ATHENS — As the sun went down over the Exarchia district of Athens one recent evening, hundreds of people gathered beneath a banner with the protest slogan, “No Pasarán,” a resistance slogan from the Spanish Civil War meaning “They shall not pass.”
It had been barely light outside when police descended on the neighborhood and evacuated four squats earlier that same morning. Two had been makeshift shelters for refugees and migrants; the other two housed anarchist collectives; 57 men, 51 women and 35 minors from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Turkey were shuttled away in police vans to have their legal status inspected at the city’s Aliens’ Bureau.
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By 11 a.m. builders had been dispatched to brick up the windows and doors of the now empty squats. Police barred access, while locals looked on, annoyed at the disturbance.
The raids, which started on Monday, are part of a wider effort to make good on a campaign pledge by Greece’s new center-right prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who promised to “clean up” the “lawless” Athens neighborhood ahead of a national election in July.
Police spokesman Stravos Balaskas referred to the police intervention as a “silent vacuum cleaner” that “will gradually suck up all the garbage” in Exarchia. He later apologized, after coming under attack on social media and from opposition parties.
