 2000 to build a Muslim centre and a mosque at Peania, close to the Athens airport. The project was later shelved due to objections from the Greek Orthodox Church.

The latest initiative took place in 2006, when the neighbourhood of Eleona, close to the centre of Athens, was chosen as a site for the new mosque, which was supposed to start functioning by the end of 2009. That project was frozen due to bureaucratic reasons.

Regarding the lack of a proper cemetery for Muslims in Athens, the Eleftheros Typos publication noted that many of the Muslims residing in Greece’s capital pay thousands of euros to bury their dead in Thrace or in their country of origin.

Foreign analysts, according to the publication, have criticized Greece for its failure to take proper care of Muslim immigrants. It remains to be seen whether this time the country will honour its 30-year commitment.

“Muslim immigrants in Greece: Is there a potential for violent radicalization?”

This is how ELIAMEP’s researchers (see here some info about this Greek foreign policy “think tank”) pose the question… The text of course assumes and adheres to the main ideology of the post 9/11 era: that what governments in the west – the Greek one included – are indeed against is [the potential of] islamic fundamentalism, and thus it makes sense to appeal to them for doing their duty concerning tolerance to prevent it from gaining ground.  Despite this, the text describes accurately although in blurry terms the state strategy under which collective and violent sociopolitical – or sociopolitically motivated, so to speak – radicalisation is the threat and the [promise for more] religious tolerance is the tool for silencing  conscience and discontent.    There are two more “interesting” points about the Left, the Police and how things “work” in Greece, whihc we highlight in bold fonts.  Source: here.

clandestinenglish 

 

June 1, 2009 | Anna Triandafyllidou 

About a year and a half ago, my colleague Thanos Maroukis and I conducted a study on Greece’s Muslim immigrants and their potential for turning to radicalism and violence. We found no signs of radicalisation. And no violent radicalization for that matter either. We did note though that Muslim immigrant communities in Greece are ‘growing’ and developing their own social spaces. According to police data, the informal mosques only in Athens were estimated in early 2008 to be at least 55. Journalists we interviewed raised this number up to 70 or 140 prayer rooms. Severe anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric is indeed heard in mosques. However, anti-Americanism is nothing uncommon in Greece, and much of the mosque talk might seem outrageous to the average U.S. citizen but quite ‘normal’ to the average Greek citizen.

In our study on Muslim immigrants we asked questions that are sadly topical these days: How is Muslim social exclusion linked to radicalization and to a violent one at that? What is the role of religion in this relationship? Are socio-economic realities on the ground pushing Muslim migrants in Greece towards radicalization? And what does the Greek state do to prevent this from happening?

To start with, treating religion as the decisive factor towards the potential radicalization of the Muslim immigrant communities in Greece is misleading. Religion is intertwined with real life situations. Whether radicalization processes will be developed or not is a question of socio-economic realities in which migrants are immersed. The majority of Muslims immigrants come from southeast Asia (Pakistan and Bangladesh, Afghanistan) and to a lesser extent Africa (Egypt, Somalia), are recent arrivals, do not speak Greek and usually work in construction, as street vendors, or in agriculture where language skills are not a first priority and informal economic activity thrives. In addition, most of them have found employment with the help of the illicit networks that brought them into Greece. Some are indebted to these network/people that facilitated their entry to Greece and work where they are told in order to pay off their trip. In other words, due to the particularities of the networks and paths towards employment that the recently arrived Muslim migrants have, they are very quickly confined to the margins of Greek society rather than following a path of normalization and inclusion. Their marginalization is first and foremost economic and social. Religion is only a secondary issue in this process.

Second, immigrant communities have their own internal politics which may have nothing to do with religion. A good example is the case of the Pakistani immigrants’ ‘kidnapping’ by the Greek authorities before the 2004 Olympic Games. The Chairman of the Pakistani Community in Greece found a good opportunity to mobilize the local community against the Musharaf regime. The Greek Left lined-up with the Pakistani Chairman against their common ‘enemies’: the Greek right-wing government, the Americans and their accomplices (Musharaf). Indicative is part of their joint press announcement “the government of Greece, and also that of general Musharaf, sticks to Bush, with army in Afghanistan, with provisions facilitating the occupation of Iraq, with full tolerance and understanding in the slaughters of Palestinians in Gaza, with Souda functioning as a base of imperialist operations” (Athens daily, Eleftherotypia 21.07.06). Indeed in this case the motivation for protest was not religious but political. The Pakistani immigrant community (including religious leaders) rallied in support of their Chairman’s stance against the Pakistani ambassador and the Greek authorities (Athens daily Eleftherotypia 13.11.2006).

In this example but also during the more recent protests and episodes between Muslim immigrants and the police forces near Omonoia and Ag. Panteleimonas, the role of the Greek Left has been paradoxically crucial in preventing Muslim immigrant radicalization. The Greek left takes under its arms immigrant protest and engages it into a parliamentary democratic context that although deeply shaken by the events of December 2008 is still functioning. Indeed, this close relationship of immigrants with the Greek radical Left functions as a space that diffuses discontent and constitutes a unique point of bonding between the immigrant communities and the host society.

What are the policies however that the Greek government adopts for preventing possible radicalization phenomena? Police surveillance tactics is the closer one gets to Greek State policies relevant to the prevention of Muslim violent radicalization phenomena. They consist of two practices. First, sending ‘under cover’ agents to local prayer rooms in poor neighbourhoods where migrants concentrate in order to “check that everything is alright” and make it clear to the Muslims that they are under surveillance. And second recruiting informers among the longer established immigrants from these communities that are also involved (with police toleration) into the smuggling of people or goods. Their illegal activities are tolerated as long as they accept to give insider information about what happens in their local community or prayer room. Both of these methods are highly problematic. The lack of linguistic skills (no Greek police officer understands Urdu, Bangla, or Arabic for that matter) denotes that the purpose of surveying these spaces cannot be really met. Secondly, the blunt security approach that the authorities adopt and their informers within the Muslim communities risks causing more frictions and problems than those it is meant to solve.

The only measure promoted so far as a sign of recognition and respect of Muslim identity is the building of an official mosque in Elaionas, voted as a law in late 2006. A former police officer commented: “the majority [of Muslim immigrants] will go [to the mosque]. The ones who are leading will go and that is positive. They will be controlled more easily. And there will be a common expression towards the Greek polity…it would have happened at some point, anyway. We will not be able to avoid it, so let it come this way.” Nonetheless, 2.5 years later the mosque remains on paper as the Ministry of National Defence refuses to move out of the area its storage facilities so that the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs builds the mosque. How surprising……..?

…about the uprising of immigrants on Thursday and Friday, 21 and 22 of May, in Athens…

This a translation of a text we leafletted in Thessaloniki  the last few days.

clandestinenglish

…about the uprising of immigrants on Thursday and Friday 21 and May 22 in Athens …

… background “snapshots” …

• left: refugee camp in Samos …
• center: Afghan refugee smitten by port police in Patras …
• extreme right: riot police and “Golden Dawn”neo-nazis during their collaboration for terrorizing refugees, 10th of May 2009 …

• left: teenage and children refugees in Patras port run behind trucks in order to board to Italy …
• center: The 24 year old Mazir who was killed by falling into ditch in Votanikos area in Athen, most likely while chased by police near the Asylum Police in Petrou Ralli (as two more refugees in a few months) …
• right: the religious debate has only started …

… and “perspectives” …

“It could have been something else, not the pages of the Quran …”

It could have been an old family photo.  Or a crumpled piece of paper with the mobile phones of relatives and friends in Sweden, England or Germany on it.  It could be some few folded banknotes – this, though, the cops would have seized, not torn.   The cops, who are not supposed to treat immigrants as people; the cops, who are indifferent whether immigrants love those pieces of paper of theirs, the ones they move from one pocket to another, the same pieces of paper which count as many kilometers and borders as they themselves do.  The “waste papers” of the“sans papiers”.

Someone tore up a Qur’an volume and stepped on it.  Symbolic violence. Violence confirming the real degradation, the crass devaluation  immigrants are subjected to by the Greek State, violence imposed in a thousand ways, not at all “symbolic”.  By the Greek State, which permeates racist attitudes and rewards voluntary atrocity.

“It could have been nothing other than the Qu’ran …”

“It could have been nothing other than the Qu’ran, what could make immigrants take it to the streets”  since « only religion» could make them confront collectively the cops of the “civilized world”.   Because “these people” are “pious”. And only some insult to their religion could make them surface out of the rapidly growing ghettos in the center of Athens, in order to rally for something – for their religion, which is of course “absolutely respected” in tolerant Greece … as long as it remains in the basements and the back rooms of  fast-foods.  Which is also true for the lives of “these people”, which are “absolutely respected”in Greece as long as they remain expendable among the urban waste.   As long as they stay available for slavery and death…

“They rallied under the dictates of the imams”, they are “steered”, this is the convenient explanation and perspective for the holders of authority, either grand or small.  Imams ,who try to keep and expand their “flocks”… Let the ones who want to become herdsmen see herds… We don’t. What we see is people and communities from the devastated continents of the globe seeking refuge…

For the Qu’ran? Or for all the reasons of the world …

“Did you see what happened in Athens with the Qu’ran;”. Indeed. What happened in Athens was the clash of cultures, discovered in Greece as well with the usual delay! … The opportunity should not be missed…

It is absolutely clear that the people in the photos enjoying the Greek hospitality, they are not immigrants, refugees, poor people, they are not even Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis …“Muslims, that’s what they are”!

They are not reacting to the humiliations, the tortures, the detention-stables, the workplace-treatment, the deportations … No.  They are doing this «because they are Muslims» …

… and those residents kept shouting to the firefighters in Patras “let them burn” during the recent fire in the refugee camp because…becasue they are Christians …

… and the landlords at Manolada shot migrant workers…

…and the Christian Ministry of Interior Affairs announced new detention mega-camps,creates a prison – warship, plans to limit even further the already negligible asylum rates …

… and the Greek State cooperating with both the Fortress Europe commissioners in Brussels and the neonazis in Athens…

…they all did and do so essentially on… religious grounds…

The only clash of cultures is the one

between freedom and exploitation.

Thessaloniki, May 24, 2009

Group of Immigrants and Refugees – «o Dromos», Baltadorou 7, Thessaloniki

http://www.clandestina.org

Gas attack on Athens Muslim prayer centre injures three

Athens – At least three people were hospitalized in Athens Saturday morning with breathing problems after unknown assailants ignited a gas canister and threw it through the window of a store that doubles as a prayer centre for Muslim immigrants.

Media reports said none of the injured was in mortal danger.

The attack came a day after serious clashes between Muslim protesters and Greek police. Those clashes were prompted by Muslim allegations of police brutality and charges of desecrating the Koran.

According to Athens Indymedia the injured are 5 immigrants from Bangladesh.    This certainly looks like “retalliation” work by fascists for muslim immigrants’ reaction to the last weeks “sweep operations” and the desecration of a Quran by police.  

 

So many reasons for anger to explode… Battles in Athens during march against police racism

Text by the user taxikipali at lib.com org (here is the original post).  Photos: Athens indymedia post (there are more there).

clandestinenglish

Battles in Athens during march against police racism, many protesters injured

Extended clashes broke our in Athens on Friday 22/5, during the second protest march in two days against police racism, after a cop tore the Koran and brutalised Muslims during anti-immigrant sweeping operations. During the clashes many protesters were injured arrested and hospitalised.

A second protest march against police racism took to the streets of Athens on Friday 22/5/08 in response to the incident of anti-muslim brutality two nights before during a police sweeping-operation against immigrants in the center of Athens. During what appears to be a typically offensive search of muslim immigrants at a local cafe, a policeman tore a Koran in pieces and stepped onthreatening the immigrants in compromising racist language. The incident led to a protest march on Thursdaywith limited clashes between police and demonstrators.

During the Friday protest march immigrants and solidarity protesters of the left gathered in Omonoia square and clashed with the police outside the Greek parliament. The protesters piled the riot police with marbles, shoes and other projectiles, receiving tear gas and blast flash grenades in response.The march then proceeded towards the coveted Athens area of Agios Panteleimonas where the anti-muslim incident had occurred.

On the way, protesters smashed banks, expensive shops and government vehicles, before being massively attacked by strong riot police forces. During the battle that ensued scores of protesters were seriously injured, many being hospitalised, while 40 were arrested and remain in custody. One Syrian protester is said to be arrested during the protest march for allegedly throwing a molotov cocktail against the local police department.

The riots that have once again reduced much of the capital’s center into a battle zone come at a time of increasing tension across the country, accentuated by both the political impasse after the surprise dissolution of the Parliament earlier this month, and the continuing pressure of urban guerrilla groups which once again demonstrated their resolve this week by bombing the offices of the Siemens affiliated corporation that has provided the greek police  with its new phone tapping and electronic surveillance system meant to frame the social antagonistic movement after the December uprising. The attack which injured none due to a previous warning call was claimed by the left-wing urban guerrilla group “Popular Will”, who also claimed responsibility for the bombing of the State Land Management headquarters last March. The greek branch of Siemens is involved in one of the biggest economic scandals of the collapsing  government, with its head on the run, and its deputy-head held in custody.

Here is a tvxs.gr video.

Sweep operation in Aghios Panteleimon, Athens, demo for the “respect of religion”, and more achievements of the Acropolis’ cops

sources: athens indymedia articles here & here, and tvxs article

clandestinenglish

The “tough” public order minister’s doctrine is clear: cops should listen to “citizens”, provided that they are racist enough.  Building on the para-statal “indignant citizens” (ie a few dozens of fascists, their cops dressed up as citizens and their paid for the job collaborators) bullshit, the cops launched an attack on Agios Panteleimonas district last night with hundreds of “stop-and-search” controls and about 12 arrests of “sans-papiers” (the rest of the anti-criminal crusades grand achievements were the arrests of 26 people for prostitution, 2 for illegal gambling, 1 for forged documents and 1 for possessing  guns).  [Aghios Panteleimon has been the epicentre of the miserable efforts by Golden Dawn fascists to present themselves as protesting residents of districts flooded with immigrants].

During the operation one of the cops tore the Quran one of the immigrants had with him.  At the moment (Thursday afternoon) a protest for the respect of religion is taking place on the spot.

UPDATE # 1: According to this indy.gr article 3000 immigrants joined the protest.   The demonstration was predictably assaulted by riot police with teargases.  

UPDATE # 2:

news agency report

Immigrants, Athens’ cops clash over Qur’an

Greek police fired tear gas at hundreds of Muslim immigrants in Athens protesting reports that an officer had desecrated a Qur’an.

Around 1,500 demonstrators marched through the working class district of Kypseli towards the Omonia Square in the city center, where there were scuffles with officers and tear gas was fired, the police said.

Some demonstrators also threw dustbins and stones at the police station in the Kypseli district, injuring one officer and damaging a car. Officers fired tear gas to break up the crowd.

The people who took to the streets said that on Wednesday, when police officers stopped four Syrian immigrants to check their papers, one of the officers had torn up a Qur’an and stomped it with his foot.

After word spread of the alleged incident, the local Muslim immigrant community, mainly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, organized Thursday’s protest.

Immigrant’s rights groups have called another protest for Friday. Police said that they had opened an investigation into the affair.

SG/SME/HAR

libcom report

Immigrants march in Athens after incident of policemen beating a Muslim when they found a copy of the Koran in his bag which they cut into pieces in an orgy of racist bigotry.

On Thursday 21 May afternoon 1500 immigrants took to the street of Athens marching to the police station of Kypseli, the most densely populated area of the Greek capital. The protest march was organised in response to yet another incident of police racism against Muslims the previous night. When as part of the now common anti-immigrant sweeping operations the notoriously racist greek police stopped a Syrian immigrant and found in his bag a copy of the Koran, they severely beat him, tearing the Koran in pieces and jumping on its torn fragments on the ground.

The incident comes as yet another example of greek police fascism which has reached new levels after the active involvement of immigrants in the December uprising. The most common target of both police, the secret services and paramilitary thugs are members of the Pakistani community, which is despised by the police state for its active involvement in left wing politics. An increasing number of attacks against Pakistani activists has been reported after December, recalling the infamous arrest of more than a thousand Muslims in Athens after the London July metro bombing, and the setting up of secret interrogation camps in the greek mountains, uncovered by the British media in the winter of 2006. In a bravado of racist policy unique to Europe, no public worship of Islam is allowed in Athens or other major cities, and the State does not allow the creation of a Muslim cemetery.

The police sweeping operations against immigrants are concentrated on the area of Agios Panteleimonas where a number of Greek residents allied with neo-nazi groups have been launching an racist hatred campaign in the last year. Thursday’s protest march began in Omonoia, met at the square of Agios Panteleimonas with solidarity protesters and marched to the Kypseli police station where limited clashes occurred, with one policeman injured. New marches are planned for the following days.

On Monday, just a day after the beating of Senegalese immigrants at the Acropolis police stattion, cops broke the fingers of an immigrant from Senegal in the Omonoia square.

Assault against Coptic church in Ambelokipoi, Athens

Info from this athens indymedia article.

clandestinenglish

The door of the Coptic Church in Ambelokipoi, Athens was burned down completely  probably due to some inflammatory assault by racists.  The location of the door, away from any inflammable material, and the fact that it was completely burned externally points to the direction of the parastate attacks of the past. The Coptic church’s exterior space  each Sunday is filled by African immigrants, Ethiopians and Egyptians, with the appropriate costumes and hymns.