Athens, 07.10.2020
On 7th October 2020 outside of the Appeal Court in Alexandras Boulevard in Athens, Greece the political party "Golden Dawn" convicted as a criminal organisation. The party, which established in 1980, had a neo-Nazi and nationalistic ideology. The hate-motivated assaults started as early as 1990s but after the elections of May 2012, where for the first time the party had Parliamentary representation, the assaults increased against immigrants, refugees but also anarchists and left-wing labor-union members.
During the years of the of the refugee crisis and financial distress in the Greek society, members of the party murdered immigrants including Shehzad Luqman in 2013 and numerous others attacks towards them, with various causes like the beating of documented. The last murder, the one that pushed the investigation against Golden Dawn, happened on 17th September 2013, when another member of the party, Giorgos Roupakias, killed a prominent figure of the underground greek hip hop scene, Pavlos "Killah P" Fyssas.
On the day of the conviction at the Appeal Court around 20.000 to 30.000 people gathered to protest against Golden Dawn including students, people from left-winged parties, artists and Antifascists. The exact moment the ruling of the court became known to all the people outside of the court, Riot Unit of the Greek Police (MAT), threw tear gas and stunt grenades to the cheering crowd. Water canon was also employed against them. The gathered people scattered to the nearby intersected roads while Anarchists and Antifascists, started to form roadblocks utilising garbage bins and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the police.
