ment that DELTA has acted with excessive cruelty, while quite oten, according to our interviewees, “they do not care to show even a hint of neutrality”. In fact, it is no accident at all that the “removals” in the high ranks of the Hellenic Police ater the events of autumn 2013 started from these particular police forces. Even before these events, as found during our research, the Division of Internal Afairs seemed to many of our interviewees to be the only service of the Hellenic Police that could be somewhat trusted to serve justice and stand by a certain degree of accountability. Today, it is as important as ever for the Division of Internal Afairs to be able to do unhindered what we have long expected from such a service: to make a decisive contribution to the disclosure of the tolerance or the active collaboration of the Hellenic Police with the neo-Nazis. 12/ RACIST VIOLENCE AND POLICE In January 2013, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, following a week-long visit in Greece and before publishing his report on the country, stated: “I am deeply concerned with the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of racist attacks in Greece. Very few have been led to justice and even fewer have been condemned ... The police does not do its job as it should: abuse of authority, excessive use of force, collaboration with Golden Dawn. Among police oicers, there are undoubtedly ‘rotten apples’, but they sufer no consequences – impunity here as well ... The international image of Greece, and particularly of the judicial system, is in danger. We wish to witness the indictment of members of Golden Dawn and police oicers. Until this happens, anything else is mere words”! Finally published in April 2013, the Muižnieks Report32 is an unprecedented blow for Greece, bringing the issue of racist violence and police impunity to the forefront. Its formulations are anything other than discreet. The Commissioner “regrets that rhetoric stigmatizing migrants has oten been used in Greek politics, including by high-level politicians”, and explicitly mentions the prime minister, who in November 2012 spoke before his party’s parliamentary fraction of “an on-going ‘recuperation’ by the Greek authorities of city centres from irregular migrants who had ‘occupied’ them and subjected them to their ‘illegal activities’” (para. 23). The report mentions similar statements by the political superior of the Hellenic Police, the minister of public order, who said: “the country perishes. Ever since the Dorians’ invasion 4 000 years ago, never before has the country been subjected to an invasion of these dimensions…. this is a bomb on the foundations of the society and the State” (para. 24). The reply of the Greek government to the commissioner’s report is of equal interest. Having acknowledged that Golden Dawn is “an expression of popular disillusion and protest against harsh, though necessary, austerity measures”, it admonishes the commissioner that “the solutions cannot be a product of sentimental reactions that 32. 38 | Cf. https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet &InstranetImage=2275537&SecMode=1&DocId=2004246&Usage=2. ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG