Sunday, September 2, 2012

Diamanda Galás: Human Warehouses, Prison Camps, Artists’ Colonials, and SCHREI 27

Greece has a massively corrupt medical system and for years the prison camps El Daba (1944), Makronisos (Devil’s Island 1946), Yaros and Trikeri (1947-1958) among others, were actually inhabited by doctors supervising the interrogation of dissenters, dissenters such as the great Yiannis Ritsos, who was repeatedly incarcerated in the camps until, when let out, he died of cancer. (Videoclip of Trikeri here.)

These camps were subsidized by America and by Britain since perceived insurgency was contrary to their interest in Yiorgos Papadopoulos, CIA agent and Nazi collaborator, who ran the Greek Junta.

Greece recently has opened thirty more asylum/prison camps for insurgents, immigrants who are involved in any activity they dislike, or immigrants if they feel like it.

Many sources say it is becoming a great asylum. This smells of a Junta in progress. And massive corruption from the very rich and the government, who caused the gigantic national debt, leads to juntas.

The Mediterranean Quarterly wrote, in its review of Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State by the outstanding scholar Neni Panourgia, “Prison camp El Daba was established at the end of 1944 by the British in the wake of the Battle of Athens for as many as 12,000 Greeks suspected of supporting the Left (including children.) And massive funding authorized by Harry Truman from 1947 onward helped to fund the establishment and maintenance of the concentration camps and the containment of Communism.”

“At its height, Makronisos, the largest of the island prisons, held 10,500 in its five separate camps.”

There are many other American camps like this throughout the world, fronting, for example, as artists’ colonies, or as guesthouses open to government bureaucrats. I believe many are fronts for “debriefing,” or “interrogation” centers.

I was invited to one such colony in Tuscany, Civitella Ranieri, which the Counts Ranieri generously rented to an American organisation। I had not done recent homework, and when I saw the evading eyes of the ambassador from Washington who now ran this colony, I felt something major had changed. He did not want to meet me or be alone with me, which was attractive, but odd.

More...

See also:

Diamanda Galás Discusses Her 13 Favourite Albums

No comments:

Post a Comment