Nikos Sotirakopoulos
The EU is usually the first to moralise about human rights and democracy, but not when it comes to Greece.
The European Union (EU), we have long been told, is an uncompromising champion of human rights, supporting them with all possible means, from diplomatic measures to military action against sovereign states. Amid all this rhetoric, however, there is an ever-larger elephant growing in the room, namely the quasi-police state that is being established within the EU itself in recent years: Greece.
The EU has long both moralised about, and meddled in, the affairs of other countries in the name of human rights. The ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Serbia in 1999 is a good example. And the liberal elites in Brussels don’t hesitate to stick their noses into the business of non-members like Russia and Belarus, for real or alleged violations of political freedoms and freedom of press. Even Cuba, on the other side of the world, has not escaped from the EU’s moral crusade on human rights. But the EU’s transformation of Greece into a quasi-police state puts paid to its supposedly unequivocal advocacy of human rights and political freedoms.
Such a claim may raise some people’s eyebrows. A quasi-police state? In the EU? In 2012? This must just be scaremongering by a super-sensitive leftist, right? Well, no, would be my answer. This is an apt description of the harsh reality that Greece is facing since it came under the custody of the ‘troika’ of the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Here are some key facts about the situation on the ground in Greece at the moment: (more on spiked-online.com)
