It has been a bleak summer for democratic freedoms in Greece, as dozens of people have been sentenced under dictatorial laws on account of having occupied abandoned buildings and providing housing to refugee families. These are laws imposed in 1938 by Metaxas, admirer of Mussolini and Hitler, and subsequently, during the black seven years of the 1967-1974 military regime.
It all started when the Hellenic Police (ELAS) carried out an extensive operation to evacuate three squats in Thessaloniki, and arrested 74 people who were detained until the following day, while the refugees were transferred to camps without any charges pressed against them. Of the 74 arrested, 15 were convicted, three were acquitted, whereas the trial for the rest has been postponed. Many say that one of the reasons why the police and the government did not press charges against the refugees is that they wanted to obscure the fact that these were squatted buildings housing refugees.
At the same time, defense lawyer Effie Telli wrote that most of the arrested individuals, namely the ones from the Charles Diehl Str. Squat, “were not allowed to use the telephone, neither did they have access to food.”
