An elected mayor in Northern Greece wants to build a wall around a Roma settlement even if it is illegal and against the Constitution and no public servant, no matter how racist one is, could ever isolate a group of the country’s own citizens.
Mayor of Thermaikos in Central Macedonia, Giorgos Tsamaslis, said: “if legality is not adhered, I tell you, I will go a little further, knowing that it is beyond boundaries and legality, but i will do it, I will raise a wall there, so that no one goes into this area.”
Tsamaslis was responding to a journalist’s question about the Roma settlement.
“The area is also suffering from theft. They cannot do what they want. They will find me against them,” the mayor said.
Reaction came first of all by the Special Secretary for the Social Integration of the Roma, Aikaterini Gantziou. She expressed her “deep concern” about the rise of “the rhetoric of hatred against the Roma”, stressing that “continuous references by political figures and those already elected in Local Government to both in the mass media and in social media, incite racist hatred and consolidate the division among the citizens of the state.”
Others condemned the mayor’s “far-right rhetoric” and “racist statements” and urge him to work-out an organized plan against delinquency and gangs instead of proceeding with authoritarian practices that violate the core of the Constitution and the fundamental conventions of human rights, human dignity and rights.”
According to local media seleo, Mayor Tsamaslis is a former New Democracy official.
