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Hala Akari, 40 years old, is part of Athens’ city hall’s integration counsel. She’s been in Greece for 22 years, speaks an accent-free fluent Greek, and while she tenderly remembers the day she arrived, she shivers when she thinks about the changes that took place in the past two years, because of the economic crisis. Nowadays, she suffers daily from racism, something unthinkable for someone that once saw her father be threatened with deportation and, curiously, receive help from a then generous Greek police.
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From Syria to the Neo-Nazi Greece: “We want to leave, we can’t stay here anymore”
Born in Kuwait, but from Syrian origins, Hala wears a hijab, which makes her easy prey for the members of Golden Dawn party. She openly talks about the horror she felt when those men dressed in black, as they usually do, arrive in immigrant neighborhoods.
In spite of having reported cases of violence and racism, she never got a convincing answer from the Greek political body. On the contrary, she realized that the cases were treated as “isolated”, not significant, and that the Greek police, aligned with the Golden Dawn, are not the same anymore.
On a November morning, Hala talked to Opera Mundi for an hour in Keramikos, a west Athens train station. Her biggest desire, even after two decades in Greece, is to leave the country. “My job is impracticable”, she said.
Opera Mundi: Would you say that immigrants who have been living in Greece for more than 20 years have decided to leave the country?
Hala Akari: Yes. People who had their jobs, who speak Greek fluently, are going abroad. Some go back to their own countries. Others choose to go somewhere in the northern Europe where the situation is better and getting a job is easier. Some of them, a lot of them Syrians, try to ask for asylum, since they can´t go back home because of the war. Greece is losing these people.
Roberto Almeida/Opera Mundi
OM: Why are they leaving?
HK: Because of the social crisis. Racism. We are not only talking about the extreme right party [the Golden Dawn, considered a neo-Nazi party], we’re talking about society as a whole. There will always be people who hate foreigners, but not this way. The contemporary Greek society is changing and heading this direction, it thinks of the immigrants as easy prey. Since you’re different, it’s easy to say you’re the reason for the crisis. We know that when there’s crisis discrimination rises, but it is not only that. We don’t only have hate and discrimination in Greece, we also have violence.
OM: Are the violent incidents related with the Golden Dawn?
HK: We can say that they began with the Golden Dawn. We registered several violent incidents. They are people who wear black clothes. We know that they are part of the Golden Dawn, but sometimes they don’t use their party’s symbol on their clothes, some other times they do. And sometimes they send messages: “We’ll be on the streets today”. A clear warning for the immigrants to stay home.
OM: Can you give me an example?
HK: A friend of mine sent me a warning message, telling me to be careful. “In two neighborhoods, Kipseli and Plati Amerikis, members of the Golden Dawn will be on the streets starting from 7 pm. Please, tell your friends not to go there”. But, more than that, every day, after 7 pm, they are on the streets, they enter buses and trolleys, they take immigrants from the vehicles and ask to see their documents. They have no right to do that, but they do it. A lot of people are afraid of them. Many times, the police know about it, see it, but don´t do anything.
OM: How is the government reacting to that?
HK: We tried for a long time, at Athens’ city hall, to explain to the politicians that the immigrants are facing a really dangerous situation. A lot of them [that suffer those attacks] are Pakistanis or come from Bangladesh, and because their skin is darker, they’re easily recognized. If one of them is alone, it is common that a group of five or six people beat him up. That has happened and we reported it, but the politicians say it’s not so important, they say it’s a small phenomenon and that there’s no need for discussion or specific legislation. When the complete Greek system changed, with deputies only looking for votes, they started to express racism. When they began to talk like that, society started to adopt the same speech with no fear of punishment. If the Prime Minister [Antonis Samaras, from center-right New Democracy party] talks like this, well, we can say whatever we want. It’s become pretty clear in the past two years.
OM: When you say deputies you are referring to the Golden Dawn members or deputies from every political party?
HK: From New Democracy, from PASOK [center-left]. We didn´t expect to hear that from PASOK, but since it was an election period, they noticed the growth of the right and adopted the same discourse. “This can’t go on. Our city must be our city. Athens is no longer Greek…” This shows us that they’re not happy with the immigrants. But it got really hard when we saw that 22 Golden Dawn parliamentarians were elected. It was a shock. Who voted for these people? We found out that many police men voted for them and many people who thought that if they “cleaned” their neighborhoods, they’d have more jobs available. You know, people don’t like to think a lot about things, they’d rather see everything black and white, good and evil, Greek and not-Greek. And even those who have Greek nationality, but were not born in Greece, should leave Greece to the Greeks.
OM: Have you suffered racism?
HK: It’s a daily thing in public transport. I was on the trolley the other day and a woman came up. She was yelling and pushing everybody. The vehicle was full of immigrants from Patission street. I asked her why she was pushing people. She looked at me and said: “How dare you talk to me!”. And I responded that I could talk to her. “You are Muslims. As if it wasn’t enough, a Muslim woman who wants to talk”. She was far from me and I realized she was talking to a friend about Muslims, that they do this, that they do that. I told her to repeat all of that in front of me. I speak Greek very well, with no accent. In the middle of that, a Greek man started yelling at her. “I can’t stand you crazy people! What did they [the immigrants] do to you? They didn´t do anything! It’s crazy, you make me feel embarrassed for being Greek”. She got down on the next stop.
OM: So there’s still a part of the population that defends immigrants.
HK: Yes, we see that some Greeks don’t accept racism. But normally you can’t defend yourself, especially if you don’t speak the language correctly. A lot of people prefer to get off the bus than hear this kind of attack. A lot of time we see bus drivers telling black to get out of the vehicle. Who can defend them? The police make you regret reporting any case of racism or ask for help. You have no rights.
OM: How would you compare today’s Greece and the Greece from 22 years ago, when you arrived?
HK: The difference is huge. When we got here, we had no documents. There were no specific laws for immigrants. It was all very new for the Greeks. They began to accept immigrants, but they were immigrants themselves. When other countries shut their doors, such as France or England, Greece was the only option. If the police caught an immigrant, he would be deported. But Greek society was very caring, and they opened their arms. We were different: my mother and I used hijab; they knew we were Muslims, and nevertheless, they helped us a lot at the beginning and to learn Greek. At the university, the teachers were great and really tried to help immigrant students. And we didn’t even have documents! The police once stopped my father, and when they heard that he had his family in Greece, they helped him escape supervision and control. Even the police were friendly. Now we have the opposite. We have documents and a few rights, but society gives us a very cold treatment. They are afraid. They are distant. I understand that many immigrants came, but they need to know that what’s happening is not the immigrants’ fault. And the thing is, if you ask them if they want to leave, the first thing they’ll say is yes. They only lack the documents to do so. I already said that if Athens wants to get rid of the immigrants, it only needs to give them a month’s residency. And they will disappear. Greece is protecting its borders and that turns the country into a great prison.
OM: Is there a solution?
HK: I think the best thing would be to give residency for them to leave, or make it easier for them to ask for asylum. If they can have any kind of paper, they can go some country else. I don´t mean that other countries are willing to accept these people, but they can, as it happens in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark or Norway. In the United Kingdom is very hard to have documents. But, especially, I don’t see staying in Greece as a solution.
OM: How does the Troika’s imposed rules affect the immigrants?
HK: If the make the Greeks’ life harder, they’ll complicate ours even more.
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