900 attacks on immigrants in two years

It is sad that it took the murder of a Greek before the media and public opinion finally were galvanised into serious discussion of the Golden Dawn movement.
Over the years there had been occasional reports of their most outrageous attacks, such as overturning stalls and trashing merchandise of immigrant vendors at open-air fairs and markets as well as the other incidents I had described in my previous post.  Now it comes to light that in the past two years there have been 900 documented attacks serious enough to cause injury.  A few of the victims were brave enough to show their scars or broken teeth on camera.  Some said they were attacked by packs of 15 - 25 men wearing GD T-shirts.  There are likely to have many more attacks that were not reported because the immigrant had no papers and was afraid he would be deported, or because he knew there was little point in doing so since the assailants were likely to go free and retaliate.  Some say they went to the police but were discouraged from lodging a formal complaint against the assailants.
In my previous post I had mentioned how one reason GD have been able to act so brazenly, without regard for repercussions, is because they are supported by a significant proportion of the police force.  Two senior police officials have resigned, two more suspended, and seven police officers have also been suspended.  And that is before the Supreme Court completes their study of the 32 case files that involve GD members.
Recent opinion polls had shown GD popularity (intent to vote for them at next elections) at 8.3% before the murder.  Yesterday polls showed them at 5.8%.  Media commentators made a great deal about this drop of 2.5% within a week.  I am concerned that it is still as high as 5.8% after one of their members confessed to murdering the singer.  

Golden Dawn goose steps over the red line

I had promised to write about Golden Dawn and unfortunately it did not take them long to give me an extreme incentive to write.  Yesterday in the middle of the night a member of GD stabbed to death Pavlos Fissas, a 34-year-old singer who was considered 'leftist'.  This followed an argument about football but was probably politically motivated.  The 45-year-old murderer (he admitted his guilt to the police) received a mysterious phone call and rushed to the café where he, along with about 15 other GD members, ambushed the singer and killed him.  The perpetrator phoned his wife to get rid of his Golden Dawn party card, GD leaflets, a taser and a folding truncheon, but the police found them in the rubbish bin near their home.  The GD spokesperson Kassidiaris appeared on TV last night to dissassociate the party from the murderer, but photos are emerging showing him at GD events,
This is the culmination of a recent series of increasingly outrageous stunts by GD this month, such as preventing a female member of parliament from laying a wreath at Vitsi civil war commemoration, a torch-lit display of power at Thermopylae which this article compared to the Ku Klux Klan, 50 Golden Dawn members beat up a group of 30 Greek Communist Party members who were putting up posters at midnight, hospitalising eight, and disrupted another civil war commemoration at Meligala, where they attacked the mayor and elderly survivors (in Greek, but lots of photos).
426,025 Greeks voted for GD at the last elections in June 2012, giving them 18 Members of Parliament.  Recent opinion polls (before the murder of the singer) gave them 15% popularity.  In 2009 they only received 19,636 votes.  This enormous rise in popularity coincided with the growing number of Greeks losing their jobs in the recession.  Immigrants were seen as taking jobs from Greeks--never mind that these were menial jobs that nouveau-riche Greeks had grown too proud to do.  The immigrants became the easy scapegoat, and GD's anti-immigrant rhetoric exploited this to garner votes.
Immigrants are easy targets, especially when they are children, like a 15-year-old Afghan boy.  Gangs of members, wearing black T-shirts with the Golden Dawn insignia, roam the streets in packs on motorbikes, attacking immigrants.  As many immigrants are illegal these attacks are not often reported unless they are fatal (Greek reports at the time said that Golden Dawn pamphlets had been found at the home of one of the murderers).
Now they are widening their attacks to include Greeks whose political orientation they do not agree with, such as the Communists and Civil War memorials I described in my second paragraph.  Women are another favourite target, most famously last year when two left-wing female politicians were attacked on live TV by Kassidiaris, a GD Member of Parliament.
According to the Human Rights Watch report attacks are on the rise, but the police do not do much about them.  This may be because many police officers support GD--I've seen figures estimating them at between 40% and 60% of the police force.
If you would like to read more about this, there is a detailed article in Pandora's Box, an overview of their last 33 years, and an entire blog about them.  I hope that the murder of the singer will open the eyes of some GD supporters who possibly did not realise how dangerous these people are.
Once again Greece is in international news headlines for all the wrong reasons.  Personally, as an expatriate I am growing increasingly afraid of living in Greece.  Will I be attacked by GD members in the street because I do not look Greek, or even because I wrote this blog entry?  The serpent's egg has hatched, I do not know where this will end.  The frightening rise in popularity of a neo-fascist party with swastika-like insignia, black shirts and other nazi trappings is unconscionable in a country that suffered so deeply at the hands of the German army during WWII.  God help us.

Cruelty to animals

Yet another incident of heinous, senseless cruelty to animals.  A dead dog was found by children and teachers on Friday morning in Amaliada, hanged from the school fence of the 3rd Junior High School.  It had probably been tortured first, as the wall of the school yard was covered in blood.  Warning: graphic photo. 
The crime is double: firstly to the poor dog, and secondly to shock the pupils and teachers as they arrived at school at the start of the school year.  The very public location suggests the perpetrator(s) were making some kind of a sick statement.
When I first came to Greece I was struck by the number of stray cats and dogs.  Many pet owners think it is unnatural to sterilise their pets, it goes against their nature etc.  But these same "animal lovers" then leave the unwanted kittens and puppies to die in cartons by the roadside, tied up in plastic bags left on the road to be run over, or dispose of them in other ways.
Incidents of poisoning are not uncommon.  Someone is annoyed by barking or mewing and leaves some poisoned meat lying around.  Death is slow and painful, and does not discriminate between strays and pets--in my old neighbourhood, a neighbour lost a beautiful pet dog to a poisoner.
Beasts of burden are overworked, beaten, left to stand in the hot sun for hours with the saddle or load strapped to their backs.  The same goes for those cute donkeys and ponies for tourist rides, and the horses who pull the carriages in some tourist areas.  Guard dogs are chained or locked up in yards, underfed and unprotected against the elements--one particularly cold winter a chained dog was found frozen to death.
Also, now with the financial crisis more and more grown pets are being dumped to fend for themselves.  I saw several elderly dogs roaming my old neighbourhood, legs stiff with arthritis, searching for food when they should have been pampered after years of affection and service.  Several years ago I found a younger dog with two broken fore legs which had knitted askew.  The vet fees must have been too much, so her "master" took the cheap way out and turned her out, still wearing her collar.  I tried to take her in but my landlady was adamantly against it and I ended up taking her to an animal shelter.  My son and I still remember her with guilt.
The weekly magazine with one of the Sunday newspapers has a page each week with stories of animals rescued from negligent owners, or plain stupid owners who leave their dogs to bake in a car with closed windows, or strays, with photos of animals in need of a loving home.  I've seen classified ads of owners who want to give away their pets, in some cases pedigreed (meaning expensive food and vet fees).  I guess at least they are trying to find homes for them, not just driving to an area far from their home and leaving the animal there so it can't return to them.  But I cannot understand how one can share one's life with a living creature for several years and then just abandon it.  I once found a very large tortoise in a dumpster.  Luckily it was on top of the rubbish, I heard it scrabbling and found a shop nearby to buy a zipped bag so I could transport it to a park and release it.  Was it so much trouble for the owner to do this if they got tired of caring for it, or to take it back to the countryside where it had been taken from?  This was a live animal, not potato peels.  If the rubbish had been collected it before I (or any other animal lover) happened to walk by, it would have been crushed to death by the compactor.
All these stories, and I have come across far too many of them over the years, pale before deliberate torture of a defenseless creature.  The dog at the beginning of this post looks small in the photo.  It would not have been able to put up much of a fight against its executioner(s).  I hope they are found, but there are so many crimes being committed against humans, such as old pensioners beaten to death during burglaries, or gagged and left to die, that this little dog is not likely to be high on the list of police priorities.
I have chosen to write about this incident before writing about the crimes against humans (which will come in another post) because I was so shocked when I saw it on the internet news today, and because it indicates the fabric of society is unravelling.  In the words of Gandhi, 'the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated'.  

Back to School

Today schools opened again in Greece, after nearly three months (!!!) of summer holidays.
The Greek Orthodox priest came to my son's school to bless the school, teachers and children.  So much for separation of Church and State, or freedom of religion.  Then the children were sent home.  No new books, not even a list of their stationery needs.  Luckily I only work part-time so I was home when he returned--imagine how parents in full-time employment manage this.
Children in our old neighbourhood did get their books today, so I hope it's just a matter of time before the books arrive at my son's school.  After all, they only had three months to get them ready...  I guess they started distribution at the more privileged northern suburbs and the books will eventually trickle down to the working-class south-western suburbs.  At least it looks as though there will be books this year, unlike two or three years ago, when children got CD-ROMs or were told to go online, download and print them.
I was just watching a brief report on TV, summarising the main changes implemented by 27 Ministers of Education in about 35 years.  Sometimes a Minister's successor from the same political party would cancel the previous decision.  A pupil who starts Senior High School cannot be certain the system will be the same when they graduate three years later.
You may recall my friend the teacher who was in limbo.  Today she was finally informed she will be teaching on a small island.  At least she still has a job, although a large chunk of her salary will have to go on rent, while her own flat will stand empty in Athens. Tonight she is travelling to her new posting to present herself at her new school, find accommodation, then return to Athens, pack and move as quickly as possible, as proper lessons will probably start on Monday.  But as I said, the Ministry of Education only had three months to get the lists of appointments ready.  Or did they return to work on 2nd September and then suddenly remember that they had to do this?

Teaching English in Greece

Sorry I haven't written for a while.  I had planned on writing something on Golden Dawn's disruption of a Civil War commemoration, had opened up half a dozen sources to quote, when someone in the family shut down my computer and the following morning I did not have the time to search for them all again, then life just got in the way.  I'm afraid they are likely to give me another opportunity to write soon.
Yesterday I went to a foreign language coursebook publishers' exhibition. In addition to keeping in touch with new books, attending talks and getting ideas for teaching, it is a great opportunity to meet old friends, trainees and colleagues.  I have been teaching English in Greece since my arrival in the early 1980s.  In 1990 I was Chairperson of TESOL Greece, a professional organisation for English teachers.  Since then I have been a teacher-trainer at CELT Athens, so I have come to know hundreds, perhaps thousands of English teachers.  It is one of the rewards of teaching to be remembered years later, to know one has made a positive impact on some lives.
Back to the exhibition yesterday, I was moved by several people commenting on my blog.  I had received several kind Facebook likes and comments, but had no idea other people were also reading it.  So this spurred me back to the keyboard after a week's hiatus.
What impressed me most at the book exhibition, as well as last week's ELT News forum, was the number of dedicated professionals giving up a precious weekend to develop professionally.  Most were English teachers, but a few stands also catered to the main other languages being taught in Greece: German, French, Spanish, Italian.  One publisher also displayed Russian and Chinese, the emerging languages in Greece due to sizeable Russian tourism and Chinese investments.
Alongside the publishers of course books were several stands by some of the most popular public examining bodies in Greece.  Certification of foreign language level is useful in Greece for employment, and knowledge of up to two foreign languages can earn extra salary points in the public sector.   Over a dozen public examining bodies for the English language are officially recognised by ASEP (please click on the first doc icon--this site is in Greek but the certificates and examining bodies are listed in English).
I was impressed by how large the field of language teaching has grown in Greece in the three decades I have been living here.  My earliest English teaching jobs in Japan and Greece were obtained on the strength of my first degree in English Literature--most people thought that being a native speaker of a language was enough to teach it.  Since then the more conscientious teachers and employers have realised the need for methodology training.  Many teachers attend language awareness courses to improve their command of English, and methodology courses to obtain certificates and diplomas in teaching, some even go on to Master's degrees, even though there is no guarantee this investment will result in higher income.  Some enlightened employers subsidise membership fees to TESOL for their teachers, realising they will get these returned in better teaching, but even when this is not the case teachers are willing to pay this from their small wages.  Forums, conferences and publishers' exhibitions are always crowded, some talks are standing-room-only.  Of course there are still some neighbourhood language institutes which employ young, inexperienced (i.e. low-paid) teachers without any methodology training, because in Greece people can still obtain an English teaching permit with a Proficiency certificate.  But as their pupils' examination results are understandably disappointing I hope that market forces will eventually drive them to change this if they want to compete against schools with better pass rates.
When my son was in third grade at a Greek state primary school, English was introduced as the first foreign language.  I believe that this now happens in first grade.  In fifth grade he was given the choice of German or French.  Any other languages have to be learnt outside the state school system, so every few blocks in every neighbourhood one can see private language institutes.  Some belong to larger franchised chains but most are still family businesses.  Greek children usually start with English, to give them a head start since until recently this wasn't taught in state schools until the third grade, and many parents believe it isn't taught well.  This is changing with the financial crisis, more parents are unable to pay the neighbourhood language institutes despite their lower prices and special offers such as second language free.  
This is just a fraction of the information I could share regarding teaching English in Greece.  If anyone is interested in this please leave a comment and I'll try to answer any questions.
Update on my previous post, Education Uncertainty.  My friend the English state school teacher is still waiting to know whether she will teach or not, and if so, where--I met her yesterday at the exhibition and there is no news yet.  The school year starts in three days...  

Education uncertainty

A friend of mine is a teacher at a state school.  After many years in the private sector she was appointed after sitting national examinations (meaning she demonstrated her own abilities, it was not through connexions).  Her first year was on a small island.  This is customary in Greece, where over 35% of the population live in Attica (basically, in Athens, Piraeus and their suburbs) so the main way of getting enough teachers and doctors to staff schools and hospitals in the provinces is to require them to do their first year there.  Since her return to Athens she has taught at three different schools in three years.  This is to be her fifth year.

Unfortunately, as part of the Troika-imposed requirement to reduce the large number of public sector workers, all "new" teachers who have worked fewer than five years in the State system will either be a. laid off, b. offered a position in the Provinces or c. be appointed to Athens/Piraeus again.  Two days ago the list of "new" teachers for the provinces came out.  Those on the list have less than a fortnight to go to the new town or island, find accommodation, return to Athens to pack, and move to their new post in time for the new school year.  Some of these teachers are likely to be married, with homes in Athens, who now have to leave behind their families and fork out additional rent in a new town, or uproot the entire family to resettle elsewhere.

My friend is not on the Provinces list.  So she still does not know whether she will have a job this year.  If she is unlucky, it is too late for her to look for a job at a private school.  If she is lucky she will teach again at a state school, but does not yet know where.  The school year starts in nine days, and daily attendance at their school is required from the beginning of the month for all teachers to prepare.  Thousands of teachers are not yet participating in this preparation.  How can anyone plan their lives this way?  Why does it take so long to make these lists?   Thousands of teachers and their families are in limbo, uncertain of their future.  

Oh, and just to keep things even more interesting, the teachers' union OLME have not yet decided whether to call a 48-hour strike, or an indefinite strike, starting the day after schools open.  Imagine being a parent, having to go to work, not knowing whether your children will be safe at school while you are working, or whether you need to make babysitting arrangements for them.  If you cannot afford a babysitter and have no grandparents or other relatives handy, these kids may be roaming the streets.  And of course, there will not be enough time to cover the year's syllabus if the strike drags on indefinitely.  Several years ago primary state school teachers were on strike for about six weeks.  Luckily at the time my son was in private school so he was not affected.  Then the financial crisis hit us too and we could no longer afford the private school.