Roundup: Greece marks Int'l Day Against Discrimination with events for refugees

Greece marked on Monday the International Day Against Discrimination and the World Poetry Day, both celebrated on March 21 every year, with a series of events organized nationwide in support of refugees.

As the country and the wider region face over the past year the worst refugee crisis after the WWII with over a million people seeking shelter in Europe from warzones, Greek poets joined their voices with the protesters in the streets and citizens calling for an immediate end to conflicts and protection of refugees.

Renowned poets such as 95-year-old Nanos Valaoritis and Athens Academy member Kiki Dimoula were among the more than 30 artists who recited their poems about refugees during an event in an exhibition hall in central Athens.

Under the campaign "A Poem for Refugees" similar events took place in some 30 cities across Greece, as well as in several other cities around the globe under the auspices of UNHCR.

Audiences in Greece were urged to help collect food products and other items for the 50,000 refugees stranded in the debt laden country at the moment.

"Today's events show that poets are always here, present, to raise awareness... Our aim is to send a message against racism and xenophobia which are currently spreading across Europe," Dinos Siotis, President of the Poets' Circle, which organized the main Athens event, told Greek national news agency AMNA.

Siotis noted that many of Greece's top poets in the past two centuries belonged in refugee families themselves and in particular in the early 20th century thousands of Greeks were forced to leave their homes in Turkey and resettle in Greece due to war.

In his message for the day Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos quoted Greek Nobel Laureate Yorgos Seferis (1900-1971) to highlight" the message of humanism and solidarity Greek people are sending to the world."

In his 1944 poem entitled "The Last Station" Seferis wrote: "We come from Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, the small state of Commagene, which died out like a small lamp. Keeps turning about in our brain again and again, and large cities which throve for thousands of years, and later became the grazing lands of buffaloes, fields of the sugar cane and the corn. We come from the sands of the desert, from the Seas of Proteus, souls withered away by public sins, each like a bird in its cage."

The refugee issue was also at the forefront of events organized by civil society organizations in Greece to mark the International Day Against Discrimination on Monday.

"The world stands by the refugees" was the key motto of this year's celebrations.

The Greek Forum of Migrants and representatives of local minority communities experiencing discrimination, including refugees, migrants, Roma, LGBT, HIV positives, he elderly, addicts, and religious groups organized a "Walk against Discrimination" from Syntagma square in front of the Greek parliament to the Acropolis museum.

Politicians, authors, students and human rights activists marched together and ended up dancing under the Acropolis hill during a music concert by second generation Georgian and African youth. Endit