Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis on Wednesday asked that Deputy Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas to resign for tolerating anarchists who burn down urban buses.
“I want Mr. Toskas to tell us in which European capital people systematically burn down buses in front of the city’s main museum,” was the mayor’s rhetorical question in a radio interview on SKAI 100.3.
Kaminis was referring to Monday evening’s incident, when a group of anarchists stopped three buses, asked passengers to disembark and then torched the vehicles with petrol bombs.
The incident took place only a few meters away from the National Archaeological Museum. The citizen protection minister’s response to the incident was that there were more violent incidents during previous administrations.
The Athens mayor said that this is the first time ever he asks for the resignation of a minister because of Toskas’ tolerance of destructive anarchists whose violent acts have become routine in Athens, and particularly in the Exarchia neighborhood. He said that this atmosphere of lawlessness hurts tourism.
The neighborhood behind the museum has become a den of anarchists and other delinquents who often attack police with molotov cocktails, set trash containers on fire and vandalize the area.
“We have found that Hellenic Police have been successful in the past in improving the situation in central Athens,” Kaminis said, disputing Toskas’ claim that the situation has been the same in previous years.
The mayor further said that people of Athens should not be subordinated to the destructive fury and blind violence in the historic Exarchia district because the government is incompetent of controlling such phenomena.
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