Chris Jones: Greece's Evolving Social Crisis: Black Shirt Fascists!

Sunday October 7 was a day of mixed emotions. First there was coming to terms with seeing black shirted fascists marching along the water front in Samos Town. When I first came here in 1995, I could never ever imagined such an event taking place on Samos. On Sunday it happened. But, there was also relief that the Golden Dawn (GD) presence was so small. I counted 35 in their ranks, of whom half appeared to be from outside Samos. They were the ones getting them sorted out in ranks of 3 in the car park, before they marched, and leading the chants. The others may have been from Samos, but none were recognized by those we were with, although later I was told by a close friend who lives and works in the town that she recognized 3 police men from Samos among the GD marchers. I think there were 3 or 4 women while the rest were men, mostly in their 20s and 30s dressed in jeans and black T shirts. Most of them seemed to be carrying a flag, lots of Greek and some Golden Dawn flags, which I supposed helped disguise their small turn out. GD called for the demonstration and had publicly invited all Greek Samians to protest against the re-opening and refurbishing of the Detention Center that had only been built around 8 years ago, but had been closed for some years as the flow of refugees moved to the land border to the north between Greece and Turkey and away from islands such as Samos, Lesbos and Chios. But as the land border has been hardened into a death trap for those who dare, so the older routes to Samos have re-opened. By the end of September, the cells across a number of police stations on the island were shamefully crammed with up to 9 adults living in rooms of less than 15 sq meters. Many of these recently arrived refugees, included significant numbers of young children. In the middle of September I went with a friend to take some food and drink to 8 Algerian refugees locked up in Karlovassi police station and being kept inside a single room 24/7 at a time when daytime temperatures were still very high.