Moira Lavelle is an independent reporter based in Athens, Greece. She covers migration, borders, gender, and politics.
Greece’s right-wing government has been caught tapping the phones of journalists and opposition politicians. The scandal has raised doubts over Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s future — and highlighted his New Democracy party’s worrying authoritarian turn.
Vladimir Putin claims to be protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine. A Jacobin reporter at the Polish border found Russian-speaking refugees outraged at his claims — and at Russian media’s denial of horrors they saw with their own eyes.
After the bloody suppression of the Polytechnic students’ uprising in 1973, universities became a symbol of Greek democracy — and for decades, police were banned from even entering campuses. But on Thursday, parliament voted to create a special police force to patrol universities, as the right-wing government mounts a troubling crackdown on supposedly “dangerous” student groups.
After decades of murderous attacks on migrants and leftists, on Wednesday, a Greek court ruled that Golden Dawn is a criminal organization. The verdict is a triumph for victims, and for the minorities targeted by the neo-Nazi party — and it will embolden the resistance against still-active far-right forces.