The Greeks get a wake-up call

The Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS), an independent Greek think-tank, has just published two special editorial reports which can be accessed here following the recent riots by Muslims in the Greek capital, Athens.

Beginning May 21 and continuing on May 22, around 2,000 mostly illegal Muslim immigrants (reportedly from Afghanistan and Pakistan) clashed with police in the centre of Athens. The police fired tear gas and stun grenades; 14 people were injured and 46 arrested. The riots started over the alleged defacing of a Koran by a Greek policeman following an identity check. A recent wave of illegal immigration has led to an influx of Muslims living in dilapidated parts of central Athens.

The RIEAS report titled, “Never say we didn’t tell you….” describes the gravity of the situation now facing the Greeks:

The scenes in downtown Athens on May 22 – a date already marked by those who follow events with a more sombre eye as the beginning of something extremely dangerous – were unprecedented.......Suddenly, the Greek government has been made brutally aware that the uncontrolled entry of illegal immigrants into the country, and the formation of large blocks of culturally alien populations in the middle of Greek society, carries implications that cannot, and won't be, addressed successfully by the jargon of political correctness and the demands of overarching foreign structures impervious to common sense, not to mention the iron lessons of history.

Previously, RIEAS had warned readers about the looming Islamic extremist terrorist threat in Greece and the inability of the authorities to do anything about it:

There is little evidence, if any, that Greek authorities give the requisite attention to the critical question of the possibility of illegal immigration bringing into Greece Islamic "sleeper" terrorists or, indeed, spawning locally resident disgruntled populations that could engender future terror attacks against Christian Greece. The myth [of Greek-Arab-Islam friendship] plays an important role in this complacent attitude. Yet, real threats hardly evolve along the lines of what makes one feel good and helps him avoid dark thoughts about the future.

The report continues rather pessimistically:

On May 22, we crossed a critical threshold. The Muslim riot, couched on the kind of belligerent religious rhetoric we thought, until now, it was the unenviable privilege of other European lands grappling with the challenge of hostile Islam, is a deafening warning to the government and the people of this country.

Greece has just had her wake-up call. Let's see if she rises as she must to do what it takes to contain and defeat the almost inevitable “next phase.” Our estimate, in this respect, is not optimistic.

In another articled titled, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses …” RIEAS describes the broader geopolitical and security concerns caused by the recent wave of illegal immigration and the recent riots:

With her eastern Aegean islands under threat from a swelling wave of Asian undocumented aliens arriving with the help of Turkish human traffickers – and with Turkey doing little, if anything, to honour bilateral agreements to control illegal immigration – the Greek government has finally announced it will deploy the armed forces next to shorthanded police and coast guards in trying to reduce illegal arrivals.

Illegal immigration is quickly shaping into the most critical national security threat of today, closely related, as a subsidiary part, to the long-simmering crisis whipped up by Turkey's neo-Ottoman expansionism and constant saber rattling in the Aegean. Greek governments were slow to appreciate the broader picture.

Caught in unilateral “good neighbourly relations” mentalities toward Ankara, in the absence of a more focused, cohesive, and realistic approach to Turkish belligerence, they are now watching, largely impotent, as successive waves of Asians and Africans, pushed relentlessly forward by Turkish human trafficking rings, arrive at the country's doorstep uninvited but demanding, nevertheless, their “human rights” from a country that she, herself, faces enormous economic, political, and social problems even without hundreds of thousands beating down her gates.

Source: RIEAS, Antipodes