One can never cease to marvel at the ways Greek politicians choose to handle difficult situations. The recent case of Kostas Katsoulis – a fan so ruthlessly beaten during a football match he died – prompted General Secretary of Sports Yiannis Andrianos to postpone all sporting events scheduled for this upcoming weekend. Andrianos claimed to have acted out of grief and respect for the victim and his relatives. A symbolic act – a bit melodramtic, perhaps – but ultimately bearing no significance.
The 46-year-old garnered the state’s respect after he passed away. But where was the state’s respect during the ten days he spent in intensive care, fighting for his life? Do we in Greece respect the dead but forgo all respect for the living? The next time a fan exits a football stadium missing an eye or a limb, is everything OK?
To express grief is just a tool used by politicians to sidetrack public opinion from their own inefficiency or downright incompetence. It sounds slightly pessimistic, but Andrianos himself admitted that “we can’t do something about it, the situation is out of control, so we shut down all sports events for the weekend and cross our fingers that nothing bad happens when games start again next week.” A clear example of the politics of wishful thinking. Why doesn’t Adrianos just ban all sports events forever? “Nothing bad” would happen ever again.
Officials in the Greek police claim that they lack the manpower required to adequately monitor all sports events. They add that, since football clubs are private companies, they ought to be capable of hiring their own security staff. Small wonder, then, that the two policemen present at the Herodotus-Ethnikos Piraeus game and the two who came after the fight broke out were virtually powerless to prevent the tragedy. But isn’t the duty of law enforcement officers to be present in numbers in every conceivable place where a crime could be committed?
Nor did the general secretary fail to condemn violence. He even promised measures to wipe out hooliganism and football violence. We’ve heard this before – from every general secretary of sports who has ever served the post in Greece. It almost seems like part of the qualification criteria to spout off such vague statements. But the truth is, as we are by now well-aware, the general secretariat of sports is mostly an honorific duty. It is typically an office given to an elected MP as a reward for winning elections in his district. His main duty is to go to athletic events, distribute awards and smile at people and cameras. He has no legislative power; the most he can do is exert pressure on the ministries of citizen protection and justice to be stricter on the enforcement of pre-existing laws.
And yet the enforcement of pre-existing laws is precisely what he have failed to hear in the last ten days. In the smokescreen of wishful thoughts and condemnations of violence, the crocodile tears and the promises for “new, stricter measures,” we have yet to hear the most important thing: Whο killed Katsoulis?
Millions of grieving words have been written in the news media, sports websites and blogs. But remarkably few have been written about the actual perpetrators and the ongoing police investigation. The general secretary likely forgot about such details after his “wise,” “brave” decision to postpone games for a week. We’re still lacking any details about the progress of the murder investigation. According to certain sports writers, even the videos that show the fight have been mysteriously hidden from public view.
The killing of Kostas Katsoulis should not be regarded as a “fan incident” or something that happened within the confines of a football stadium. It should be disconnected from that; it’s a homicide. The fact that someone exploits a football crowd to facilitate a crime is irrelevant. The police are the only authority responsible for investigating the homicide and bringing the perpetrator to justice. Everything else is just idle chatter.
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