The Greeks have a word for it; Xenophobia rears up as Athens tightens belt

[pampango]

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/the-greeks-have-a-word-for-it-88716972.html

Ancient Greece gave the world the word "xenophobia." Modern Greece is providing examples of it. Hamad Amiri, a young Afghan immigrant, arrived to work at his brother's cell phone store in Athens on a recent morning only to find that someone had gummed up the lock overnight. Scrawled in yellow paint on the shop's metal screen were the words "Foreigners Out," accompanied by the insignia of a far-right organization known as Golden Dawn. Amiri's experiences are the result of a swelling tide of anti-immigrant feeling in this debt-plagued Mediterranean country.

Now, as Greece enters a period of painful economic retrenchment to alleviate its staggering debt crisis, (Tzanetos) Antypas (the head of Praksis, a rights organization) fears the backlash against the country's newest arrivals will only get worse. "You can see it in the faces of Greeks; there's a lot of uncertainty. They don't feel secure in the whole environment, and of course they want to put the blame on someone," Antypas said. "And who will be easy to blame? The immigrants."

Athens and its environs, home to nearly one-third of all of Greece's inhabitants, have witnessed a number of clashes in recent months pitting immigrants and their defenders against right-wing extremists. Members of the ultra-right Golden Dawn have tagged foreign-owned businesses with anti-immigrant graffiti, although in some cases their opponents have sneaked in behind them and, with a few judicious strokes of extra paint, altered "Golden Dawn" in Greek to read, nonsensically, "Golden Eggs."

The latest target of anti-immigrant ire is a government proposal to offer citizenship to children of non-Greek parents if they meet such requirements as having spent several years in Greek schools. Rights groups laud the ruling Socialists for working to establish a coherent legal framework for immigrants. Prime Minister George Papandreou said the bill, put forward last month, reflected Greek values of democracy and equality. Greek culture, he said, was threatened more by the hours spent by children in front of the TV every day than by the presence of immigrants.

I doubt that immigrants had much to do with Greek politicians cooking its books to qualify to enter the Eurozone, but it seems to be easier for some (particularly right wing extremists) to take out frustrations on them rather than on the powerful elites and politicians who were responsible.

On the positive side, it sounds like the Socialist government is acting to protect immigrants in the belief that reflects "Greek values of democracy and equality".