Photos: Vassilis Vafidis
Anastasia Balezdrova
We spoke with Golden Dawn’s deputy Nikolaos Mihos during the foodstuffs handout campaign of the party in the region of St. Panteleimon Church in the centre of Athens. He is not one of the best-known members of the parliamentary group of the xenophobic party and he was wearing a black shirt and jeans, like all its other organized members.
"There were about 500 people here today in my opinion. People started lining up at about 8 am and are still coming. Before today's campaign in the area of St. Panteleimon Church, we handed out foodstuffs in Syntagma Square and other parts of Athens and across Greece. The number of willing people is huge. I am ashamed for saying this, but now we are the last country in Europe."
Immediately after Golden Dawn entered the new Greek parliament, the party leadership announced that its deputies will retain only part of the parliamentary salary. The remaining money goes into the party funds. With it and with the money Golden Dawn receives as a parliamentary force it provides foodstuffs and hands them out for free.
"We take the foodstuffs from Greek producers. We will continue to give foodstuffs. We are keeping all of our election promises and we will continue to do so. We did not tell people things just to be able to deceive them and win their votes. We proved it with our position and the help we render to them. Despite the responses against us, there is no way to surrender. Golden Dawn is here and will move forward."
Nikos Mihos is a deputy from the region of Evia. He said that many Bulgarian Roma workers have settled in the region of Thebes where agriculture is one of the main activities of the locals and causes problems.
"These are gypsies from Bulgaria and Albania. Besides taking the jobs in the region and the diseases they have brought with them into Greece, they steal at night whatever they can find - from copper wires, thus damaging transformers, to iron bars of shafts, thus putting at risk passing cars and people. These people do not stop at all. Greeks have become second-class people in their own country, while all the rest are above us.
Gypsies pose serious problems to the Greeks of the region because they take the jobs for half a wage. 20-30 of them live together. They have no costs and do not pay taxes. Therefore, it is easy for them to agree to work for less money, which they eventually export from the country."
The deputy said that Golden Dawn is ready to take action against the individual workers and their employers.
"We intend to take action against employers who employ such people. It is not possible to see how our fellow citizens are starving whereas they hire foreigners to work in their fields. Once they are interested only in their pockets, we will protect the other Greeks. We will not allow this to continue."
He did not specify how they are determined to act.
"We will use all legal options, by averting the tax authorities and control bodies, etc. We will always be ahead of them. Of course, the fronts before us are many and we do not know where to start. "
Finally, Nikos Mihos said that today's initiative to give foodstuffs and the actions against the Roma and their employers along the Asopos River are just two of the issues, which Golden Dawn is determined to handle without gloves.
"There are so many problems that we literally do not know where to start and where to finish. They just never end. But everything has its day. When we decide that an issue should be resolved we take action immediately."