About the murder of Kostas Fragoulis
On 13/12 it was announced that Rom Costas Fragoulis is now dead. On5/12, after 16 year old Kostas refused to pay 20 euros for petrol, he was chased by DIAS cops, who shot him with 2 bullets in the head. Before we even knew about his final state of health and while the family wasn’t receiving any information either, the cop killers were already set free.
This murder unfortunately does not catch off guard, as we do not forget the murder of another Rom, Nikos Sambanis in October 21 with 38 bullets in the back of the head, where once again the killers were pampered by the bourgeois “justice”.
Roma communities vehemently refuse to adapt to the norms created by Greek capitalism. And rightly so! In any case, the only “efforts” of the state to include them in the social fabric and remove their marginalization are to fit them into its molds, to “civilize” them and use them as cheap labor, as it does with all social groups that do not conform to the dominant model. When it has no need for this, it feeds their ignorance in a whole host of ways, culminating in the murder of a child for which it will not budge.
The message “whoever can’t adapt, dies” is now clear from the state’s side and is being transmitted every day. Whether it is the daily oppression and ghettoisation, the criminalization of the Roma, or the shooting of the Roma, Greek society has been educated in the narrative that the Roma are less than human and therefore deserve all this. That’s why we see people applauding the cops who killed Kostas, just like they did in the case of Sambanis. That’s why the Roma communities have taken the whole struggle for vindication on their backs; and one shouldn’t have to wonder how and why.
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