Greece's neo-Nazis rally voters on anti-migrant plank

Shouting "Foreigners out!" and "Greece for the Greeks", hundreds of flag-waving neo-Nazi Golden Dawn supporters vented their anger towards migrants in downtown Athens just four days before Sunday's key general election.

"Greece has got to stop hosting foreigners and send them home," party leader Nikos Michaloliakos told the crowd of 500 gathered as dusk fell Wednesday over a down-at-heel corner of Athens frequented by travellers and migrants.

Michaloliakos, whose party is tipped to take third place in the September poll with around six percent support, won 388,000 votes in elections in January, a little less than in June 2012 when it garnered 426,000 votes.

Cheered as he demanded the government guard Greece's borders, he called for "the army to be sent in".

It was the bespectacled 57-year-old leader's first rally since being released in March after spending 18 months in jail with other party officials on criminal charges in connection with the fatal stabbing of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas two years ago.

As military marching music boomed over the loudspeakers, his supporters shouted "People, army, nationalism", "Foreigners get out!" and "Turkey, Mongols, murderers", in reference to the country's 1974 invasion of Cyprus.

"We are simply patriots, we love our country!" said a 53-year-old woman who refused to be identified and who, like others, spoke only reluctantly.

Michaloliakos railed too against being shut out of the wall-to-wall TV debates taking place ahead of Sunday's vote by "corrupt political parties".

In a startling move, the former mathematician on Thursday accepted political responsibility for Fyssas' murder by a Golden Dawn supporter.

But he insisted there was no "criminal" responsibility to assign.

"Should an entire party be blamed for the reprehensible act of a fan, a friend of the party?" he told Real radio.

Sunday's election was called in August by former radical left premier Alexis Tsipras, who quit when up to a fifth of his Syriza party MPs walked out in protest against economic reform pledges he made to the country's EU-IMF creditors in exchange for a fresh bailout.

- 'Greeks too scared to come here' -
"Greeks are too scared to walk around here," said Michaloliakos, as scores of Afghan refugees bedded down in the open on a square a few hundreds yards (metres) away in the hopes of boarding buses and trains the next day to the Macedonian border further north.

In all, more than 230,000 people fleeing war and persecution have landed on Greek island beaches since the beginning of the year, making their way to Athens on the road to the more prosperous nations of northern Europe.

Down the road from the flag-waving rally, travel agencies were busily selling tickets to and from Greece to Albania and other east European countries, while on Victoria Square just blocks away scores of migrants were organising tents and bits of cardboard for the night ahead.

"My sales have dropped 60 percent in the last days, people avoid this area," said the owner of a photo shop on the square.

"It stinks here, the hygiene is disgusting," said stall-owner Tassos Boubalos. "Western countries, especially France and Germany, are responsible for this misery.

"Greece has no protection against a migrant invasion. By closing its borders, Germany is just protecting itself," he added.

While the migrant issue is far from being at the centre of an election campaign dominated by Greece's economic woes and massive unemployment,  the two leading contenders in the race, Tsipras' Syriza party and the conservative New Democracy party, differ on the subject.

Syriza, which took over from a New Democracy administration in January, had long campaigned to naturalise migrants living in Greece for years, and on taking office moved to shut down migrant detention camps introduced by the previous conservative government.

Tsipras has dubbed the migrant crisis a "global phenomenon" and said Greece is ill-equipped to handle it without extra European help.

But the mounting crisis across the European Union may spill over into Sunday's vote.

"The situation is getting worse," said Thanassis Bourgas, 46, as he crossed Victoria Square. "We need a more serious government, a rightwing government that would send the migrants to other countries more quickly and follow Germany's example by sealing the border."

Source: AFP