Wednesday morning, Greek musician and anti-Fascist activist, Pavlos Fyssas, age 34, was stabbed to death during an altercation outside a cafe by a member of the neo-Nazi political party Golden Dawn.
Pavlos Fyssas, a 34-year-old hip-hop and rap singer described by colleagues as an anti-fascist activist, died early Wednesday from two stab wounds to the chest after leaving a cafe in Keratsini, a suburb of Piraeus.
Fyssas was able to identify his murderer before he lost consciousness.
The 45-year-old suspect was arrested, admitted to the killing and identified himself as a Golden Dawn member, police said. He has not been named in accordance with Greek law.
While the authorities cannot release the name it has been leaked to the public, along with his picture, and widely disseminated online in Greece.
The murderer is alleged to be the owner of the cafe where Fyssas was stabbed.
The Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has denounced the murder of Fyssas and the neo-Nazis.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said he will not let neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn "undermine" democracy.
"This government is determined not to let the descendants of the Nazis poison our social life or commit crimes," Mr Samaras said in a national TV address.
"This is not a time for internal disputes or tension. We all know our country is at an extremely critical point," he told Greeks in a televised addressed referring to the bankrupt nation's worst financial crisis in modern times.
"Any political differences should be resolved through democratic dialogue … not through violence, and even more, not through blood."
The Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos stated that Golden Dawn "should be dealt with as a criminal organization".
Thousands of mourners attended Fyssas' funeral in Athens today and protests over his death are growing widespread, and unfortunately, violent.
Video Transcript.
Newscaster: Just as Greece appeared to be calming down, a flare-up - clashes in Athens between left-wing groups and riot police. Stones were hurled, fires lit, and a bank and police station attacked. Tear gas and stun grenades were used to push protesters back.
They are the scenes that Greece has come to know so well, but this time the cause was different. It was not austerity that triggered this, but the murder of a left-wing musician by a member of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party. Tributes were left to Pavlos Fyssas, who was stabbed to death after an apparent altercation. Protests followed in cities throughout Greece.
Female Protester: We must take action. We are all in danger; our children and our dignity are in danger.
Male Protester: We have to stop them from entering our neighborhoods, our schools, the workplace. Together we must unite and get rid of them.
Newscaster: Police found Golden Dawn papers at the assailant’s home that he had tried to hide. The neo-Nazi party is frequently accused of vigilante attacks on immigrants, but this is the first time that someone has been killed, seemingly, for political reasons.
The Minister for Public Order says the Government will now consider new laws on armed gangs, implying Golden Dawn could be classified as a criminal group.
In Parliament there were angry exchanges, with the Party denying its role.
Golden Dawn’s Party Spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris: All of you in here are against us. You are all lying. Golden Dawn has done nothing at all - and I will shout it out loud - nothing to do with this unfortunate event…nothing whatsoever.
Newscaster: As the night wore on some arrests were made. There will now be huge pressure for the Government to clamp down on the neo-Nazis, and this anxious nation watches to see if a tragic crime will unleash a new wave of unrest.
"Pigs! Fascists! Murderers!" mourners chanted, the Reuters news agency reports...
Anti-fascist protests turned violent in several Greek cities Wednesday night, including the country's second-largest city of Thessaloniki and in Keratsini near the site of the stabbing...
In Keratsini, 130 people were detained during the clashes, with 34 of them later arrested. Scuffles broke out in the early Thursday outside Athens police headquarters where they had been taken.
Golden Dawn not only denies involvement in the murder, they actually deny being a neo-Nazi organization. However, its leader,
Nikolaos Michaloliakos, is a fascist of long-standing. At 16, he joined the
4th of August Party, a "radical Greek nationalist political party". He was also a member of the Greek Cypriot paramilitary organization
EOKA-B. He later joined the Greek Army, training as a commando, but lost his position after being arrested for involvement in yet another right-wing extremist group.
He was arrested again in July 1978 after he had become a member of a far-right extremist group, and sentenced to one year imprisonment in January 1979 for illegally carrying guns and explosives.[7][8] He was also dismissed from his position in the army.[2] After he was released, he launched the Chrysi Avgi (Greek for "Golden Dawn") magazine. The politics of the magazine were, at least initially, closely aligned with National Socialist beliefs.[7][8]
Michaloliakos is also a Holocaust denier.
Golden Dawn is not just some fringe group led by a violent nut who admires Adolf Hitler; it is the third most popular political party in Greece.
Earlier, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn's leader, called on all of Greece's political parties to "assume their responsibilities and not create a climate of civil war by giving a political character to a tragic event".
Few Greeks accept their claims of innocence. The organization is notorious for their violent attacks on immigrants (among others). It is considered
"Europe's most extreme far-right group."
More than 300 attacks – starting with the murder of a Bangladeshi immigrant in May 2011 – have been attributed to the openly racist organization whose meteoric ascent on the back of economic desperation has ensured it is now Greece's third-biggest party and fastest-growing political force.
Just last week members of Golden Dawn attacked a group of Communists.
Last week, thousands of Greeks protested in Athens after about 50 Golden Dawn members, wielding bats and crowbars, attacked members of the Communist Party as they hung posters for a youth festival in an Athens suburb, leaving nine people hospitalized with serious injuries.
Support for the group has actually increased in Greece over the last few years.
Recent opinion polls have shown it has the support of 15% of voters – almost double the figure it won in elections 14 months ago.
Golden Dawn’s popularity has climbed in political polls especially among a growing number of Greeks who are increasingly angered by record joblessness, a steady flow of immigrants into the country and the less-than-successful struggle by mainstream parties to mend the effects of a devastating recession.
Thankfully, protests against them are also on the rise.
Greek police have raided several Golden Dawn offices throughout the country in search of incriminating evidence linking them to these violent attacks. Others have called for the organization to be outlawed, but that might not be possible unless existing laws are changed.
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UPDATE from An Affirming Flame:
The murderer and Golden Dawn MP were photographed together, the MP with his arm around the man. Can't post the image directly because of DK's image rules, but see more at the link below. The Golden Dawn MP Barbarousis is on the left, the murderer Roupakias is on the right.
From the Greek Streets
From elsewhere on that site, a demonstrator loses his eye from a tear gas canister:
Police was shooting directly to the people’s heads the tear gas canisters with the special tear gas weapon, among the dozens antifa demonstration who were injured yesterday was one who was hit with tear gas canister in the eye. The doctors of Tzaneio operated him for 2.5 hours but they could not save his eye.
And, on a more positive note, after the massive antifa demonstrations last night, Golden Dawn abruptly cancelled their public events scheduled for today:
Golden Dawn leader Michaloliakos announced a few hours after the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas that next day he will give a speech in Nikaia (the local branch where the murderer Roupakias is member of) he invited all the Nazis to join him for the event. [...] However in early hours of the morning after the big antifa demonstrations that took place all over the country and attacked GD local branches everywhere, the event was cancelled, and vanished from their webpages.