Anti-refugee bias in the local press

The relevant literature indicates that the arrival of the refugees and their settlement in Greece were met with hostility by the local populations, causing social friction. Despite the fact that the refugee populations were by no means homogenous and were instead characterised by substantial differentiation, they developed a common identity which superseded differences in class, place of origin and place of settlement. In a way, this identity defined a part of the Greek population as ‘refugees’.

The local populations in all sites of refugee settlement had a mostly negative attitude towards the refugees, especially those of the first generation. Although the Greek press often focused on the uprooting and the hardships these populations had had to endure, in essence the Greeks who lived in the Greek territories were inhospitable towards them. The reasons for the conflicts between the locals and the refugees were political, economic and cultural.

During the first years after the refugee arrival in Chania, the self-described liberal and democratic section of the local press of Chania seems to have maintained a moderate stance on the various issues which commonly arose until the new populations were fully rehabilitated. Research has not located any anti-refugee comments, aggressive front page headlines, or repeated complaints.

However, in smaller newspaper columns, police reports, and throwaway remarks, we can recognise the attitudes the press instilled in the local society by attributing certain characteristics to the newly-arrived refugees.

In autumn 1922, the newspaper Kiryx made sure to point out the refugee status of those implicated in its crime reports: ‘…the police arrested Paraschos Karanikolas, son of Nikolaos, age 45, refugee from Asia Minor, for stealing olives…’. In another case, out of three persons implicated in an incident, one was identified as a refugee, but no mention was made of the fact that the other two were native Greeks: ‘…the police arrested Michail Siachos, from Asia Minor, Kyriakos Protogerakis and Politis Rafail…’.

A few months later, in January 1923, the newspaper Esperinos Tachydromos employed the same method in its own crime reports: ‘The police arrested the criminals Nikolaos Manopoulos, Omiros Zachariadis and Dimitrios Gerontakis, refugees, and found 2,187.50 drachmas in their possession’, reads a report on the murder of an Armenian refugee. Similarly, in a report on a fraud, the arrestee’s refugee status is mentioned, whereas in the next two reports on thefts, the names of the arrestees are not accompanied by their refugee status, leading us to believe that they were probably locals.

In August 1923, the newspaper Dimokratikos Agon published an interview with the Minister of Welfare, Apostolos Doxiadis. When asked about local public health issues, the Minister said: ‘Chania and its suburbs are plagued by a variety of venereal diseases due to the interaction of Ottoman women and refugees with the locals and it is imperative that we start an intensive effort to fight them’. This is another iteration of the common stereotype of the foreigner as a ‘health time-bomb’, the use of which has been observed during population movements across space and time.

The last piece included in the entry was published in a January 1924 issue of the newspaper Nea Erevna. The newspaper published a complaint written by a group of refugees who had visited the offices of the General Governorate of Crete to air some grievances. They complained that ‘they were thrown out… [an employee] called them drunks and thieves…’ and they were forced to leave unceremoniously, unable to exercise their rights even though they were Greek citizens.