“No cops in universities! ” For three weeks, Greek students and academics have been demonstrating in Athens and Thessaloniki every Thursday against the education bill of the conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
An express calendar
The text unveiled on January 14 by the Minister of Education Niki Kérameus, alongside the Minister for the Protection of Citizen’s Rights (Public Order) Michalis Chrisochoïdis – unheard of in Greece – should be put to the vote at the Vouli , the Greek Parliament, Wednesday 10 February. An express timetable to create a special corps of a thousand police officers authorized to patrol the country’s universities.
“Universities are crucial public structures which are subject to threats to their security”, justified Michalis Chrisochoïdis. The minister was referring to an event that shocked the country on October 29. A hooded commando had entered the office of the rector of the Economic University of Athens, then photographed him under duress, a sign hanging around his neck. This indicated solidarity with the occupations of buildings in the Greek capital, which the authorities are evicting one after the other.
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“There is a tradition of violence by small leftist and anarchist groups in Greece who regularly occupy, steal and vandalize university buildings, especially in the center of Athens”, explains political scientist Ioannis Papadopoulos from the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.
The abolished university asylum law
The event gave the government with its ultra-right-wing overtones an opportunity – it has two ministers from the far-right LAOS (Popular Orthodox Alert) party, including Interior Minister Mavroudis Voridis – to implement its program of priority to safety.
A month after taking office in July 2019, he abolished the law on university asylum, a law adopted after the fall of the colonels’ dictatorship which prohibited access to universities for the police, in memory of the student uprising of 17 November 1973, suppressed in blood.
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“It’s unthinkable, inconceivable! “, rebels Sotiria Papadopoulou, architecture student at the Polytechnic of Athens. “Despite police repression and fines, we will not be silent, we will demonstrate every Thursday no matter what, she storms. These units must be canceled or at least put under control. “
A special unarmed police
Faced with the outcry, the minister wanted to reassure – in vain – by specifying that the police will not be armed, but only armed “Batons and anesthetic gas” and that they will wear uniforms “Different from those of the police” classic.
“These units”, denounces Alexandra Koronaiou, professor of sociology at Panteion University in Athens, “Will depend on the Ministry of Public Order. They will not be under the authority of the university administration. They can do anything with impunity and we will only be spectators. ” Students and rectors fight back and ensure that this measure violates the Constitution by removing the self-management status of universities, a principle established in the majority of universities in Europe.
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“They want to control the free flow of research ideas”
The reform also plans to create disciplinary boards in universities and to fight against qualified students. “Eternal” by tightening the conditions of access to higher education and by limiting the period for obtaining a diploma to six years. 20,000 of them are thus threatened with exclusion.
“The disciplinary councils exist in theory and the government wants to activate them”, specifies Ioannis Papadopoulos. But opponents accuse the government of wanting to ban any dispute, even cancel a conference judged “Non-university”. “They want to control the free flow of research ideas”, fulminates Alexandra Koronaiou who signed, with more than a thousand academics, a petition supported by the prestigious University of Oxford for the cancellation of this reform.
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Measures for a “return to order”
The so-called university asylum law, which prohibited access to universities for the police, was abolished in August 2019.
The immigration department has been abolished to entrust the management of migration policy to the police within the ministry of citizen protection (public order).
Humanitarian NGOs working in migrant camps were imposed a confidentiality clause, by a decree published on November 30.
The draft law on demonstrations, presented on January 21, plans to impose strict rules on organizers and journalists who cover these events.
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