Greek Police kill another Romani youth, Roma protest in the streets - the third such case in the last three years
Greek Police have shot dead a 17-year-old Romani boy after a car chase in the city of Thebes, north of Attica. The Associated Press (AP) and the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) reported the case.
The incident is the third case of a fatal shooting by Greek Police of a Romani teenager in the last three years. According to media reports, the police were chasing a car with four passengers, two boys and two girls between 15 and 17 years old, which failed to obey a police order to stop.
The car was eventually stopped and surrounded in a dead-end alley in Liontari municipality around midnight on 11 November. Witnesses heard the gunshot that fatally injured a 17-year-old youth.
Police claim one of the minor passengers in the vehicle attempted to take the weapon away from the officer and that it then “went off”, killing the boy. The brother of the victim said the officer shot him.
Citizens’ Protection Minister Giannis Oikonomou issued a statement expressing condolences to the family of the young victim and emphasizing that “the circumstances under which the sad incident took place are under investigation by the competent authorities”. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the exact cause of death.
A police officer who is a member of a unit involved with preventing and suppressing crime was charged with intentional homicide that same evening and was suspended on Wednesday, 15 November. The AP reported that the incident sparked protests by the Romani community in more than one Greek city.
In Thessaloniki, young people clashed with police during the evening of 15 November after a protest march. Several protesters were arrested.
In Athens, the main highway was closed for a short time after Romani youths lit fires there and threw stones at police. There was an outbreak of similar violence in a suburb of Athens mostly inhabited by Romani people.
Third fatal shooting in the last three years
This is the third such incident in the last three years in Greece. In mid-December 2022, more than 1,500 mourners assembled in the Romani quarter of Thessaloniki for the funeral of Kostas Frangoulis, a Romani youth who died as a result of the injuries he suffered when a police officer shot him in the head during a car chase after Frangoulis failed to pay for EUR 20 worth of gas at a filling station.
Immediately after news of the shooting reached the Romani quarter, about 100 Romani people erected barricades in front of the hospital where Frangoulis was being treated and set garbage cans on fire. A total of 1,500 protesters clashed with police in the streets of Thessaloniki.
Almost nobody there believed the official version of events that the victim’s behavior during the car chase had “posed an imminent risk to the lives of police officers”. The fatal results of the shooting sparked three nights of protests and unrest in Greece.
One year earlier, on 23 October 2021, seven Greek police officers on motorcycles fired on three unarmed Romani teenagers in a vehicle being pursued on suspicion of having been stolen, killing 18-year-old Nikos Sabanis and seriously wounding another 16-year-old youth. On the video recording of the incident, 30-40 shots can clearly be heard, and from the radio communications between the operations center and the intervening police officers it is clear the officers knew the passengers in the vehicle were three Roma.
The police press release after the incident falsely alleged that seven officers had been injured, that the deceased was 20 years old and had a criminal record, and that the minor who was shot suffered just slight injuries. All of that later proved to be untrue – no officers were injured, the victim was 18 years old and had a clean criminal record, and the 16-year-old boy who was shot was seriously wounded.
In reaction to the police shooting of Nikos Sabanis, the European Parliament’s Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup (ARDI) and the ERRC sent an open letter to the Greek Prime Minister urging that any eventual racial motivation for the use of such disproportionate force be investigated. Both organizations also expressed their concern over the news coverage statewide, which had sparked a wave of anti-Romani sentiment because the prosecutor had referred to Roma as a “social menace”, and they called for the relevant authorities to quickly respond by stating that hate speech is unacceptable and that the members of law enforcement do not enjoy impunity for crimes committed against Roma or other ethnic minorities.
