The ugly face of state racism.
On the Greek government’s attempt to treat immigrants as a public health risk

Panagiotis Sotiris[1]

Aggressive state racism is going to be an important aspect of the public debate in Greece in the run-up to the general election expected to take place in May. The aim is to move the political agenda to the right in order to avoid discussion of the social devastation brought by the extreme austerity measures and also to answer the electoral challenge the Far Right poses, since opinion polls show that even the neo-Nazis of the ‘Golden Dawn’ have a strong chance of passing the 3% threshold and entering parliament.

The result is a turn towards openly racist policies by both PASOK and New Democracy, the two parties of the coalition supporting the Papadimos’ government. A program of new detention centers for illegal immigrants has been announced, accompanied by police tactics of mass arrests of immigrants. On top of this, the Ministers of Health, A. Loverdos, and Public Order, M. Chrysochoidis, want to introduce new legislation according to which illegal immigrants will be treated as a public health risk. If this legislation is passed through parliament, illegal immigrants will be subject to forced detention in health facilities, if the on the grounds of their country of origin or their practices, such as drug use or prostitution, they are considered a danger to public health.

This is accompanied by increased press Media coverage on the situation in the centre of Athens where thousands of immigrants live in conditions of extreme poverty and lack of access to basic sanitation. These dwellings have been presented as a ‘health bomb’ and an extreme danger for public health. The same goes with the exploitation of data regarding HIV infections in drug users and the expansion of illegal prostitution. It is obvious that the Greek government is trying to send the message that immigrants carry infectious diseases and therefore its anti-immigrant policies are in the interest of the health of Greek citizens.

It is obvious that this rhetoric is based on a complete distortion of reality. Immigrants do not pose a health risk, they are facing an extreme health risk, because of anti-immigrant policies from the part of the Greek government and the European Union (especially the “Dublin II” regulation), and also because of the practices of property owners and employers that exploit them and force them to extreme poverty. Moreover, if we are going to think about an actual danger for Public Health in Greece, this is no other than the Health Minister himself. He has been responsible for an aggressive program of health cuts that have already led to a severe deterioration of health services in Greece. If there is an increased rate of HIV infection in drug users this has not to do with the fact that poor immigrants are also drug users but to the fact that needle exchange programs have been suspended or reduced. And the Media reports about the return of ‘forgotten’ infectious diseases fail to stress is that this is due to the situation in immigrant’s countries of origin that led to the dismantling of public health infrastructure and also the result of the policies implemented in Greece that deny illegal immigrants access to basic health services. Moreover, health statistics and epidemiology suggest that much more people will face disease as a result of the insecurity and socio-economic stress brought upon them by the austerity packages and increased unemployment, than by the ‘exotic’ diseases supposedly carried by immigrants. And of course despite all the exaggerated and inflated reports about a growing number of immigrants in reality many immigrants are actually trying to flee a country with a 21% official rate of unemployment.

All these attest to the fact that we are facing a classic case of political investment in racist policies. Association of immigrants and foreigners with disease and biological degradation has been a basic tenet of racist and colonial discourse that tends to present the ‘other’ as a threat to the ‘biological’ purity of the nation. One can only think of Nazi extermination policies based also upon the preservation of the ‘hygiene’ of the German nation. 

This open use of archetypical racist discourse, this combination of racist biopolitics with electoral politics only makes this ideological mix more toxic. This is another evidence of the extreme cynicism of the Greek political class. The fact that moving the political debate towards this direction also gives increased legitimacy to openly neo-fascist and neo-Nazi positions, is something they can accept as long as they think that in this way they might turn immigrants into scapegoats.

Hopefully, there is a great chance that this strategy will fail. Despite an attempt to make racism the center of political debate in early 2011, as it was made evident by the vicious attacks on the heroic hunger strike of 300 immigrants, in the end the effort failed and we witnessed the impressive movement of the squares and subsequent struggles. Where there is struggle, one can also expect to find solidarity.