Sunday 9 August 2009

Drugs abusers and migrants - just the same in Greece?

Basically if you think about it, it is strange. Yesterday's headlines in one of the few English editions of a national newspaper states that on Saturday police continued to clean up the centre of Athens removing drug addicts and migrants from a deserted hotel - the Appollon Hotel - in the city centre. I find it a bit strange as if they were talking about one and the same - drug addicts and migrants? These are very dangerous correlations for a country like Greece where xenophobia is often rumoured about in a more general sense.
What makes this story even worse, if you remove 100 - 150 drugs addicts and migrants what do you do with them? In most European countries such people would be taken care of by the social services in one manner or another. What happened in Saturday to these individuals in Greece? The story relates that one was arrested and the fate of the others is unknown?
So what do the authorities think is going to happen to these 100 - 150 minus one. Where are they going to go? What is going to happen to the drug addicts now on the street and not in some deserted hotel? I feel such Greek solutions is only a means of pushing the social problems along on front of us. These, you can bet, will come back to haunt Greek society - maybe not tomorrow but they will come back.

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