Students complain of a climate of terrorism and lawlessness on the Zografou campus. In the wake of the arrests of an Argentinian juggler and a Swedish tourist, real students claim they are witnessing a drug trade and receiving threats not to react. At the same time, the prime minister is asking for zero tolerance from the authorities.

The students’ complaints about the lawless situation that prevails in the student residences are shocking. Narcotics trade, threats and criminals are the daily situation they have faced in recent years. The students state that they are afraid and are thinking of leaving the residences, additionally talking about old and neglected facilities.

A student who lived in the residence halls of the Polytechnic in Zografou describes an organized group of criminals who lived there for a long time and had control:

“There had certainly been times when I had felt fear. Home to criminals who threatened anyone they thought looked at them wrong, anyone they thought didn’t fit what they wanted to see. There was an organized group that lived where the students were supposed to live and knowing the same mechanism could do whatever they wanted.».

Homeless, even for the students themselves, who live in a climate of terrorism and delinquency. As they describe, drugs are traded inside the hostels, while non-university students are literally and figuratively threshing.

And as it seems after the police operation on Saturday, the student dormitory in Zografou had been turned into a… hotel.

A 35-year-old Argentinian, a 30-year-old Swedish woman and a 38-year-old Greek man were arrested for disturbing the peace in the student residences… they even reported that they were “hosted” by people from Greece, in the specific area.

“There cannot be students who repeatedly commit such illegal acts and universities not proceed with the obvious act of erasing them. In no other country in the world would there be the tolerance that is sometimes shown for such phenomena“, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis emphasizes at the same time.

In Thessaloniki, the public prosecutor ordered a preliminary investigation to be carried out after a publication according to which there was an attempted attack, with a chainsaw, on the underground area of ​​the School of Physics and Mathematics of the AUTH, where a nuclear reactor is located, by hooded men who wanted to occupy the Biology School of the Institution again.

“There has never been an attempt to breach the space in which this nuclear device is located. The only report is a month and a half before the beginning of February of a broken lock on a door that leads to the basement but not to the area where this nuclear device is located“, states the Rector of AUTH, Charalambos Feidas.

The investigated offences, according to the same order, concern dangerous damage from which a danger to people could arise.

New doctrine from the police

It seems, however, that on the margins of the data, the Police are changing their tactics by hardening their attitude towards delinquency within the universities.

As the manual of police directives regarding universities is differentiated, ELAS chief officers received orders for immediate police operations in case of squatters or phenomena of delinquency inside and outside the HEIs.

In the above, the explanations from the officers of the Greek Police regarding the “lack of reflexes” recorded both in the attack on Zografou and in the attempt to occupy two faculties in AUTH, a few days later, are preceded.

Characteristically, there was talk of converting the HEIs into prisons and thus the police will intervene immediately after brief discussions with the rector’s authorities.