AthensLive Wire | ‘You won’t take a thing’

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This is our weekly round-up from Greece,

The eviction of a low-pensioner journalist from her house over a law of credit card debt caused a wave of outrage throughout the country. Thanks to people that acted in solidarity, the woman is still in her house. But this will not be for long. Nor would she be the only person left homeless because of being indebted due to the economic crisis.

Do you remember that Greece ranked 108th on the RSF Press Freedom list? Well, the ND government does its best for the country to slip even lower. An award-winning photojournalist was arrested while doing his job and kept incommunicado in the police department. Plus, it was revealed that the State News Agency APE head works as a ghostwriter in a government-affiliated newspaper.

Finally, the Greek government is pushing ahead with criminalizing solidarity with refugees. Panagiotis Dimitras of Greek Helsinki Monitor and Epaminondas Farmakis of Human Rights 360 appear to be the latest targets in a sui generis conflict.

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at the latest Berliner Gazette conference

After an inspiring local event in Berlin at the Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte, the Berliner Gazette has launched the “After Extractivism” conference as an “asynchronous online event” and expansive resource site with video talks, projects, texts, and audios tackling the Ecological-Economic Complex, Green Capitalism, and Transition Justice. Check out the website here.

In our capacity as the project’s outreach partner, we are presenting below some of the “After Extractivism” material that is most vital to our own program. Fighting for debt cancellation and environmental justice in the Global South, the question is how we can wager our future on the legacies and claims of those who – then as now – have been plunged into existential hardship by the ecological-economic complex. In his contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s video talks series “After Extractivism,” economic anthropologist Julio Linares is looking for answers in Latin America.

‘You won’t take a thing’

This was a premeditated crime.

They came at 5.30 in the morning, a time when usually criminals act in the dark.

Only these people were acting lawfully. Because the law in this country has been so disfigured in the Memoranda years that it does not safeguard basic constitutional (human) rights anymore.

What happened?

On Monday, police officers in the presence of a bailiff literally broke the entrance door of the home of pensioner journalist Ioanna Kolovou at 5:30 and attempted to throw her and her son (who has a medical condition) on the street.

The humble apartment in the grassroots Ilisia neighborhood in Athens had been auctioned electronically in March 2022 for a credit card debt of around 15,000 euros. It was bought by a private person through a fund.

“They came with an electric saw and broke the door, the bailiff pushed me violently and injured my hand which is now swollen,” Kolovou told the media. She said she was not allowed to enter the house. “I have a health problem and they told me to go to the toilet next to the neighbors.”

“I have no other home, I have nothing. My child will soon join the army. I have no idea what to do, I’m desperate,” Kolovou, a widow for over a decade who lives on a monthly pension of 700 euros, told News247.

It’s a typical story. Pensions along with wages had been slashed again and again during the Memoranda years, throwing people in despair as they had undertaken certain financial obligations which they could now no longer sustain.

Let’s say, you had taken a loan before the crisis, to buy an apartment. Your wage then was 1,500 euros and the monthly installment was 400. Then your wage was slashed, then you lost your job… And this is how easily you could find yourself in a situation where you cannot repay a loan.

Kolovou does not even fall under this category. She just had a relatively small debt in a credit card she could have used to cope with emergency spending and then the interest rate skyrocketed the debt.

Although an attempt was made to pay off the debts and repurchase the house from the new owner who bought it through a fund, the desired result was not achieved.

The crucial point here is that the first residence is no anymore protected in Greece. SYRIZA government narrowed the spectrum of the indebted who were protected by a previous law as to saving their first residence. Then, SYRIZA introduced fast-track electronic auctions. Finally, they criminalized the then-strong anti-auctions social movement which had prevented hundreds of house auctions by appearing to protest at the time and place they were taking place. Finally, the ND government introduced the New Insolvency Code, providing that both companies and physical persons could go bankrupt for debt as low as 20,000 euros and lose even their first residence.

A crucial remark was made by labor law specialist Dionisis Temponeras. Temponeras cites an excerpt from the Bank of Greece Financial Stability Report in November 2022. “Among others, the bypassing of Greek courts decisions (while the issue is still pending with the Top Court Areios Pagos Plenary Session) is announced in advance in this excerpt; [decisions] which banned funds and servicers to proceed with auctions against people who had taken loans,” he suggests. “The bank ‘foresees’ either ‘contra-lawmaking’ or overturning the decision at higher courts, thus directly intervening in favor of funds and of course exercising the corresponding pressure to the government to fully deregulate auctions like those who kicked low-pensioner Ioanna Kolovou out of her house yesterday in Zografou.”

The good news as to the eviction incident is that neighbors reacted strongly and videotaped the invasion and that soon afterward a crowd of supporters broke the police chain to express solidarity with Kolovou. Actually, a people’s ‘river’ flooded the neighborhood in support.

Following the incident, the activist anarchist group Rouvikonas went to the bailiff’s office and broke the door. The video of the operation circulated widely on social media.

The bailiff has been recorded on video saying to Mrs. Kolovou: ‘You won’t get anything when she asked him to wait for her to take her coat. Later, the Secretary of the Bailiffs Association would say that their code of conduct does not allow for evictions to happen so early in the morning and that the evicted person has a right to take mobile items.

Kolovou's case was not the first and will not be the last. In this debt-ridden country, more and more people would be forced to become homeless.

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In what kind of regime a journalist covering events is arrested despite showing his professional ID?

Well, on Tuesday the Greek police arrested award-winning photojournalist Nikos Pylos, also a member of the Foreign Press Association, during their raid in the Prosfygika area (a squatted space) in Athens, hunting a suspected arsonist. He was detained despite telling the police he was a journalist and later arrested despite showing his journalistic ID.

Pilos was freed after midnight Tuesday; however, the police filed ten criminal charges against him. He was among others charged for causing plain physical damage as an accomplice, for exercising violence against employees and judicial persons, and for damaging private property as an accomplice.

The police operation in the Prosfygika area (Alexandra Avenue) took place in the context of searching for a person suspected of involvement in arson attacks on the Real Group media offices on 13 July. According to the police, “after the arrest, groups of people gathered at the scene, climbed onto the roof, and threw objects (stones, building materials, etc.) at the police forces, preventing the seizure and transport of the arrested person’s vehicle. So far, dozens of arrests have been made from the spot.”

In total 78 people had been arrested during the operation. Among them, also a pregnant woman who stated she was not provided with medical assistance. People kneeling down, facing a wall, with their hands handcuffed at the back were pictured in photos that went viral on social media.

The Global Network for Independent Media IPI issued a press release while Pylos was detained, demanding his immediate release. “He should have been released as soon as his status as a member of the press was established,” they emphasized.

“Our colleague was released at 2 after midnight,” photojournalist Tatiana Bolari posted. “Since 17.30 he had been detained in Police Headquarters GADA and for 8.5 hours we did not know the reason for his detention nor did we have any contact with him. We did not even know if he was just detained or arrested, to call a lawyer! They turned down all our requests for Photojournalists and Foreign Press Association representatives to visit him. And all this, because he was in Prosfygika covering the developments! We got the message and we know what’s going to happen to us from now on…”

“It is with great concern that we were informed of the prosecution and the serious charges brought against our colleague and member of the Foreign Press Association Nikos Pylos,”

the Foreign Press Association stated in a press release issued on Wednesday. “After suffering a 10 hours detention, Mr. Pilos was released with a pending indictment for serious charges, but without any testimony or evidence against him,” they emphasized, calling on authorities to drop all charges.

When asked to comment on the matter, government spokesman Yannis Oikonomou didn’t really make much sense. He said this was a misadventure, that police were told to release the journalist, and that Pilos had not declared his ID.

Pilos deconstructed Oikonomou's arguments promptly, stating he had shown all his IDs to the police from the beginning. “This has been registered in the testimony I willingly gave the State Security Sub-Directorate police officers, in which all my citizen ID data are included as well as my profession (photojournalist) which I have been exercising for 35 years, abiding by its rules.”

Yet, this was not the sole incident as the Press Freedom worrying situation in Greece.

The head of the State News Agency (APE) Emilios Perdikaris is at the same time working for ‘Manifesto newspaper as a ghostwriter, Dimokratia newspaper reported on Tuesday.

APE is the sole state news agency. When ND rose to power, Mitsotakis took APE under his wing in a move that stirred a lot of controversies and brought accusations of ‘Orbanism.’

The APE head is forbidden by law to work elsewhere. ‘Manifesto,’ (who had been accused by the historic Italian newspaper Il Manifesto of stealing its title, logo, and fonts) is a new newspaper, totally affiliated with the government.

As We Are Solomon reporter Stavros Malichudis reminded on Twitter, the Perdikaris incident is not the only problem with this newspaper. As Solomon had reported in the past, one of ‘Manifesto’s’ reporters, Fotis Karydas had been writing government-praising articles without disclosing to the readers he is one of PM Mitsotakis’s close associates.

‘Manifesto’ editor Harris Pavlidis has worked in at least four ministries’ press offices as well as Migration Commissioner (and ND high profile member) Avramopoulos’s Press and Communication consultant. While working for Avramopoulos, Pavlidis was covering ND reporting for a TV Channel!

Couple all these with the recent research according to which 84 newspapers closed down in the Memoranda years while journalists enjoy practically no labor rights anymore - and you have an illustrative picture of the media landscape in the country.

At the time these lines were written, on Friday, NGO Greek Helsinki Monitor spokesperson Panagiotis Dimitras was expected to appear before an investigating judge in relation to actions carried out as a human rights defender. “This is the latest chapter in a decade-long judicial harassment campaign” against the NGO, Fair Trials reported. They denounced “this continued harassment and the criminalization of solidarity.

As Fair Trials reported, “Dimitras has been summoned before the judge for forming and joining a criminal organization, facilitating entry to the Greek territory for a citizen of a third country for profit and by profession, and facilitation of illegal residence of a citizen of a third country for profit. Through these charges, the state has used its criminal justice powers to reframe legitimate actions to help save lives and protect human rights as human trafficking.”

Dimitras is not the only such case. Some 50 humanitarian workers are currently facing prosecution in Greece. "Greek authorities are engaging in a witch-hunt targeting refugees, but also their defenders," sixteen rights groups said last month.

The attack seems to be full-scale. "There are very few NGOs left in Greece," Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi told Skai TV this week. "Among those operating (at the height of the migration crisis) in 2015-2019, the great majority have left the country on their own accord," he said.

NGO Human Rights 360 is an illustrative example of the escalating conflict between NGOs and the Greek government.

HumanRights360 was embroiled in a row after assisting the 38 Syrian asylum seekers stranded on an Evros River islet for several days. The asylum seekers claim that a five-year-old girl died from a scorpion sting during that time.

However, it was reported with solid documentation that there are serious doubts as to whether a child indeed died, while last week Der Spiegel withdrew its previous reporting on the matter: “At this point, there was an article about the fate of a group of refugees on the Greek-Turkish border river Evros in the summer of 2022. There are now doubts about the previous description of what happened at that time. We have therefore temporarily removed several posts on this topic from our website. We review our reporting and, once the research is complete, decide whether or not to republish the articles in a corrected and updated form,” the magazine stated.

Desperate people sometimes resort to desperate means to survive. However, even if it is finally proved beyond doubt that no child died in this particular Evros islet incident, a) this does not discredit dozens of well-documented reports on push-backs, and b) it does not change the well-documented fact that so many people have lost their lives trying to cross to Europe or/and in illegal pushbacks. (This week, a UN Letter Documented Greek Pushback of Turkish Asylum Seekers).

However, it goes without saying that the Greek authorities would weaponize the incident.

It is illustrative that HumanRights360's head Epaminondas Farmakis did a U-turn after initially claiming the islet was Greek, which would have made the migrants Athens' responsibility, eventually saying publicly it was Turkish.

It was then that many of the NGO's staff quit in protest, clearly implying HumanRights360's had succumbed to government pressure.

This week, it had been reported that the NGO was brought to the attention of the Money Laundering Authority following reports of financial mismanagement of millions of euros.

“Reproduced by some Greek media citing a “source” and a “chunky file” with findings of an alleged investigation, about which, up to now our organization hasn’t been notified or informed, the article in question presents inaccurate information and false claims by distorting real data posted on our website, as an Annual Report of our Action,” stated the NGO in a press release. “HumanRights360 expressly and unequivocally declares that the information included in this article is inaccurate and incorrect,” they added.

On Thursday, it was reported that a public prosecutor will conduct a general investigation into the financial activities and management of European funds by Human Rights 360.

It goes without saying that if the NGOs’ finances are obscure, they should be held accountable.

Seeing the whole thing in context though, Human Rights 360 could have been a handy target in an effort to shift the game in favor of the government.

Fireplaces, wood stoves as lethal as cars: The main sources of air pollution in urban centers in Greece are vehicle traffic and heating - “This phenomenon appeared a decade ago, at the beginning of the economic crisis, and remains strong. Pollution from biomass burning has brought us back to pollution levels that existed 20-30 years ago, in some cities they are similar to those of Asian countries. I fear that this year the situation will be worse, as people have been frightened by rising gas prices and will turn to burn wood and pellets again”

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