Academics, politicians call for abolition of university asylum

A group of five well-known academics and politicians have written an open letter calling for the end of university asylum, which New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis - who all polls indicate will win the 7 July general election by a large margin - has said he will abolish anyway.

The letter is signed by Sorbonne Professor Emerita of Byzantine History and ex-Paris 1 rector Helene Ahrweiler, University of Athens Professor Emeritus of Political History Thanos Veremis, former education ministers Anna Diamantopoulou (Pasok) and Marietta Giannakou (New Democracy), and Nikiforos Diamantouros, a political scientist who was a two-term European Ombudsman and is a member of the Academy of Athens.

The university asylum system was first passed into law in 1982 under Andreas Papandreou and was intended to ensure academic freedom from state or other interventions after the junta, which in 1973 sent to the Athens Polytechnic an army tank that smashed through the steel gate to stamp out a student uprising. There were many dead in the junta crackdown.

The current asylum law forbids police or other organs of the state from entering campuses without the express permission of rectors and university assemblies.

Critics charge that the law has been exploited by groups of students and anarchists who use campuses as an operational base to make Molotov cocktails to be used against police during anarchist forays.

They also point to physical attacks against professors, the destruction of university property, and the fact that drug dealers on campuses also use the law as a shield for lawlessness.

The letter appears intended to prepare the public for Mitsotakis' abolition of the asylum institution, which he has said he will do at the start of his...

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