It’s been two years since the Golden Dawn trial kicked off
Here’s why you should care.
Since the beginning of last year when we launched AthensLive, you’ve seen us focusing on Golden Dawn (GD) and it’s trial. But why do we think it has such importance? If this is the first time you hear about the case, this video by Markus Kowalski is a good intro.
To put it blatantly, fascism is on the rise all around the first world, so this makes it an international issue. To put it more technically, it’s a dynamic story that depicts the way neo-Nazi organizations operate in Europe; it proves their connections with organized crime, the deep state and of course, not least, the state itself.
When our reporter Elvira Krithari wrote a follow up on the trial, a Greek professor of political sciences told her: “The trial is also important for postwar Europe in general, where political parties — even extremist ones — do not usually exceed the constitutional and democratic framework,” and since the Greek Constitution forbids banning any political party, it is up to the judges to prove that GD is a criminal organisation. The consequences of this decision will have effects across Europe as well as in Greece.
Currently the trial is in it’s 146th Hearing at the Women’s Wing in Korydallos prison. April 20 marked two years since the beginning of the high profile trial. The GD’s members facing court were arrested in 2013 following the murder of Greek antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in Keratsini, an event that marked the climax of a wave of violent assaults against leftists and immigrants attributed to members of the party.
Why is it important?
GD is one of the most fundamentalist neo-Nazi organizations in Europe. Its members do not hesitate to publicly humiliate anyone they consider to be an ideological adversary or inferior. They assault migrant worker communities such as Egyptian fishermen and Pakistani field workers with merciless violence. Greek Communist party activists, leftists and anarchists receive the same treatment. They are capable of murder in cold blood, as demonstrated by the brutal murder of Pakistani migrant worker Luqman Shahzad in central Athens in January 2013 and that of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas in September of the same year. After these two murders the Greek state implemented a crackdown on the organization.
In the Greek version of the popular reality show ‘Survivor’, with viewing figures about 80%, there is a Greek-Chinese contestant. Last night, while we were watching the show with some friends, one of us remembered a Greek fascist punk song that included the lyrics «Skinhead Skinhead στον δρόμο δυνατά — βρίσκω κινέζους και τους σπάω τα μαγαζιά». It translates to “Skinhead skinhead be strong on the streets — find some Chinese and break their shops”.
While this might appear unrelated, the video features Greek Nazis are partying with German Nazis who are under investigation by the German security services.
The release of the video of a neo-Nazi rock concert in 2005 attended by the leadership of Golden Dawn stole the headlines a few months ago in Greece. The video is disturbing. And it’s even more disturbing that the neo-Nazi rock concert took place in 2005 and was attended by the leadership of Golden Dawn.
The trial of GD has the unique characteristic — of note on a European level as well — that the parliamentary team, the elected members of a political party, are standing trial on charges of belonging to and running a criminal organization. The entire group who were members of parliament before September 2013 is currently on trial and Greece’s parliament treats them as equals on a parliamentary level. Do you know any other European party who is both elected and also on trial? I don’t.
The fact that the biggest Greek neo-Nazi organization was elected to the parliament by capitalizing on the financial crisis, with the political support of mainstream media and the cover of the Greek police, is also unique. GD operated from within the parliament, under a cloak of a democratically elected political party until September 2013 when they got arrested.
The prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos argued in a 700-page brief drafted after reviewing the case that a total of 69 of the 85 members of GD originally accused of criminal offenses should stand before a court and that every member of the party’s parliamentary group belongs or belonged to the “hard core” of GD, a “criminal organization” that operated “under the party’s cloak.”
But the biggest paradox in this story is that GD, a small group of political outsiders — with such a ridiculous repertoire — in a few years they managed to transform themselves from an underground gang to a political party with half a million supporters. And now they are on trial for constituting a criminal organization. Their questionable transition in the Greek political scene leads to a unique phenomenon that sparks questions about the nature of their party and how they gained considerable power in both the ballot boxes and on the streets.
GD has been engaged in criminal activities since 1988. And right now 18 party MPs elected in 2012 stand trial, together with another 52 party officials and members on a wide range of charges, including operating a criminal organization and several other charges of murder and assault. One of their first leaders called “Periandros” was convicted individually in 1998, while the authorities left the overall activity of the organization out of the investigations.
Luna Svarrer talked to the French-Greek journalist Angélique Kourounis who has followed GD since the 1980s. With her documentary ‘Golden Dawn — A Personal Affair’ she managed to get into members’ houses, knowing that she, herself, would become one of their targets. The footage shows not only the violent face of the party and it’s militaristic organizational structure, but also the diversity found in GD’s support base. The film depicts ordinary people, citizens who could be your next door neighbor, many of whom have been left struggling to make ends meet and feeling abandoned and betrayed by the political elite and Greece’s traditional ruling parties.
While Kourounis’ documentary gives us insights into the nature of GD the trial is not recorded with any technical means. The real-time broadcast of the trial on social media is possible thanks to Golden Dawn Watch — a trial watchdog that has been monitoring proceedings since the beginning and Jail Golden Dawn a group of lawyers who are part of the trial’s civil action. Here you can find the session — by — session monitoring in English.
But despite Golden Dawn’s Watch monitoring the problem remains. We will have no official archive from the courts hearings. Only photos are allowed and the coverage by the Greek media is minimal.
Even though the leaders of GD, when they were arrested, wanted everything to be broadcast live so “everyone can hear and see the truth” finally they denied the TV and radio coverage of the trial. The Trial of 17 Noemvri, Greece’s notorious far-left terrorist group was recorded on audio tape and back in 1989, the Koskotas trial — a major corruption trial — was broadcast live on Television. Fortunately smartphones now enable us to publish the actions of GD outside the courtroom. The video below shows MP Yiannis Lagos and other party members who are on trial, invading a Greek school where refugee children are about to enroll. Think of this video as evidence that will be used for their conviction.
The trial will be completed during 2018. This length of time (3 years minimum) is typical for cases such as neo-Nazi organizations and it’s also common in other cases in Europe (see the NSU trial in Germany) due to the complexity of the cases (many victims, aliens, hundreds of witnesses, recorded conversations, etc.) The complexity of the numerous cases is also due to the long-term tolerance of these organizations by the state and the police. Unlike the neo-Nazi group that killed members of the Roma minority in Hungary (trial 2011–2013) and the NSU undergoing trial in Germany, GD enjoys a paradoxical institutional legitimization.
In the European parliament (where they also have elected representation) every other far-right party has refused to cooperate with them. They are isolated in a group of 4 MPs (three GD MPs and the German Udo Voigt). The European parliament is also trying to cut the funding of this group, just as the Greek Parliament did in 2014. Four million euros of Greece’s parliament budget has been withheld under the rule of law and will remain withheld until the trial is over.
So far, the indictments have been proven during the procedure. Immigrant victims of GD, antifascists that have been attacked have one thing in common; they were attacked under an organized plan of GD to occupy social ‘Lebensraum’ and to dissipate any reaction against them.
All the above reasons, I think, state the obvious. That the GD Trial is an issue you should care about and it’s a developing story that if you know it correctly, you can persuade others that fascism can go where it belongs, to the trash can of history.
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