world

World :: Far-Right's Food Handouts Are For Greeks Only

Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party has been handing out free food to residents of Athens - but only to card-carrying Greek citizens and not to immigrants.

Pasta, milk, potatoes and cooking oil were given to around 500 Greeks who gathered with IDs to prove their citizenship in the main Syntagma Square but immigrants were told to "clear off", according to one photographer.

Party volunteers dressed in black passed out the food in a one-day charity event that critics said was meant to soften the image of a party likened to neo-Nazi groups.

Greece is going through its fifth year of recession, with poverty and unemployment rising, and Golden Dawn has made inroads in the country's political system with its vehement attacks against traditionally dominant parties and strongly anti-immigrant stance.

Its members have been accused of involvement in attacks against immigrants and some of its senior officials have publicly declared admiration for Adolf Hitler - though the party rejects the neo-Nazi label.

Public support, however, has increased 20-fold since elections in 2009, and the party has won 18 seats in the country's 300-seat parliament in June elections.

"Golden Dawn is a nationalist party and above all we are looking after Greeks," Golden Dawn MP Nikolaos Michos said.

Panayotis Panagiotopoulos, an unemployed man waiting for food, said he was grateful for the help and described Golden Dawn as representing "the soul of the Greek people".

The party denies any involvement in a recent surge of street attacks against Asian immigrants in Athens and other cities, despite repeated claims to the contrary by migrant groups and human rights activists.

"At night they beat people up. And by day, they hand out food," left-wing Athens city councillor Petros Constantinou said.

"They are exploiting people's misery to fish for votes. They are despicable."