A neo-Nazi party that wants work camps for immigrants is on course to win its first seats in parliament on Sunday
[...]
Over the last two years, Mr Roumeliotis has watched the central Athens neighbourhood of Ayios Panteleimonas, where he grew up, undergo an ugly transformation. Taking the bus on another morning soon after, a gunshot shattered the back window and a gang of men forced the driver to stop. When the doors opened, they came on to the bus and started to assault the non-Greek passengers. The attackers were wearing T-shirts from the right-wing extremist group Golden Dawn. While panicked people were trying to escape from the bus the men were hitting them with flagpoles.
"They were beating people with the Greek flag," said Mr Roumeliotis.
When the police arrived they stood off until the thugs had finished. When he asked the police why no one had been arrested one of the officers replied to him: "Why, did they do something to you?"
[...]
"People here have been forgotten by the government," said Mr Roumeliotis. "They have done nothing about immigration." The skinheads are now talked of as "good boys" who are looking out for their community. What was happening in Ayios Panteleimonas – which has the highest concentration of immigrants in Athens – came to the attention of the rest of Greece when members of Golden Dawn were voted on to its local council.
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Speaking at the party's offices opposite the Larrisis train station where volunteers do weekly handouts of clothes and food to "needy Greeks", Mr Panayiotaros said that the priority in the midst of the economic crisis was to throw out foreigners. "All of the immigrants are illegal, even the ones that have been in the country for a long time and they have to be punished," he said.
Greeks were afraid to leave their homes as immigrants were on a spree of robberies, rapes and murder, he said. The cost of jailing or deporting more than a million people would be offset, he said, by putting them into work camps. Those that were not prepared to work would not be given food, he added.
Scary stuff.
I guess they bypassed the 'fence' idea, and went for something a little more 'patriotic'.
Strange times.
