Greek Roma people face racism and police violence: community leader
CanaryDec 08, 2022
Doctors at the Hippocrates hospital confirmed that a 16-year-old boy from the Roma community who was shot in the head by Greek police in Thessaloniki as he fled a petrol station after allegedly not paying last week died on Tuesday morning.
The teenager, reportedly identified as Kostas Fragoulis, was taken to the hospital in an ambulance on Dec. 5 in a coma, where he remained in critical condition for over a week.
This tragic incident has exposed to the world what ethnic Roma have to endure in Greece due to systemic racism and police violence. Punishing and incarcerating the suspect must be the first step towards a reckoning with this historic injustice.
Though Greek authorities are investigating this case, political opposition is seeking to weaponize the incident for political reasons — trying to make an inflammatory link with the 2008 killing of Grigoropoulos. The law applies to everyone in Greece, and police are supported strictly within the framework of the law.