The successful fight against domestic terrorism healed one of the biggest wounds of the post-dictatorship era in Greece, but it also created a certain complacency. Active pockets of “low-intensity” violence were treated like something of a nuisance, a routine. They were banished from their lairs in the country’s public universities and from their squats, but they were not eradicated.
The police seem addicted to the cat-and-mouse games they play, while the justice system has succumbed to pressure for leniency, and a section of the political establishment is tolerant. The recent events in Thessaloniki, however, showed us that the intensity of this violence is not controlled. There is no scale for terrorism in a normal democratic country.
Anyone who puts human lives at risk must be arrested and condemned – and no one should try to justify them and no democratic party should be divided in its treatment of them. Extremism can only be stamped out with an efficient criminal justice system and political unanimity.
