ATHENS – The neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn, which won almost 7 percent of the vote in the stalemated May 6 elections and stands poised to again win seats in Parliament at the critical June 17 polls, has denied any role in a spate of immigrant beatings, although it has campaigned on ridding Greece of virtually all migrants, and some of its leading members – including the daughter of its leader – were arrested in a recent assault.
Golden Dawn officials said the attacks were part of a media and police conspiracy against them so that it wouldn’t be elected again. “Golden Dawn, like we have said before, denies any involvement with incidents of violence and condemns the police’s role in the state mechanism’s fight against our party,” it said in a statement that came after the arrest of six people in the beating of a Pakistani immigrant near a Golden Dawn motorcycle rally. They included Ilias Panagiotaros and Giannis Vouldis, Members of Parliament elected last month, who served only several hours before the body was dissolved to make way for this month’s polls. Also arrested was the daughter of Golden Dawn chief Nikos Mihaloliakos, Ourania Mihaloliako, but they were all released and no charges pressed. Police did not explain why.
Police said the assault happened on the night of June 2 in the Tavros area of Athens when a group of bikers taking part in a Golden Dawn rally moving through Athens attacked and injured the 31-year-old Pakistani national who happened to be walking past. It was similar to other recent assaults on Metro trains by large groups of people believed to be Golden Dawn members who gang up on lone immigrants, as many as 30 assailants jumping one person. In the Tavros assault, members of the Delta motorcycle unit arrived on scene soon after the assailants escaped. The suspects were not caught but police soon after intercepted another group from the same rally, who tried to attack another group of migrants.
Golden Dawn has been holding large motorcycle rallies, its members waving its Swastika-like ancient Greek symbol and brandishing Greek flags. The group has a history of assaulting immigrants. As it rose in polls before the May 6 elections on the back of its anti-immigrant vehemence, a brief coalition government shared by the New Democracy Conservatives and PASOK Socialists who supported the austerity measures responded by cleaning out the Omonia Square area of Athens and other neighborhoods of illegal immigrants and began sending them to detention camps.
The Golden Dawn statement added that, “After the incident in the Kipseli area, where police following state orders broke up a perfectly legal Golden Dawn pre-election informational rally, so too yesterday did they arrest party members, because of an incident involving an attack on some immigrant, that took place kilometers away from where our members were. We could of course have had nothing to do with the incident, if for no other reason but the simple fact that our party members were nowhere near it,” the party said, although police clearly identified the assailants as coming out of the Golden Dawn rally.
The party skyrocketed from nowhere to a surprise seventh-place showing in the first elections on the back of an anti-Semitic, Nazi-style propaganda campaign promising to rid Greece of immigrants they accused of a rise in crime and as its leader promised to fight the austerity measures that have worsened a deep recession and put 21.7 percent of Greeks out of work. Its popularity has begun to drop, however, in the wake of the assaults Mihaloliakos’ statement that the Holocaust of Jews by the Nazis was fabricated and never happened.
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