Galery

1

Anastasia Balezdrova

"If you give a chimpanzee at the zoo a banana or a flag, it will raise it," said Nikos Michaloliakos, leader of Golden Dawn, in connection with the inclusion of Giannis Adetokunbo, aged 18, in the lists of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The head of the extreme right-wing party made the comment because Giannis and his brother Thanasis had raised the Greek national flag when his name had been announced as included in the list of new basketball players of the American basketball association, who will have the chance to prove themselves this season.

The comment was made during a TV show whose participants were discussing the fact that Giannis Adetokunbo and his parents had been official guests in the Greek Prime Minister's Maximou residence where Antonis Samaras congratulated the young basketball player for his success and thanked him for raising the Greek flag.
 
Giannis’ parents are from Nigeria but he and his four brothers were born and raised in Greece. However, they have had no citizenship until recently and most probably they would not have received it due to the repeal of the law earlier this year. However, the two basketball players have recently become Greek citizens precisely to be able to go to the United States in connection with Giannis’ inclusion in the elite selection of young talents in American basketball. He was able to rank 15th and will play in the team of Milwaukee Bucks.

The offence Golden Dawn had addressed to Giannis was its second insult addressed to a basketball player of the national team of Greece. A year earlier, the xenophobes had said that they did not consider Sofoklis Schortsanitis as Greek because of the colour of his skin. The father of the player of Panathinaikos is Greek and his mother comes from Cameroon.

"I do not divide people but God does. Do you know how many people like him, from Congo and Nigeria, are in Greece and are not playing basketball? Greeks have never been black," said Michaloliakos and denied having called Giannis Adetokunbo a "monkey".

Meanwhile, the Greek branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees welcomed the opening of a new service that will receive and process refugees’ applications for acquiring refugee status. "We have been anticipating this for years. It is good that, finally, a service with civilian staff has been established and that the police interference with the entire procedure is decreasing," states George Tsarbopoulous, head of the mission.

He and his associates urge the Greek government to establish, as soon as possible, the remaining 11 offices in other Greek cities with high concentrations of immigrants. One of the very important issues that the service is about to undertake is to consider the applications "for assuming the responsibility under the Dublin II regulation" which involves the cases of immigrants who are in Greece but have many relatives in other European countries. In the case that the result of the procedure is positive, the applications for refugee status will be processed by the relevant services in the specific countries.

The mission states that the measure of detaining immigrants at centres while triggering the extradition procedure is posing problems. "In addition to the fact that basic human rights are being violated in some cases such as the problems an ill person is experiencing, some of the detained are people who should not be returned to their countries for various reasons. The percentage of returnees is small and the people actually remain in the centres without the ultimate goal being achieved."

According to the activists, there is a pressing need for creating centres for initial reception at the entry points in Greece. "They should establish the identity, age and other details related to each immigrant in order for each of them to be directed as appropriate, which will secure effective protection of certain categories of unaccompanied immigrants such as children." They also insist on increasing the number of places and on connecting the refugee status granting procedure with the centres for initial reception.

According to George Tsarbopoulous, the absence of such centres on the islands in the northeast part of the Aegean Sea, especially on Lesbos, is making the situation very difficult both for the immigrants and for the locals, which is posing the risk of emergence of xenophobic and racist sentiments which have not been observed until recently. "The same is true for Evros and the land border with Turkey, but to a lesser degree. After the construction of the fence, the migration flows have again turned to the islands where the police and coast guard are the only government departments dealing with the problem. There is no infrastructure or even a shed where the people can shelter from the hot sun or the rain. The residents and the Church are taking care of the livelihood of the immigrants."

The procedure for taking care of unaccompanied children is also incomplete as stated by the Greek branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "The infrastructure in the centres where they are being sent is not good and the result is that many children are leaving them. It is necessary to construct schools near them and to create a record in the country in order to provide them with more effective protection."