{"id":12800,"date":"2018-08-26T09:27:33","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T09:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12800"},"modified":"2018-08-26T09:27:33","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T09:27:33","slug":"between-bureaucracy-and-violence-pakistanis-in-greece-push-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12800","title":{"rendered":"Between bureaucracy and violence, Pakistanis in Greece push back"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Athens, Greece <\/strong>– Well before the sun came up on January 17, 2013, Shahzad Luqman woke up, hopped on his bicycle and took off for work in a suburb of the Greek capital, Athens.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old Pakistani, who had been in Greece for six years, was going from his home in the Peristeri neighbourhood to nearby Petralona to unload oranges at the farmers market.<\/p>\n

But before he could reach work, he was stabbed seven times and left to bleed out in the street.<\/p>\n

When police swept the homes of the killers, they found leaflets published by Golden Dawn, the Greek neo-fascist party that currently has 16 seats in the country’s parliament.<\/p>\n

The incident wrought trauma in Greece’s migrant community, particularly among Pakistanis, who are estimated to be around 50,000 in number and have been migrating<\/a> in ebbs and flows to the Mediterranean country since the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Javed Aslam, the 50-year-old president of the Pakistani Community of Greece and head of the Union of Immigrant Workers,\u00a0remembers<\/a>\u00a0the day Luqman was killed as a turning point.<\/p>\n

“They [had] targeted and attacked around 1,000 workers. And not one Golden Dawn member was punished until Luqman was killed and his two murderers were arrested,” Aslam told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

“That was the first time anyone from their party was arrested.”<\/p>\n

Five years later, Aslam said migrant workers continue to bear the brunt of far-right violence.<\/p>\n

In 2017, the number of hate crimes motivated by race, skin colour and national origin almost tripled<\/a>\u00a0compared to the year before, according to police.<\/p>\n

Qamar Zaman was among those attacked<\/a> when he got off a bus in Athens. A group of young Greeks followed him, beat him up and fled with some of his belongings when passersby approached.<\/p>\n

“My life was saved because of that [people approaching],” said Zaman. “Otherwise, I would’ve probably died.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Athens, Greece – Well before the sun came up on January 17, 2013, Shahzad Luqman woke up, hopped on his bicycle and took off for work in a suburb of the Greek capital, Athens. The 27-year-old Pakistani, who had been in Greece for six years, was going from his home in the Peristeri neighbourhood to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}