Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

ATHENS, Greece – They descended by the hundreds – black-shirted, bat-wielding youths chasing down dark-skinned immigrants through the streets of Athens and beating them senseless in an unprecedented show of force by Greece's far-right extremists. In Greece, alarm is rising that the twin crises of financial meltdown and soaring illegal immigration are creating the conditions for a right-wing rise.

Even as Greece founders under mountains of debt, illegal immigrants have been streaming into the country across the Turkish border, turning Greece into the migrant world's gateway to Europe. Last year, Greece accounted for 90 percent of the bloc's detected illegal border crossings, compared to 75 percent in 2009.

The UNHCR and Muslim groups say hate crimes have risen sharply, although police do not have hard numbers.

The xenophobic rage exploded in May, when youths rampaged through a heavily immigrant neighborhood in broad daylight, knifing and beating foreigners. The attacks left at least 25 people hospitalized with stab wounds or severe beatings. Athens has since suffered a spate of hate attacks by far-rightists.

Immigrants testify to the growing atmosphere of hostility.

"I receive threats all the time," Naim Elgandour, the Egyptian- born head of the Muslim Association of Greece, said in an interview.

"Things have gotten much worse lately. It's an alarm bell from the rest for Europe," he said. "There may be 5,000 hard-core extremists in Athens, but they are gaining sympathy and tolerance by the day."

Aristotle Kallis, a professor of modern history at Lancaster University in Britain, said that Greek extremists are losing the stigma of being associated with the 1967-74 far-right dictatorship and are becoming more similar to other European groups by sharing ideas and methods on the Internet.

"Since the 1990s, Greek nationalism has mutated quite substantially," Kallis wrote in an email to the AP, warning of a broader European rise in bigotry.

"We are ... becoming complacent about a wider, deep and dangerous prejudice against immigrants that is spreading well beyond the constituency of the conventional far-right."