James Vassilopoulos
Is this the way to "celebrate humanity": to evict Roma families from where they have been living for 30 years in order to build car parks? To allow poor safety to claim the lives of 13 workers? To launch a major attack on civil liberties? To launch a new austerity drive? Yet all this has been done in Greece's preparations for the 2004 Olympic Games.
Even before the games start, the hype surrounding them is enough to blow people away. "You can speak any language, come from any country, represent any race, follow any religion and still compete on an equal footing", Kevin Gosper, current Australian member of the International Olympic Committee, told the August 9 Sydney Morning Herald. (Gosper, an ex-boss of Shell Australia, was the one who pushed aside another girl to ensure his daughter had a run with the Olympic torch fours years ago.)
But nations hardly compete in these games on an equal footing. In the developed countries, athletes have access to the best training facilities, equipment and use the latest scientific knowledge to vastly improve their chances of winning medals. To make it even more unequal, the rich countries steal athletes from poor countries. During the last Olympics, Spain did this to Cuba.
"It is absolutely unfair that the rich countries — based on their economic capacity, offers of scholarships or gifts, conditions of life — take away sporting talents of the poor nations, just as they rob scientific brains", said a Cuban Olympic official.
Racism against the Roma
What impact will the Olympics have on the people of Greece? An Amnesty International report documents the poor treatment of a group of Roma families who were evicted from homes near the construction site of the Olympic stadium. An agreement between the mayor of Maroussi, Panagiotis Tzanikos, and the representative of the 136 Roma people, Stelios Kalamiotis, stated that the Roma would agree to reallocate from where they have been living for 30 years, on the condition that they receive rent subsidies for new accommodation. They have been moved so a parking lot can be built. The mayor has in practice reneged on the deal by moving the Roma people but not fully subsidising the rent in the new houses.
There are 100,000 Roma without decent housing in Greece. The Roma often live in squalid, 19th century-type conditions. Malcolm Brabant from the BBC describes the situation of the Roma at the outlying suburb of Aspropyrgos: "Just a 20-minute drive from Athens' unfinished Olympic stadium, Roma children play in the twilight, splashing through filthy puddles with make shift chariots. This is their back yard — a stinking rubbish tip on the outskirts of Aspropyrgos, the dirtiest, most polluted, smog swamped suburb in all of Athens."
Here families live in plastic-sided shelters, with no supply of clean water and electricity diverted from the industrial power lines overhead. Ioanna Aristopoulou says that "the kids are getting sick. Even dogs and chickens have homes. The politicians don't care about us, and yet they want our votes."
Panayote Dimitras is head of the human rights organisation Greek Helsinki Monitor: "You have racist mayors, racist neighbourhood associations, who object to having the Roma next door. And the central government does not have the will to impose this program."
Police state
Athens has been turned into a police state with more surveillance than your typical episode of the reality television show, Big Brother. Sixteen hundred surveillance cameras are now operational in Athens and a further 100 are in the port city of Pireaus. The cameras will stay after the Olympics and they are expected to produce 10,000 photos of suspects by 2006.
There will be 70,000 troops and police officers on duty, including foreign troops and spies from the US, Israel and Spain. Fifty-one warships will be in the area. There will be an arsenal of Patriot missiles and AWACS planes.
The total security bill is likely to be greater than US$1.6 billion — four times the amount that was spent on security for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. And, to make visitors feel really safe, a zeppelin in the sky will act like a giant eye. The zeppelin has been hired from the San Diego-based Science Applications International Corporation, on a four-month contract at a cost of $3.2 million per month.
At the beginning of August, Athens police detained and beat up a Mexican reporter and TV camera operator who were filming in a high-security zone at the port of Piraeus. "They had gone to the port, outside the port, to do a security story. But they were literally kidnapped, taken to a police gym and they were hit in the face and legs", said a spokeswoman for Televisa, which holds the rights for broadcasting the games in Mexico.
If the Athens police are treating Mexican reporters in this way, it is likely they treat Muslims and migrants in a worse manner. In a statement issued on August 6, Amnesty International noted that "the Athens authorities have put a lot of effort into cleaning up the streets. This has also meant the rounding up of homeless people from the centre of the city and sending some of them to psychiatric institutions."
The statement quoted Michalis Yannakos, head of a trade union at Dromokaition Psychiatric Hospital, as saying: "Following arrests by the police, the prosecutor issues sectioning orders that force us to lock up drug addicts, alcoholics or mentally ill people."
Unlike the NSW Labor Council which issued a no-strike pledge in the lead-up to and during the Sydney Olympics, Greek trade unions have used a temporary improvement in their bargaining position to fight for better wages and conditions.
Workers' safety sacrificed
Officially, 13 Greek and foreign workers have been killed in the construction of Olympic sites and hundreds have been injured. When related projects like roads and bridges are taken into account the death toll for construction workers rises to about 40. One worker died in building the Sydney Olympic sites.
In the rush to finish construction projects, safety has been compromised in order for the big construction companies to make super profits. Thousands of inexperienced foreign workers from Albania, Russia, Bulgaria and the Middle East have been brought in. It's common for construction workers to wear sandals and uncommon for them to wear protective head gear.
A protest on August 10 of more than 2000 construction workers condemned the Olympics and said that it had been built on the back of workers' sweat and blood. ABC Radio National's August 11 AM program reported that the names of the dead were read out and wreaths were laid on 13 white crosses.
"Five people died building the Olympic stadium, others in the athletes' village, others at the equestrian site", said the secretary of the construction workers union, George Theodorou. "It is incredible that there were deaths at the athletes' village, because it is made of two-storey buildings."
Public sector workers, doctors, archaeologists, ambulance drivers and paramedics, transport workers and hotel workers have all protested for better wages and in favour of an Olympic bonus. These latest disputes follow the massive general strike of April, 2001 where 500,000 workers rallied across the country. This was the biggest protest since the 1940s. The conservative New Democracy government has further angered workers by giving the cops bonuses of $4000.
On August 4, thousands of hotel workers struck for 24 hours to demand a 100% wage increase, from $850 per month to $1700, creation of permanent jobs and an Olympic bonus. The hotel bosses are offering them a measly $1.47 extra per day. This is despite many of the large hotels expecting big revenues through hugely inflated hotel charges. The Grecotel chain expects to charge $1200-$3200 per day for a two-person room, and a $396 compulsory daily fee for food.
The hotel workers struck again on August 11, vowing to organise wild-cat strikes during the Olympics.
The total cost of the games is likely to be greater than $16 billion. Greece's public debt has increased massively to 102% of GDP. Paying this debt off will likely be achieved through cuts in spending on health, education or pension schemes.
As the television cameras focus on Jana Pitman's knee, what we will not see are the conditions in the Sotiria psychiatric hospital. Here, as reported in the left-wing daily Rizospastis on August 6, 31 patients wait for treatment, many of them lying on makeshift camp-beds in the corridors of the hospital.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 18, 2004.
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