Refugee crisis is shot-in-the-arm for Greece's neo-Nazis

Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party lost some overall support in Sunday's general election while picking up extra votes on eastern Aegean islands Lesbos and Kos, where massive refugee arrivals have at times riled locals.

With 99.9 percent of votes counted, the anti-migrant party took third place in the September 20 poll, as it had done at the last general election in January, but lost some 9,000 votes (around -2.4 percent) in comparison with the last poll.

However because abstention rose to a record high of 44 percent, Golden Dawn's national score inched up slightly from 6.28 percent to 6.99 percent.

On Lesbos, on the other hand, where up to 20,000 migrants landing from Turkey have been seen at times forced to sleep out on streets and in parks, a total 4,197 people voted in favour of Golden Dawn on Sunday -- or 7.85 percent of voters -- against 2,765 in January, an increase of 3.18 percentage points.

The party also scored well in the Dodecanese archipelago that includes Kos and Samos, where thousands of refugees from war and persecution have also landed.

Golden Dawn saw its voter share increase by 2.55 percentage points in Kos and 2.12 percentage points in Samos, with the party winning 8 and 7.6 percent of the share respectively.

More than 300,000 migrants have arrived by sea in Greece since January, according to officials.

Elsewhere in Greece, the neo-Nazi party saw its vote share increase by less than two percent.

Far-right expert Dimitris Psaras told AFP the party had been politically active in the islands where tension between residents and migrants were particularly high in August-September when the Athens administration provided little help for local authorities to cope with the arrivals.

Earlier this month the government laid on extra transport to help facilitate the transfer of migrants to Athens.

Golden Dawn also has been active in the last few years in the poorer areas of the capital where migrants settle, many of them from Afghanistan.

Party leader Nikos Michaloliakos and other officials currently face criminal charges in connection with the fatal stabbing of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas two years ago.

The 57-year-old leader was released in March from 18 months of pre-trial detention and in a startling move a few days ago 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 a radio network.

In January the party won 388,000 votes, a little less than in June 2012 when it garnered 426,000 votes.
Source: AFP