Stricken by a typhoon of austerity measures, facing titanic hurdles of unemployment, poverty and desperation, Greek society is literally between the hammer and the anvil. However, apart from the burning wave of anger, fury and sadness, among the citizens caused by the financial crisis, Greece is also torn by an explosion of xenophobic even racist responses.

These strong sentiments seem somehow justified. Every now and then, articles are published, blaming immigrants for the crisis, television shows are exposing sinning foreigners, illegal immigrants, dangerous criminals.

Motos such as “you are not becoming a Greek, you are born a Greek “, “proud to be a Greek” are becoming popular especially among the young. All of a sudden, Greeks have been transformed to a nation without memory, selectively forgetting their own past, present and unfortunately future as immigrants, as foreigners in a strange land.

From police operations with the awfully sarcastic title “Xenios Dias” to raids of the ultra-right party “Golden Dawn” and people who admire their political agenda to working immigrants and foreigners, that have resulted to major injuries even deaths, discrimination, racism and hate are becoming more and more tolerated by the society. A society that stays still, like a speechless theatre audience watching passively, the escalating violence and brutality.

Violence is not limited to the physical or verbal abuse. Violence is also the discrimination, the blockage, the exclusion of any dignity, security and respect the integration within the society might offer. How this integration is achieved for a foreigner? Only by his legal status, his naturalisation as a proud to be citizen of the country that has become his adopted homeland.

In Greece is very difficult to obtain legal status as an immigrant or a refugee. Most people are caught in a maze of bureaucracy, frustration and fear. It is almost impossible to obtain naturalisation status unless you are married to a Greek citizen and having Greek children. An excruciating, exhausting process has to be followed including language and history tests, high fees and often a specialist’s highly paid advice, with ambiguous results.

Greece is facing a “painful” truth that was resting for decades to oblivion. Immigrants do exist on its soil, they do obtain legal status eventually, and they do raise a family, children that will eventually go to school, will participate actively in the society. These children do follow the fate of their parents, being denied naturalisation. They will always remain strangers, foreigners, outcasts. Their residence, affiliations, taxes, contribution to society as workers is simply ignored, is non-existent. The state simply does not consider all of the above as sufficient for naturalisation; they do not prove alliance with the country. What does?

This is certainly a rhetorical question in a country where an American citizen of Greek descent can be naturalised even if he or she is completely alienated from the country, but due to his bloodline retains the right to be naturalised. Although Greeks do take pride of their fellow citizens of the world, they cannot tolerate the presence of foreigners on their land. Giving the chance to immigrants to naturalise would only benefit the country. Would create a homogenous population, contributing positively to society by paying taxes, studying, working, being grateful for their residency rights. Instead what is created is a house divided against itself; that house will not be able to stand.

“I condemn the killing of Suhail Mahmoud Al-Ali,” said the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, recalling that more journalists were killed in Syria in 2012 than anywhere else.

“I am appalled by the death toll of Syrian journalists and call on all parties to recognize reporters’ duty to continue informing the public even in the midst of strife,” Ms. Bokova added. “Once again, I call on all sides to respect journalists’ civilian status and let them benefit from their basic right to speak freely, in keeping with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

According to the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, Al-Ali died from injuries while covering fighting in the city of Aleppo.

In total, 41 professional and citizen journalists died in Syria last year and more than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the country since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in early 2011. Recent months have witnessed an escalation in the conflict, which is now in its 23rd month.

Separately today, a UN spokesperson announced that the Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will meet on Friday in Geneva with Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, and the United States Deputy Secretary of State, William Burns.

The meeting is aimed at furthering their discussions to arrive at a political solution to the crisis in Syria. Mr. Brahimi has been holding meetings in the Middle East region and elsewhere, as part of his efforts to bring an end the conflict.

“The number of journalists who are paying with their lives for doing their job in Pakistan is alarming,” the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, said in a news release.

Abdul Razaq Gul, a journalist for Express News TV based in Balochistan province, was found dead on 19 May, according to UNESCO. He had been kidnapped while returning home the previous evening, and his body showed signs of torture.

Aurengzeb Tunio was a television reporter for the Sindhi-language Kawaish Television Network in Lalu Ranwak village in Sindh province. Some 20 gunmen are reported to have attacked his office, killing him, his brother and a family friend.

“I urge the authorities to investigate these killings. It is essential for freedom of expression and for good governance that those responsible for the death of journalists be brought to justice,” Ms. Bokova added.

The latest killings bring to 27 the number of journalists and media workers killed in Pakistan since 2002, according to UNESCO.

Soon, there will be no daily editions, at least on paper. Weeklies will be strengthened to create cash flows, necessary for news organisations to survive. Of course, structural cuts will have to wait until after the elections, since campaign budgets are rolling since after a Parliament decision, new money was channeled to political parties (and their advertisers and PR specialists)… At the same time, major television stations continue to suffer from a long lasting strategy that favored low quality competition, built upon a star system of well paid tele-personas. This is dead too.

Only 5 years ago, announcements on internet penetration in the country used to be news. Today, broadband connectivity has transformed the news market, allowing a new wave of online investments to take place. However, the crisis has turned online growth to more opportunistic than strategic. Small groups of journalists and prominent media figures are creating websites that remind first generation attempts in foreign mature markets. There is an absolute lack of innovation, even in design and layout arrangements. These ventures reflect the agony of the profession to place itself in the new web advertising market, which is about to take off, as soon as fiscal finances in Greece appear to be stable and entrepreneurial climate starts to improve.

In the last 6 months, around a dozen of ‘major’ news web sites have appeared in the Greek internet market, already causing an inflationary effect in the free news content sector. None of these relies on parameters that could fall under the category of innovation. And this is the main reason why the leading ones are those advertised by mainstream channels, television and billboards. In the first case since their owners are television personas, in the second, because owners can afford it.

The growth of internet news/content market in Greece resembles the chaotic development of private TV stations in the country, 20 years ago. This time, however, the chaotic approach is not due to the rebellious nature of the new media. It simply lacks strategy, confusing readers and advertisers. These things are about to change…

Dr. Demetris Kamaras is the Editor of AlYunaniya.

Six parties apart from apart from PASOK, New Democracy, the Communist Party (KKE), Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) and Ecologist Greens which were not represented in the last parliament and are contesting the upcoming elections will be given some airtime on ERT, according to a joint ministerial decision signed on Monday by Interior Minister Tassos Giannitsis and Minister of State Pantelis Kapsis.

This decision is in response to an an appeal to the council of state by Drasi Party , which objected a cross-party committee decision to provide airtime just to the five parties who won seats at the 2009 elections and the Ecologist Greens, who won a seat in the European Parliament in the same year.

Any party that has received at least 0.25 the previous national elections or European Parliament elections will be guaranteed some airtime.

State broadcaster ERT is obliged to carry a 45-minute interview with the leader of each party and will have to cover live one of the group’s public rallies, ANA reports. ERT and private channels will also allocate each party two five-minute spots during their evening broadcasts and a total of 25 minutes for campaign ads.

However, the issue of a televised debate between party leaders remains undecided. PASOK has challenged ND leader Antonis Samaras to a two-way debate with Socialist chief Evangelos Venizelos. The conservatives rejected this idea yesterday, arguing it would simply lead to “monologues” by the two politicians. ND called for a cross-party committee to agree on a format involving more leaders. “They are rejecting dialogue because they are afraid,” said PASOK spokeswoman Fofi Gennimata, according to Kathimerini.

According to a white paper by ComScore, social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide; the field hosts 1.5 billion people whilst social networking behavior both transcends and reflects regional differences around the world.

At the end of 2011, there were around 18.2 million Facebook users in the Middle East, namely around 8.4% of a total population of 216.2 million (total internet users reached 78.6 million, 35.7% of the population).

Guardian’s Peter Beaumont, correspondent in the Middle East wrote that the defining moment that unites Egypt with Tunisia, Bahrain and Libya is a young woman or a young man with a smartphone. In Egypt, details of demonstrations were circulated by both Facebook and Twitter and the activists’ 12-page guide to confronting the regime was distributed by email.

Micro-blogging is gaining ground amongst web-enabled public figures. Fb-status updates and Tweets are increasingly replacing TV soundbites in the subjective recording of timeliness. Regular news stories incorporate more and more of that. Special stories are written on tweeted reactions of prominent people to events and sayings of others.

In 2008 in the US, Barak Obama used the Internet to target youth of 18 to 29 years olds, the age group most reliant on new media for information about politics and election. A few years later in northern Africa, crowds used the same means to target authority, calling for change.

Dr. Demetris Kamaras is the Editor of AlYunaniya.com