Greek Riots Follow Decades-Old Pattern of Weakened Police

The violent clashes between Greek police and protesters sparked by the police’s fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy follows a pattern that has repeated since the 1970s, said John Sitilides, chairman of the Southeast Europe Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

The riots are fueled not by economic conditions but by decades-old communist and anarchist ideologies perpetuated since a student uprising helped oust Greece’s military dictatorship in 1974.

“Greek police and intelligence services, blamed for human rights abuses of the dictatorship, were utterly defanged,” said Sitilides, chairman of the Southeast Europe Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center.who also chairs the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute Advanced Area Studies Program for Greece & Cyprus. “The result was 27 years of terrorist acts that murdered 23 people, including five Americans, without a single individual arrested or prosecuted until 2002.”

Greece also maintains a policy of asylum at higher educational institutes, prohibiting Greek police from entering campuses and granting de facto protection from law enforcement to arsonists, vandals, criminals, and terrorists.

“Greek political leaders worry about comparisons to the hated colonels,” Sitilides said, “so they’re reluctant to order and actually carry out the decisive security actions essential to stop marauding rioters and to restore social order.”

**** John Sitilides, chairman of the Southeast Europe Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute Advanced Area Studies Program for Greece & Cyprus