An elected mayor in Northern Greece wants to build a wall around a Roma settlement even if it is illegal and against the Constitution and no public servant, no matter how racist one is could ever isolate a group of the country’s own citizens.
Mayor of Thermaikos in Central Macedonia, Giorgos Tsamaslis, said “if legality is no adhered, I tell you, I will go a little further, knowing that it is beyond boundaries and legality, but i will do it, I will raise a wall there, so that no one go into this area.”
Tsamaslis was responding to a journalist’s question about the Roma of the settlement burning tires.
“The area is also suffering from theft. They cannot do what they want.They will find me against them,” the mayor said.
Reaction came first of all by the Special Secretary for the Social Integration of the Roma, Aikaterini Gantziou. She expressed her “deep concern” about the rise of “the rhetoric of hatred against the Roma”, stressing that “continuous references by political figures and those already elected in Local Government to both in the mass media and in social media, incite racist hatred and consolidate the division among the citizens of the state.”
Others condemned the mayor’s “far-right rhetoric” and “racist statements” and urge him to work-out an organized plan against delinquency and gangs instead of proceed with authoritarian practices that violate the core of the Constitution and the fundamental conventions of human rights, human dignity and rights.
According to local media seleo, Mayor Tsamaslis is a former New Democracy official.
Working out a plan to deal with Roma ..life style..shall we call it, will never work.Some Roma peoples get away with crimes and behaviour that non Roma do not,would not.Some live mostly outside of the law and make non Roma peoples lives unbearable.Non Roma peoples have rights,human rights,human dignity as well and those are being violated by some Roma who commit many crimes on a daily basis and go unpunished and have done so for very many years.If non Roma people brought up their children and exposed them to the..life style..that some Roma do then the police and social services would be at their door and the children would be taken away.Two sets of laws,one for Roma peoples,one for non Roma,thats not correct is it.When they abide by the law, respect the law and live like good upstanding citizens then they will be treated equally as such.