Greece: Protests, Riots and Organized Crime
Posted by Arms Control Center in CRIMES & VIOLENCE, tags: athens, criminals, gangs, Greece, Hellenic Arms Control Center, Hellenic Civil Guard, looters, riots, Έλληνες Πολιτοφύλακες, Ελληνική Πολιτοφυλακή
The Arms Control Center is constantly monitoring the social unrest in Greece especially regarding the recent riots in Athens. The Foreign Media hungry for bloody reports and videos have distorted the actual source of the street fights shown on various videos on TV and the Web. The groups attacking the police are not law-abiding citizens who are suffering from the recession and the austerity measures but gangs and criminals who have been ravaging Athens for decades. Hundreds have been arrested and very few of them (if any) could be related to a social movement against the political and financial state in Greece. Trained members of those gangs attacked the police following a strategic plan focusing on particular shops and banks. They burgled, robbed and burnt down shops, citizens, banks etc. The foreign media portrayed those events as the reaction of the Greek people against their government but this picture is fake and distorted. Actually, the bitter feeling of the really unemployed and impoverished people, if erupted, could create a much stronger public unrest, however this time it was the organized crime operating in Athens. The Arms Control Center strongly believes that in Greece the greatest cancer that has eroded the political system is the inability of the judicial system to administer justice. Juvenile delinquents, hooligans and other marginal elements of the Greek society have formed an underground movement that emerges each time there is a demonstration in Greece. Its members follow the tide of the demonstration and then they break up from the peaceful group of demonstrators in order to provoke and then clash with the riot police which orderly watches the demonstration. Armed with Molotov cocktails and other improvised bombs and weapons they create chaos and anarchy, burning looting and destroying. It seems that a lot of adolescents take part in this deadly game of clashing with the riot police and some of them come from healthy and prosperous families.
No, the Greek Citizens have not rebelled yet. For the time being the organized crime is filling up the gap burning national monuments and terrorizing the people. The international media should be digging deeper into the cause and effect of the riots they broadcast because their reports are shallow and misinformed.
The international community should know that there is a new form of organized crime in Greece and the politicians are afraid to address this issue for reasons that will be analyzed in the future.