The right-wing violence erupted on the night of September 4, when the Greek soccer team, which won the European championship, lost to Albania in a World Cup qualifying match in Tirana, Albania.

“When the Albanians went out to celebrate the victory of the team at Ommonia Square, right-wing gangs and cops were already waiting for them at the metro exits,” said Ervin Sehou, a leader of the Albanian Forum, an Albanian immigrant rights group. Ommonia Square is in downtown Athens. “They started beating people wildly. The cops also joined in. They beat up all sorts of people, including families returning home. In Pireaus, when the match was over groups of right-wing Greeks left one coffee shop, where they had been watching the game, to go to another where Albanians were watching TV and attacked them. Similar attacks took place in Thessaloniki, Zakynthos, Chios, Crete, Ioannina, Volos—all over the country. It was a real climate of terror!

“I want to stress that these attacks were not by chance,” Sehou said. “A tremendous nationalist climate has been created through the Olympic Games this summer and Greece’s earlier victory in the soccer Eurocup. Many people have been won to the myth of superior Greek DNA.”

The September 9 demonstration was called by the Albanian Forum and was backed by some 30 organizations. Protesters assembled at Ommonia Square and marched to the Greek parliament. Throughout the demonstration, they were followed and flanked by riot police. The 300-strong Albanian contingent let the police know that they held them responsible for the brutality of September 4. “Cops are pigs and murderers!” was the most common chant of the Albanians. At other times they chanted “Let no more Albanian blood flow!” and “Greeks and foreigners, workers united!”

A march of several hundred also took place September 8 in Thessaloniki, the country’s second largest city. Demonstrations also took place in Hania, Crete, and Ioannina, the largest city in the north near the Greece-Albania border.

“Greeks celebrated the victory of the Greek national team in streets through out the world and nothing of the sort happened,” said a Greek-born school teacher who did not want to be identified. “Albanians should be given the same rights. What happened is shameful.”

The Prefect of Thessaloniki, Panayotis Psomiadis, a member of the ruling conservative New Democracy party, defended the actions of the rightists and cops. “Instead of receiving thanks from Albanian immigrants for all their new country has offered them,” he said, “Greeks are insulted, reviled and humiliated in their own country.”

Most voices in ruling circles, however, have condemned the anti-Albanian violence. “Regardless of whether the Albanian immigrants were provocative or not, they also have the right to celebrate,” said Giorgos Orfanos, deputy minister of culture and sports. The opposition social democratic PASOK party also issued statements condemning the attacks.

The Albanian Forum is demanding that the right-wingers and cops involved in the attacks be prosecuted and punished.  
 
 
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