Greece’s ‘war on Roma’ is Europe’s new blueprint for discrimination
Key takeaways
- Mass raids on Roma communities show how Europe is recasting racial discrimination as crime prevention and public order.
- Jonathan Lee is a Romani activist from Wales, working at the European Roma Rights Centre.
- Since late 2025, this routine has repeated with terrifying regularity: at least 76 raids in six months, involving 473 officers, targeting 152 Romani communities across Greece.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Mass raids on Roma communities show how Europe is recasting racial discrimination as crime prevention and public order.
Jonathan Lee is a Romani activist from Wales, working at the European Roma Rights Centre.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogle Add Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Across Europe, the line between internal policing and border enforcement is becoming increasingly blurred, writes Lee [File: Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters]For the Romani families living in Nea Zoi, an informal neighbourhood near Aspropyrgos, Greece, the pre-dawn hum of surveillance drones has become a regular soundtrack to their lives. By daybreak, K-9 units and tactical police have blocked narrow dirt roads, police in riot gear have formed a perimeter around the neighbourhood, and armed officers are breaking through doors to makeshift homes, all under the banner of “public order”.