“Watch, one lifeless: journalists in Greece reside dangerously. The trial for the homicide of journalist Giorgos Karaivaz begins in Athens, writes the German newspaper Tagezeitung in an intensive report on journalism in Greece:
When journalist Giorgos Karaivaz will get out of his automobile throughout the road from his residence within the middle-class Athens suburb of Alimos on April 9, 2021, he’ll reside for just a few extra seconds. He has simply returned from his office on the studios of the non-public Athenian tv station Star TV. All of a sudden, two males on a bike strategy him. One of many two males shoots Karaivaz 13 occasions with a contact gun. Ten bullets hit him. Karaivaz is killed immediately and the lads disappear into the concrete sea of Athens.
The brutal killing in broad daylight in an open avenue regarded like an execution and triggered an enormous outcry even removed from Greece. Three years after the homicide, worldwide press freedom organizations, together with the Leipzig-based European Middle for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), issued a joint assertion calling on the Greek authorities to they lastly clear up the case. “Regardless of the arrest of two suspects in April 2023, no vital progress has been made to this point. Contemplating the truth that Karaivaz referred to connections between the Greek police and arranged crime, there’s a actual danger that some police departments won’t need the investigation to progress,” he says.
Freedom of the press in Greece is in danger. Surveillance, defamation lawsuits, murders: for the primary time because the finish of the dictatorship of the colonels in the summertime of 1974, the European Parliament condemned Greece in a decision on 7 February. The Council of Europe additionally pointed the finger on the Greek case. A report on press freedom in Europe revealed on March 5 is devoted intimately to drawback little one Greece. Within the present world press freedom rating by Reporters With out Borders (RSF), Greece ranks simply 88th, which places it on the backside of the EU checklist – behind the Central African Republic, Qatar and Burkina Faso.
Eurydiki Bersi from the Athens-based investigative platform Reporters United (RU) can inform us in regards to the causes. There are numerous strategies within the Greek press to make sure that no occasions are revealed that would upset the federal government in Athens, the embassies of different nations or giant corporations, Bersi tells Taz. “Journalists do not even pitch them to their division heads, understanding full properly they will not be authorised,” he says. As well as, division heads know which project they’re giving to which editor. That is often sufficient. “If not, there is a third, rarer mechanism: the offending bits of textual content simply do not seem,” Bertsi says, including: “Happily, there are journalistic pockets of resistance like RU.”
Financial editor Thanasis Koukakis notes that the fourth energy has been subordinated to the chief energy. There are primarily financial causes for this, he says: “Most media are chronically loss-making and due to this fact urgently depending on state-sponsored promoting.” In line with Koukakis, three-fifths of the media must shut instantly if authorities funding had been to cease.
Koukakis is indignant. The Greek secret service EYP has confirmed to have intercepted him. The unusual factor is that instantly after assuming energy, Prime Minister Mitsotakis ordered the EYP to report on to him. Regardless of all this, Mitsotakis washes his palms of innocence. The legal justice system of Athens, the top of which is appointed by Mitsotakis, leaves him alone. As an alternative, Koukakis, sufferer of the big Athens wiretapping scandal, is going through three civil lawsuits with terrifying financial calls for. Prime Minister Mitsotakis’ former right-hand man and nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis, who resigned in August 2022 within the wake of the wiretapping scandal, is demanding a complete of 550,000 euros from him. The prime minister’s nephew was offended by the truth that Koukakis retweeted on the X platform different individuals’s articles in regards to the wiretapping scandal.
Koukakis recollects: “When the then EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, was in Athens to learn in regards to the state of press freedom, instantly solely one among her workers wished to see me, not Jourová herself. , regardless that a gathering with Jourová had been organized prematurely”. Shortly after assembly her official on the EU constructing in Athens, she noticed Jourová on the steps. He had launched himself. With disarming honesty, Jourová informed him in entrance of the others current: Ah, you’re Mr. Koukakis! I should not have met you right here in Athens!” Koukakis filled with disappointment: “I’ve been a journalist for 27 years. Journalism in Greece has by no means been as unhealthy as it’s immediately.”
Maybe Greece’s best-known investigative journalist, Costas Vaxevanis, editor of the weekly Documento, mentions just one identify to explain the state of press freedom in Greece: “Viktor Orban.” The 58-year-old has nothing good to say in regards to the Mitsotakis authorities. Vaxevanis reveals that in recent times, roughly 120 lawsuits and legal expenses have been filed towards him. They wish to intimidate him, silence him and destroy him financially, he says. However he himself will not be going to give up, as he says. And this even supposing the lawsuits towards him price quite a lot of money and time. “Up to now, I’ve needed to spend about 250,000 euros on courtroom prices and legal professionals.” On high of that, his bodily integrity had been “repeatedly threatened” and an assassination try had additionally been made towards him, in keeping with Vaxevanis.
Again to the homicide of journalist Karaivaz: the trial of the 2 alleged killers begins on Wednesday in an Athens courtroom, greater than three years after the crime. Athens lawyer Roi Pavlea, who represents the mom and sister of the murdered Giorgos Karaivaz, states forward of the trial in Taz: “We count on that the principals, no matter how excessive they’re, can be discovered and punished.” Pavlea assumes that the accused are contract killers.
Your complete TAZ article right here
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