Human Rights Crisis in Greece

So we have a problem. There's a massive police effort to round up migrants, to an unresonable and inhumane degree.

And it's not just immigrants. Apparently, anyone "undesirable" is being caught in the sweep. This include drug users, women in the sex industry, homeless people, and trans* people.

Here are some more links, reblogged by one of our own.

Anyone else have more information on this situation (since US news media seems to be avoiding this)—and possible ways to help fight this?

And so history repeats. This is not good, not good at all.

Screw the Golden Dawn.

That is not a good thing at all. We can only hope they don't go for the final solution approach.

An unfortunate side-effect of hard times, really. When "good" people are suffering, it's easy to question why society tolerates the marginal groups draining all-too-precious resources, leading to action against them.

Yes... but a lot of those "undesirables" were, until very recently "good". Punishing them more for... what? Not having money,a place to stay and/or enough optimism to face the day undrugged? How's this a help?

The question becomes who is the next group to become "marginal" and how far are they going to take what they are doing.

And the UN will do little to nothing.

The cradle of Western civilization in the modern world. How's that for tragedy? :(

Shared on Facebook. People need to know about this.

Just did the same.

It's not as if we haven't had Greece in a situation like this in living memory. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go a few decades back and despair...

There was worse then that.

I remember the US doing almost exactly the same thing in the wake of 9/11.

I dont see any further news coverage of this. Anyone have an update?

& Yeah. One of my college professors had us watch the film Z to expand on the whole horrible modern history of Greece.

Here's a somewhat relevant video about how civilizations have tended to fall after golden ages (not very fundamentalist friendly). Neil De Grasse Tyson explains my view much better than I can.

edited 26th Jun '13 9:14:36 AM by AnSTH

This is fucked up though, racial profiling and all

well it certainly doesn't help when another country goes and steals one of your major cities...

This is not exactly the same topic, but protests appear to be spreading in Greece in reaction against the austerity program (itself an outcome of the Greek budget crisis):

Wave of protests engulfs Greece

Here is another update on the Human Rights Watch report. As far as I can tell, there have been no protest actions in relation to this.

An American Jewish conference held in Washington recently apparently confronted the Greek Foreign Minister on this issue.

Fuck.

EDIT: I just clicked on the Wikipedia article for the Greek Civil War. Did I seriously see a picture of a lynched man hanging in broad daylight???

I.....have no words.

edited 26th Jun '13 11:50:05 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

Lynched man hanging in broad daylight? That's nothing. The police were actively leading the citizens in some of those lynchings.

I..mean....I always think of that as being a Deep South thing. Or maybe the particular bad days in Russian History, the Holocaust, Bosnia. But Greece? The land of cute women and olives? I'm honestly shocked.

edited 26th Jun '13 12:14:42 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

So more on the issue.

According to the information linked and presented, although there are no concentration camps, there are still transgender people being arrested for unjustified reasons.

This sort of crap was bound to happen when you tear apart a country's economic infrastructure in the name of austerity and demand political concessions that have drastically negative consequences for its citizens as a condition of aid.

What happens is that people start supporting radical groups out of disillusionment with the majority parties. This is a historical constant. How could Europe's leaders not recognize this?

Because people always assume stuff like the Nazis happened because germans were evil, not because of legitimate anger turning down a horrifically dark path.

While I'm very sympathetic to the idea that austerity programs are based on bad economics and an even worse political process, I am also very leery of anything that sounds like giving autocratic regimes a free excuse for oppressing people.

Austerity doesn't explain why this happens, nor is it an excuse for the people doing this, but it can be a reason why people would support a popular movement that does this if that movement is also anti-austerity. If most of a movement's supporters don't care either way whether their movement is doing this sort of stuff the leaders can decide - and they probably had a violent agenda to begin with, and the anti-austerity (or anti-IMF or anti-EU) thing is just that movement jumping the bandwagon.

Any established radical movement can adopt any political agenda and rally people behind that agenda (and by proxy the movement) if the people joining or supporting it don't pay enough attention - which they won't in a time or crisis.

edited 26th Jun '13 4:58:12 PM by BestOf

It's documented fact that politics get radicalised when the economy's in the shitter, and austerity measures have done quite a bit to keep the Greek economy there.