When immigrant workers from Bangladesh demanded their wages after going unpaid for six months, in Manolada, Greece, their supervisors shot at them. Over 20 were injured and had to be treated in hospital.
x-pressed reports that police are going into the hospital to arrest and deport them, and journalists are being chased off the farm when trying to cover the story.
The working conditions on the strawberry farm are compared to modern slavery, and it’s not the first time Manolada made the news with violent attacks against non-Greeks: Last year, a man’s head was jammed in the window of a car and he was dragged along for a kilometer as Ekathermini reports.
Eleftherotypia English quotes Justice Minister Antonis Roupakiotis: “The barbarous attack … conjures up images of a slavery-based South that have no place in our country,”
This is not my country tracks the violence back to Golden Dawn and their racist and xenophobic politics and actions:
We have seen the rising xenophobia and racist rhetoric sweeping the country. It has become so commonplace to hear or read about foreigners being “filth”, “sun-human” “invaders”, “scum” that people are seeing them as such. The rise of Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) has given racism and xenophobia a voice. A legitimacy. We have an “MP” that calls immigrants “sub-human” sitting on the Council of Europe’s Anti-discrimination committee !
For more on this story, see Asteris Masouras Storify and Bloodstrawberries, a blog set up to cover the story. English content will come soon.
