A portrait of the Prosfygika housing complex during the Greek economic crisis


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It has been shelled, threatened with demolition and became such an eyesore that it was covered by a massive sheet during the 2004 Athens Olympics, but a historic 1930s housing complex built for Greeks fleeing Turkey is a hive of activity again.

As Greece's six-year economic slump has increased the number of homeless to 20,000 in Athens alone, NGOs estimate, the "Prosfygika" complex has become a haven for squatters and drug addicts as well as immigrants from Iran and elsewhere trying to cross into northern Europe through Greece's porous borders. Flat-roofed and boxy, typical of the German Bauhaus school of design, the complex of eight housing blocs was considered architecturally ahead of its time when it was built in the 1930s to house some of the 1.5 million Greeks who were displaced by a 1923 population exchange with Turkey after World War One.

Today their descendants are struggling to cope with their new neighbours, reflecting broader social tensions in Greece, especially between locals and immigrants, that have intensified during recent years of economic hardship that forced Greece to require two international bailouts. "Here, people come and go," said 76-year-old pensioner Yannis Chiotakis, one of about 30 remaining descendants of the blocs' original inhabitants, gesturing to a group of drug addicts roaming the streets. "But I can't tolerate this. I pay for electricity, for water, for all these taxes and next door there's someone who's living for free?" he said, referring to squatters.

The complex is mostly state owned and its crumbling exterior has attracted critics who say the buildings do not belong on one of Athens' busiest streets, between the capital's police headquarters and the top court. But a 2008 decision declaring them a protected site means they cannot be torn down. Preparing food from a soup kitchen over a donated stove in her cramped one-bedroom apartment, Emine Kilic, a Turkish mother of 10, said the family began squatting in Prosfygika two years ago when her husband lost his job as a construction worker.

"We had no choice. This is home now," she said.

A few buildings down, a Greek couple driven from their Athens home because they could not afford rent during the recession are also squatting. Nearby, two Iranian migrants play cards and sip tea, their cigarette smoke filling the room they share with about a dozen other Iranians, all waiting to leave Greece for north European countries such as Norway, where they hope to find work.

In 2001, the state bought all but 51 apartments in the complex whose owners refused to sell. But various renovation plans fell through over the years, including tearing down the complex to build a park or converting it into guest houses for a cancer hospital. One woman who was born and has lived her entire life in the complex recalls years of fights to save it from being torn down until Greece's top administrative court finally declared it protected property in 2008. "There were rallies, hunger strikes, sit-ins," said 76-year-old Chrysoula Charizanou, a former seamstress who raised her three children in a one-bedroom apartment here.

DEVELOPMENT PLANS

Charizanou's parents used up their life savings to buy the tiny apartment and she laments that the complex has been left to ruin by a cash-strapped state which has dithered over what to do with it. Without central heating, she spends evenings in thick sweaters huddled over a tiny wood-stove heater in her apartment, the outside walls of which bear shell marks from when the complex was caught in crossfire during Greece's civil war in the 1940s. Outside, the wide, dusty dirt roads between each block, one of the few open spaces in central Athens, are jammed with parked cars and often flood with sewage from broken pipes.

"My kids tell me: 'Leave, come stay with us'. But I love this place," Charizanou said, flicking through piles of black-and-white photographs from the 1960s, when neighbours held dance parties on the roof. "I was born here and I will die here. Maybe by then something will change."

Charizanou and the remaining residents who own apartments in the complex have formed a committee and often press the local authorities to kick out the squatters and remove the graffiti that covers the outside of all the buildings. But they have been told there is no money to spare. An official at the state company which owns most of the property, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said only that a plan to develop the property would be finalised this year.

That is creating uncertainty for the long-time residents who were born and grew up here and are determined to stay on living in Prosfygika no matter what. Pulling up his trousers to show a scar from a bullet wound suffered as a child during the civil war, Chiotakis, the pensioner, said he had even convinced his daughter to rent the flat next door.

"I've no intention of going anywhere," he said.

* Photos by Yorgos Karahalis of Reuters / Text by Karolina Tagaris of Reuters

Result
Qualifier: Islamabad United beat Karachi Kings by eight wickets

Fixtures
Tuesday, Lahore: Eliminator 1 - Peshawar Zalmi v Quetta Gladiators
Wednesday, Lahore: Eliminator 2 – Karachi Kings v Winner of Eliminator 1
Sunday, Karachi: Final – Islamabad United v Winner of Eliminator 2

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BUNDESLIGA FIXTURES

Saturday, May 16 (kick-offs UAE time)

Borussia Dortmund v Schalke (4.30pm) 
RB Leipzig v Freiburg (4.30pm) 
Hoffenheim v Hertha Berlin (4.30pm) 
Fortuna Dusseldorf v Paderborn  (4.30pm) 
Augsburg v Wolfsburg (4.30pm) 
Eintracht Frankfurt v Borussia Monchengladbach (7.30pm)

Sunday, May 17

Cologne v Mainz (4.30pm),
Union Berlin v Bayern Munich (7pm)

Monday, May 18

Werder Bremen v Bayer Leverkusen (9.30pm)

What can victims do?

Always use only regulated platforms

Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion

Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)

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Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence

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Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett

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Rating: 4/5

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Directors: Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi

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Saturday, April 27: 4pm and 8pm awards ceremony.

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
 
Started: 2021
 
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
 
Based: Tunisia 
 
Sector: Water technology 
 
Number of staff: 22 
 
Investment raised: $4 million 
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RESULT

Bayern Munich 3 Chelsea 2
Bayern: Rafinha (6'), Muller (12', 27')
Chelsea: Alonso (45' 3), Batshuayi (85')

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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