SNA (Birmingham) — Greece’s far-right ruling party New Democracy recently introduced a new police force which will be deployed to all universities. Not only is Greece now ranking first in Europe in terms of the proportion of its budget spent on the police, but it also reverses steps the country had taken to liberalize the nation after the end of the military junta in 1974.

However, this policy does represent New Democracy delivering on a campaign promise from the 2019 general election, in which it won a parliamentary majority and nearly 40% of the popular vote. The hiring of 1,500 additional police officers and the creation of the university police force, organized into “university protection teams” (OPPI), was among its pledges to the voters.

Until recently, police intrusions onto university campuses had been legally prohibited. This legislation was brought in decades ago to honor students’ role in ousting the former military junta, in particular the uprising at the National Technical University of Athens in November 1973.

In this storied event, students locked themselves inside the university, defied the government, and confronted the military. The uprising ended with tanks rolling into the university and killing dozens of people. These acts of courage from the students inspired the rest of the country to rise up and eventually overthrow the junta the following July.

During the era of junta, army and police forces worked under the same command, creating a link in the minds of many Greeks between the police and the dictatorship.

That’s why it became such a large controversy last September when police stepped onto university grounds for the first time in 48 years–including at the National Technical University of Athens. The OPPI police force proceeded to break up a sit-in carried out by students and teachers being held for the expressed purpose of protesting the new police powers.

The police operation led to the arrest of thirty students and garnered widespread publicity.

Citizen’s Protection Minister Takis Theodorikakos, a particularly controversial figure within the rightwing administration, strongly defended the police actions, declaring: “Our government is determined to make the sense of safety in universities a reality.”

Such a stance has not been universally accepted. Former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, still head of the opposition leftist Syriza party, openly denounced the police actions, presenting a video with a narration which stated, “You’re studying at the school of your choice, reading with your friends and chasing your dreams. Oh sorry! I forgot that police now go into universities and beat students. Unfair, isn’t it?”

After the Syriza party fell from power in July 2019 and was replaced by their bitter New Democracy rivals, boosting the police budget became a policy priority for Athens.

The most recent data, which covers the year 2021, revealed that Greece spent over €2.5 billion (US$2.7 billion) on the police budget, which is an enormous amount for a country which has been struggling economically since the 2008 global financial crisis. A police press release released last week noted that an extra €1.5 million (US$1.6 million) is earmarked to be spent on new equipment; namely 67 police cars, four radar trucks, and other gear for police in the city of Thessaloniki.

The police budget has grown even as other public services have seen either stagnation or cuts in their own budgets.

For example, the fire department’s budget has remained steady at €500 million (US$540 million) over the past five years. This has been the case in spite of the fact that global climate change has been contributing to major wildfires in the country. In 2021, such wildfires burned a large area of land close to Athens, killing three people and injuring more than twenty.

The largesse being bestowed upon the police forces has not gone unnoticed by the public.

This is particularly the case because, at the end of last month, police shot and killed a sixteen-year-old boy under controversial circumstances. The boy had allegedly left a petrol station without paying his €20 (US$21) petrol bill, and was subsequently shot in the head. This led to protests involving thousands of people.

The New Democracy government clearly realizes that this police shooting case damaged support for its stance on law and order. The police officer was arrested and Theodorikakos stated on Twitter that he was “deeply saddened” by the boy’s death.

However, he also added, “This case is being investigated by the court, which is the only one competent to assess the facts and judge the responsibilities.”

The issue is politically sensitive not only due to the connections between the police and the previous military junta, but also because in more recent years there have been other cases of police violence and murder which have riled the public. In particular, a notorious 2008 case resulted in a weeks of riots in which a police officer died and over two hundred people were arrested.

Also related to this issue is the fact that Greece is only recently emerging from strict Covid lockdowns imposed by the New Democracy government led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Some critics have alleged that the government took advantage of Covid lockdown measures in order to conduct illegal searches and to behave in a generally authoritarian manner.

For example, a 2021 report by Human Rights Watch reported that 74% of fines issued as Covid policy breaches were imposed on foreign nationals, which seems to indicate a pattern of discrimination in law enforcement.

Theodorikakos, however, again openly defended police behavior, declaring that such actions “prove that our homeland’s border security is strong today, and we are dealing with illegal immigration very effectively.”

Mitsotakis has also risen to the public defense of the police forces, arguing that the controversies over their conduct are mostly due to impact of social media. He declared, “The way social media work today and the algorithms of the big platforms they use, actually reproduce and reward whatever views [critics] may already have.”

He added: “That is bad for our democracy. It is bad for the level of our dialogue. Because in this way, young people are trapped in their views without developing their critical thinking, without questioning what they see, what anyone can serve them.”

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