“Greece is under economic occupation” – filmmaker

The austerity measures imposed on Greece by the EU will lead to a disintegration of social guarantees and the clearance sale of public property, argues filmmaker Aris Hatzistefanou, the director of Debtocracy documentary on the Greek debt crisis.

The director of the documentary says “We wanted to explain that what happened in Greece is actually the same with what happened in Portugal, in Ireland or in Spain.”“We are not lazy people who spend more than we earn,” he says.“It is a structural problem of the world’s financial system and at the same time a structural problem of the Eurozone,” the filmmaker shares.“The Eurozone is a system that creates deficit and debt on the European periphery while at the same time creating surpluses to the European core,” Hatzistefanou says.The filmmaker claims that if several years ago nobody talked about this, now about 35 per cent of Greeks want to leave the Eurozone.Greece is aware it is just impossible to pay a €360 billion debt so it is going to default, believes Aris Hatzistefanou, and in order to prevent the capital to leave the country the banking system should be nationalized, he says.The few families that own the Greek economy and media have realized that foreign banks might come and take control of the country so these families do not want the IMF to come to Athens rescue, the filmmaker states.In turn, the people of Greece have realized that the government has been lying to them and the austerity measures already taken cannot save the situation because deeper reforms and more radical measures are needed.Aris Hatzistefanou stresses that Greek nationals are being blackmailed on a daily basis, being told if they do not accept the EU and the IMF conditions and austerity measures – “there will be hell”.Greece has become a tax haven for a few [rich] and a tax hell for the majority of the population,” he says. “The Greek people are losing the rights gained in the 20th century.”The humanitarian organizations that used to work in Africa are now coming to Athens to help people because a humanitarian crisis is on its way and that fact gives the right idea about the ongoing situation in Greece.The next step for living under economic occupation Greece will be a massive privatization of public property and complete destruction of the social system, all this imposed by Brussels, Berlin and the Greek government, Aris Hatzistefanou states.“They will try to sell off everything.”“The Eurozone is on the brink of collapse either way so Greece should leave Eurozone,” argues Hatzistefanou.“AT first we believed that the EU will be not only an economic and monetary union, but also a political union of the people,” says filmmaker, recalling the dictatorship period Greece passed and the Greek dream of peace and security within the EU. But it turned out later that “The EU and especially the Eurozone, is just a monetary union, a tool in the hands of foreign banks and corporations to ease their work and help to take control over the population of the European periphery.”