Raping and lynching in exotic Greece

In early November in Amarynthos a village in Evoia, Greece four Greek high school students raped a sixteen-year-old Bulgarian girl in the toilettes of the school and recorded it in video. The young girl did not only suffer physical abuse but psychological as well, as the local community had a biased stance to the incident making up their minds that it wasn’t rape. When reported to the police apparently they said; ‘What can we do now?’ The head-teacher expelled the male students but the girl as well (!). These actions suggest a certain discrimination against the young refugee. One could think ‘would it be the same if the girl was Greek? Actually not, as a similar case involving a Greek girl proves. The people of the village were annoyed that the young Bulgarian accused the boys of such a crime. Thus, they forced the girl and her mother away from the village. As if this was not enough the offended families of the boys and other over zealous villagers became violent to the mother of the girl outside the court where the case was heard.

Some people did not turn a blind eye; anarchists groups from Thessaloniki and Athens mainly, knew from the beginning that this rape would become their concern. On the 19th of November organised a demonstration in the village of one hundred people approximately. It was about taking responsibility for a society that enacts or remains silent over such crimes. They decided to demonstrate in the village and they did that in order to denounce the shared responsibility of the local society over the physical and psychological abuse of the young refugee. They went there to say: ‘Rapists are not from a special cast are everyday men’ and the locals responded ‘she got what she deserved’ admitting openly their identification with the offenders. The demonstrators heard more appalling remarks while there, but the villagers did not stop there. They orchestrated a vicious attack on them; they sent away the two coaches and when the demonstrators returned to the agreed meeting point in order to leave they attacked them using stones, bricks, pieces of marble that threw to them from a distance. But the assault continued and evolved into man to man [or man to woman, if you like, as the 30% of the group of demonstrators were females] and while the demonstrators were unarmed the villagers were well equipped with spades, broaches and other misused agricultural instruments and tools. As a result sixty demonstrators were hit –ten of them badly and had to be admitted to the hospital. The police allowed these to happen with their absence, but also media and police distorted the facts, implying that the demonstrators started the incident, which is clearly not true and it is easily proved by the fact it happened on the exit of the group from the village –after the end of the demonstration, in the area where the coaches would have been parked. If their argument was true and the demonstrators started the upheaval, wouldn’t they do it inside the village while demonstrating?

The outrageous attack that lasted one and a half hours, suggests hatred against the group of young anarchists, that just wanted to show that not everyone is indifferent of crimes such rape and discrimination against immigrants.

Terminal 119 – for social and individual autonomy