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Anastasia Balezdrova

Left parties and immigrant organisations are preparing to make Athens a fascist city. This is the slogan of the events they will organise for 19 January when, according to the organisers, thousands of people from all over Greece are expected to come to Athens.

"They will arrive by buses, trains and ships and will fill the streets of Athens," said the municipal councillor from ANTARSIA party, Petros Constantinou, during the press conference held today in connection with the protest.

The organisers stress that the slogan "Out with the neo-Nazis – No to the concentration camps - Citizenship for all children" unites thousands of people against the government policies that give ground to neo-Nazi organisations like Golden Dawn.

Petros Constantinou took advantage of the opportunity to subject to violent criticism the Greek government and the Minister of Public Order and Citizens Protection, Nikos Dendias. "We want to completely isolate Golden Dawn and stop the actions of its violent groups that began after the elections. Minister Dendias is concealing them. He says he is against illegality and yet he says nothing about the attacks on immigrants in the area of ​​Agios Panteleimonas."

Then, without an apparent connection with the main issue of the press conference, he criticised in a very definite way the government's decision to break up the anarchist communes in Villa Amalia and the building known as Villa Maria Callas, where the opera diva had lived for several years.

The reaction of Dimitris Tsoukalas from SYRIZA was similar. He opposed the police actions, "which are directed against buildings where intellectual discussions take place. Many important artists, bands and other cultural figures came out from there. It is not true that the buildings are run-down. On the contrary, the young people have created libraries and other facilities in them," he said.

The deputy took the baton too and made attacks against the police, whose actions he called an "outrage against immigrants." "We want another Athens, where the neo-Nazis have no place," he said in conclusion.

Representatives of immigrant organisations described their daily life as full of attacks on their compatriots from groups of men wearing black shirts. "We are not to blame for the economic crisis. It is not our names that are on the "Lagarde List." We work and pay everything we have to pay," said Loretta Macaulay from the United African Women Organisation.

The events on 19 January will begin at 11 o’clock in front of Embros Theatre where children of immigrants will present a play. There will be two protest meetings: one in Omonia Square at 2 pm and another one in Syntagma Square at 4 pm. Concerts of over 20 groups and individual performers will take place in parallel. According to the organisers, similar protest meetings will be held in many European countries the same day as well as in New York and Chicago in the United States.

At the same time, the confrontation between New Democracy and SYRIZA in connection with the anarchist communes continues. Today, the radical left deputy Evangelos Theodoropoulos said he was an anarchist, thus triggering another round in the dispute between the two parties. Nine of the youths who were captured yesterday in Villa Callas have been charged and they are expected to testify on Saturday. About 100 people gathered to support them in front of the police headquarters in Athens whereas leftist students began a two-day occupation of the University of Economics in protest.