Another dark chapter in Europe’s history is being written on the Aegean islands of Chios and Lesvos, and at the Evros delta, the natural border between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. In our regular calendar on racism and resistance, we document a series of racist acts, including the burning down of centres storing essential supplies for refugees, as well as an international school for refugee children. The scale and organised nature of the violence is reminiscent of the racist mob attacks in Germany, at Rostock and Hoyerswerdain 1991 and in Spain in 2000, at El Ejido, where Moroccan workers were driven out of town.  And just as those events cannot be dismissed as simple spontaneous outpourings of local xenophobia, the escalation in violence over the last few weeks against refugees and NGO workers in Greece has been aggravated by the EU’s disastrous handling of (the apparently collapsing)  EU-Turkey deal amid the flight of refugees from war in Syria.

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