Racism is one of the worst and most inhuman phenomena in this contemporary world. This bad omen it is a phenomenon as a whole of this injustice system, which is ruling in the word and still has active and important place in destroying the life of millions of people all over the world.
The modern racism, which we face today, it is more complicated than the simple and clear racism of the past. Due to the struggle of the progressive movements, which fight against this reactionary thought for many years, this modern racism cannot be expressed openly, without a mask, but still racistic actions did not diminish or vanish.
I think racism became more wise and experienced than before, and now it can select from a variety of ways and forms to be active in society and train the thoughts and opinions of the society and lead the racistic actions against its victims.
Racism is the philosophical brain of fascism. Still in European countries there are some racistic organizations, which openly try to preserve the holy blood of Europe and make an open propaganda against foreigners. However, I think this kind of racistic organizations is not the real base of racism, because mostly they keep the traditional form of racism, which is not widely acceptable by the people and therefore they cannot do more things.
It is the government and the ruling class in these countries, which breeds and reproduces this old thought, not simply and directly, but rather in an indirect and sophisticated way. This kind of reproduced idea is useful for them, in order to achieve many of their plans, according to their policy about the refugees. Of course, they are not saying “ everyone who is not Greek is a barbarian” or “ our tribe is the god’s tribe”. But they are keeping their rule over the poor countries through international agreements and through legally recognized interventions. And racism is a tool used to legalize these actions among the population of the developed countries.
Bush said after the 11th of September “a few barbarians have declared war against the US”, a political statement of western racism, while Huntington mentioned in an interview that 11th of September turned western identity towards west. It is some kind of academic statement of western racism. Nowadays, what is going on in Palestine, it is an absolute genocide, with the completely racistic action of Israel on the one side and the European countries on the other side, either standing with silent consent or pouring crocodile tears. I think now this globe is not a nice place for people to live, unless they are owners of factories or their political organization, the name of which is state.
So, racism is a leading internal power of individuals. There is no need to make a specific program for racistic actions, it is enough to put this feeling or grow this opinion and after that everyone who has that can behave automatically in a racistic way. If we leave the influence of racism to the big policies of the world, the basic application of racism is expressed in endless small-scale forms. The victims of these small-scale racistic actions are the ill-fated refugees and immigrants, mostly coming from non-European countries, people who are trying to save themselves from death and find a shelter here.
The usual method for promotion of racism is not basically to praise European nations, because this method is old and useless. Instead, the suitable method is to make a negative propaganda about the foreigners or the countries of their origin. For example, “3rd world countries are not able to solve their own problems”, “we have to solve their problems”, “ we have to save them from barbarism and connect them to the civilization caravan”. Through this procedure, when a soldier is sent to Afghanistan, he thinks that he is responsible to civilize these people there, and completely agrees with any kind of actions, even actions of destruction, since they prove and satisfy his cause. The racistic training is a good guarantee for racistic action.
Each one of the European countries has a share to the destruction of countries such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and, as a result, to the caravans of refugees. These refugees, when they come here, they are treated as criminals, because now they are not highly skilled employees for the industry, they are the most innocent of the low-class people who lost their life. And since the pole of Russia does not exist anymore, and refugees are no more useful as a means of propaganda against Russia, there is no need to apply the Geneva Convention about refugees anymore.
But how they should attack against the refugees? It is not possible to use a tank or aircraft against them. Although they should be tortured, put to prison, deported or killed, these methods are not the basic solution, since they would destroy the state’s mask. The best way is to make a racistic atmosphere and sign a hard law against refugees and never give answer and keep them waiting and attack them little by little every day, from the street until the camps. Until the refugees believe that they are the most useless and most isolated and worthless and weak people, people who are not worthy even for a little trust.
There is not some special statistic, but I think that more than 80% of the refugees have various psychological problems, like depression. They are torturing themselves by knives, burning with cigarettes, poisoning themselves or trying to kill themselves. These are the direct results of the racistic actions and the endless waiting for the caravans of refugees in this world.
Despite the existence of social solidarity and left parties and organizations, as well as the movement for the defense or refugee rights, still the atmosphere in the European countries is highly racistic. The racistic actions are not limited to the police and authorities. I think, many times racism is hidden in normal daily action, even inside a seemingly humanitarian action.
The refugees are mostly from poor and underdeveloped countries, or countries in war, and these conditions support the racistic feeling in the countries that accept the refugees. Racism tries to show that refugees are timid, parasitic, incapable of leading their lives, and therefore they have left heir countries and came here to use our resources without any effort. And because of all that, they increase unemployment and cause problems to social security system and in general cause various social calamities and become a bad example in society and they also support and organize the mafia and the drug trafficking and the illegal refugee trafficking.
For the ordinary people of society, it is really difficult to understand what is going on in a small corner of the world far away from here, therefore it is possible to convince these people against these parasite refugees. Especially, because of an unbreakable relation between refugees and immigrants from one side and labor workers from the other side, the state always tries to create a distance between the two sides, which will allow them to do any action against the refugees. If refugees lose connection with the worker movements, they have nobody else to defend their rights.
All the above refer in general to the European countries, including Greece, but there are some specific features about Greece. One of these is the weakness of the racistic feeling among ordinary people in Greece, which may be due to the fact that some decades ago, many Greek people were refugees themselves. The second feature is that Greek people are not yet completely industrialized and they still have some common feeling with eastern way of life. On the other side, the state of this country has really a negative policy about the refugees and the refugee rights in Greece are just big words without any meaning. The Greek state typically has the obligation to give a reply to an application for political asylum within a period of 6 to 12 months, but they never do so. After a long waiting, they give a 3-month permission, and after this period refugees should leave the country.

All these actions are racistic.

These policies toward refugees are inhuman.

We should stand against them.
We should stand against all forms of racism and injustice,
Not only as a form of humanitarian action, but as our political responsibility.

The Greek government should give answer sooner.
The Greek government should stop deportations.

To be a refugee, it is not a crime
It is an undeniable right.


Zahir Athari

Zahir Athari came to Greece from Afghanistan in May 2001 and is waiting for a reply to his political asylum application since then…