Police arrested a Greek man on Chios after he wrote a social media post calling for locals to find “alive or dead” migrants he accused of destroying property.
The 42-year-old was arrested after making a post on Facebook calling for action against migrants he accused of destroying islanders’ property. Along with demanding locals act, he added that the migrants were “WANTED: alive or dead.”
The post was seen by a member of the “Racist Crimes Observatory” which, according to newspaper Proto Thema, reported the post to the police. The group describes itself as “recording racist crimes in Greece with a view to reporting them to the public prosecutor’s office”.
A similar reporting group in Sweden, named Näthatsgranskaren, was credited with an increase in hate speech prosecutions in Sweden 2018. The group, which received European Union funding, revealed that most of the people they reported to prosecutors were women over the age of 65.
The man is not the first to report migrants engaging in damaging the property of Greek locals in recent weeks.
Last week, Proto Thema reported that three migrants at the notorious Moria migrant camp on the island of Lesbos had chopped down five and a half tons of olive groves, causing “financial ruin” to the property owner.
Just days later, another migrant living at the Moria camp was arrested for stealing an estimated €6,000 worth of goods from a house in the Mytilene area.
Greek churches have not been spared from migrant vandalism and theft, either. Last month, two migrants, aged 27 and 30, were arrested on Chios after breaking into a chapel and stealing various liturgical items.
In May, the government of Hungary donated $30,000 to help repair Christian churches on Lesbos that had been damaged by migrants.