Greece: a covered-up femicide and its consequences
In Greece, a 36-year-old Georgian has filed a lawsuit claiming that he was tortured for four days by Greek police to force him to confess in the Caroline Crouch case. The victim's husband, who has since confessed to killing her, had deceived investigators for several weeks, claiming that she was killed when their home was burgled by foreigners. Commentators are appalled at the level of racism and contempt for women the case reveals.
The fairy tale of the innocent Greek
Kathimerini columnist Pantelis Boukalas criticises the stereotypes that influence society and the authorities:
“The 'broken Greek' that 'the murderers and robbers spoke', according to the fairy tale written, directed and acted out on camera by [the accused] pilot Charalambos Anagnostopoulos, was the 'explanation' that the vast majority of us wanted to hear. So we could be reassured and continue to sleep proudly. It was not difficult for the pilot to know which scenarios would be popular, what would galvanise the media and law enforcement. ... He must certainly have congratulated himself when he learned that the police had offered a 300,000 euro reward to find phantoms who spoke 'broken Greek'.”
A US-style miscarriage of justice
Stelios Kouloglou, journalist and MEP for Syriza, writes in TVXS:
“The unacknowledged, creeping racism of Greek society combined with police tactics is now leading to a situation similar to the infamous 'wrongful convictions' of black people in the US. The pattern is the same: a brutal crime provokes a storm of indignation and political pressure to find and arrest the perpetrators immediately. ... The authorities wanted to find a culprit quickly, so they tortured this man for four days to get him to confess to a murder he hadn't committed. Meanwhile the real perpetrator was standing in front of them, and from the very beginning something seemed off about his statements and behaviour.”
The problem is patriarchy
The left-leaning daily Avgi calls for Greek society as a whole to make an effort:
“This abominable murder is another episode - this time fatal - in the long history of domestic violence. A violence that takes many forms - indirect and direct, verbal and physical - and still persists, even if we hope that Greek society has modernised. In fact, the gender norms and patriarchy that cause violence are inherent to our social system. And this system must change. ... Punishment is not enough to tackle the problem of domestic violence.”
Completely the wrong tone
The online magazine 20/20 is annoyed that femicides are not labelled as such:
“Why are people in Greece still discussing how to describe a crime for which the European Institute for Gender Equality has a clear name? ... All incidents of sexual violence are described in the media using terms such as 'unfortunate girl', 'unfortunate family', 'unfortunate woman', 'family tragedy', 'crime of passion', accompanied by formulations such as 'he killed her because...', 'he was a good boy', 'she threatened him with separation'. This approach to reporting shows that the murders of women do not have the visibility they deserve, either in public discourse or in the Greek news.”