More controversial news from Greece since earlier this week the government majority MPs voted on a widescale education reform. Potentially writing off around 30% of the student body and placing stricter limits to young students achieving university education, the lawmakers also decided on a permanent police presence inside the campuses. Disguised as ‘campus police’, this security force will answer to the police minister instead of the university faculty, have rights of arrest, calling reinforcements and even the riot police without permission from the university authorities. Misinformation by the Oxford-schooled minister for education regarding police role in the esteemed university forced Oxford to issue a statement voicing their concern over academic liberty in Greece. Indicative offenses the campus police can proceed to an arrest range from the reasonable (ie. Damaging property, graffiti etc) to Orwelliesque like handing out leaflets or “noise disturbance”. More scandalously, the funding for this campus police will come out of ELKE, a joint university fund reserved for university research.
The undeclared war between the government and parties of the opposition over the issue of universities has been waging for over a year now. The co-author of the bill, Police Minister Michalis Chysohoidis has accused the opposing academic authorities to be operating under some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, and the Prime Minister declared that “the police will bring democracy in the universities”. A student uprising during the junta that left at least 26 people dead when tanks busted through campus gates on November 17th, 1973 stood as reason for the restored democracy to issue the so-called “university asylum law”: that no state force could enter campus grounds unless serious crimes were being committed or else invited by the university authorities.
The government narrative paints Greek universities to be completely lawless grounds. The narrative sometimes points to petty crime happening in campuses like selling contraband items, weed etc while others to assaults from unknown individuals on faculty. A significant such attack, the rector of the Economic University of Athens was forced to pose for a photo with a sign across his chest writing “I support squats”. However, professors have spoken out against the bill pointing towards statistics, both from police themselves and independent actors, showing that criminality in Greek universities is as limited as in the rest of the developed world. Opposition MPs have laid blame on the sorry state of the Greek universities primarily to the government funded and backed student union DAP-NDFK: the student union has been regularly accused of hiring thugs to break up student elections, of selling test answers to students, of buying test scores for students from government-inclined professors, of hosting parties with certain ‘benefits’ (and not a few cases of rape) inside campus grounds for recruitment efforts, and of generally being sexist fratboys. The opposition states that the government utilizes the pandemic and strict home orders for health purposes to pass as many unpopular laws as it can. Its indicative that right before this bill reached the parliament there was a lot of talk for issuing a curfew after 6 in the afternoon to combat the pandemic. Similarly, important dates for the student movement in Greece like 17th of November and 6th of December were declared extremely dangerous for public health. In the former case Michalis Chysohoidis, the Police Minister, imposed a ban on public congregations of more than 4 people.
At the same time when Greek media over-sensationalize police brutality in neighboring Turkey as a sign of increasing discontent for the Erdogan government, native police brutality seems to go significantly under reported. On the bill’s ramification day, students throughout the country took to the streets and were faced with significant violence from the police. In one instance a policeman allegedly crushed a student’s jaw with a fire extinguisher while 25 detainees were taken to the hospital with fractured skulls before taken to the police station to be processed. Earlier this year MPs of the opposition have repeatedly reported being witnesses to police violence against citizens and journalists, while an MP and Speaker of the House reported being assaulted by the police herself. On November 17th 2020, MPs were also assaulted by police during the march to commemorate the fall of the military junta of 1967-1974. On the same time the special guard’s union speaker tweeted that a “significant part of Greek society is ailing and needs to be cured” eerily rehashing junta rhetoric.
Making the situation more complicated, MPs for the opposition produced documents from Wikileaks where the US Ambassador in Athens in 2008, Daniel Speckhard, outlined US-backed reforms for Greece’s education system and the need to “police the overly politicized Greek students.” The documents produced demonstrate alleged pressures by the US government on the Greek government 13 years before a bill with the entirety of the suggestions made its way to the parliament. The government has declined to comment on the allegations of giving in to foreign pressures on the matter of policing Greek universities.