Five Greek anti-vaxxers were arrested after they stormed a high school in the town of Aeginio in northern Greece and put handcuffs on the headmaster accusing him of enforcing “unconstitutional” measures against Covid.
The unprecedented incident carried out by members of the self-proclaimed “Guardians of the Constitution” group has been condemned by the Minister of Citizen Protection Takis Theodorikakos who said: “Such behaviors are provocative and unacceptable and the Police should not allow their recurrence.”
The group has created several pages on Facebook to circulate anti-vaxxer content and videos with nationalist rhetoric.
According to reports in local media, up to a dozen members of the group confronted the headmaster at 08.00 on Friday morning. They handcuffed him, forcibly put him in one of their cars and dragged him to the local police station. They asked police officers to arrest him for “violating the Greek constitution.”
Anti-vaxxers have “reached a level of perfect absurdity”
Instead, the police arrested the anti-vaxxers and freed the headmaster.
According to the same reports, the group which is mainly active in northern Greece, had recently threatened the headmaster and teaching staff who reported their harassment to the police.
“We have reached a level of perfect absurdity. People breaking the law are arresting a Greek citizen and bringing him to the police,” Anastasios Manolas, a local mayor, told Skai.
He said the school principal resisted his “arrest” and suffered bruises on his hands.
In another highly publicized incident in September, a 37-year old anti-vaxxer father in a Thessaloniki suburb assaulted his son’s female school principal for asking for the unvaccinated child’s self-test results before allowing him to enter school premises.
Ioannis Sarigiannidis, who is a Covid denier, reportedly pushed the principal hard and prevented the other kids from entering the schoolyard after she asked for the child’s rapid test results, as Greek law requires.
The anti-vaccination cohort is relatively numerous in Greece, where polls show that almost one in four Greeks refuse the vaccination, are scared, or simply don’t believe the pandemic is real.
In the first weeks of September, several demonstrations against the vaccination have been organized in major Greek cities, with thousands of people shouting “fake news” slogans and sporadically even clashing with police forces.
The Greek anti-vaxxers are being held at the local police station:
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