CHAPTER 2 The Hellenic Police Dimitris Christopoulos 1/ STOP PRESS: “THEY DISMANTLED THE WHOLE OF THE POLICE IN ORDER TO ARREST US” On 17 September 2013, around midnight, a Golden Dawn oicial murders Pavlos Fyssas. This assassination immediately becomes the catalyst for crucial developments in the position of Golden Dawn on the Greek political map. The dismantlement of the organization begins. The series of events is literally exponential. The plan is to do within a few days what had not been done for years. All at once everybody admits that Golden Dawn is not a political party but a criminal organization under Article 187 of the Penal Code. Pavlos Fyssas had to give his life in order for the Greek State to do the obvious and dismantle this criminal organization. On 28 September, the same day when the above “stop the press” lines were written, Golden Dawn’s leader, some of its MPs and other members of the organization were arrested. Operation “Dismantle Golden Dawn” had begun, and the developments of the following days are stunning. The corrosion of the Hellenic Police by Golden Dawn pockets is one of the reasons – not the only one – why there irst had to be a dead Greek citizen anti-fascist before the Greek State would take action. Yet, a few days before Fyssas’ murder, during a commemoration for the 1944 victims of Meligalas, a group of MPs and members of Golden Dawn attacked a military formation, taunting and shoving bystanders, including the mayor.16 “The MPs of Golden Dawn wanted to disgrace the blood of the people that were killed at the Well of Meligalas”, according to a later statement by the town’s (right-wing!) deputy mayor. Regardless of the multiple contradictory interpretations and representations of the 1944 events in this Peloponnesian town, it is a fact that the Meligalas commemoration constitutes an emblematic point of national mourning for the Greek ultra-right; a mourning that has been politically instrumentalized for many years, yet remains an honest one as well. Golden Dawn disrespected this ritual of mourning, and paid for it. Precisely because of the importance accorded to this commemoration by national right-wing memory, the minister of public order had ordered that six riot police platoons be sent to the Well of Meligalas, the commemora- 16. 20 | See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRadhVsG0Bs ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG