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Debt Campaigners Slam Greece Creditors

  • Anti-EU protesters hold Greek flags in front of the monument of the unknown soldier by the parliament building during a demonstration of about five hundred people in Athens, Greece July 13, 2015.

    Anti-EU protesters hold Greek flags in front of the monument of the unknown soldier by the parliament building during a demonstration of about five hundred people in Athens, Greece July 13, 2015. | Photo: Reuters

Published 13 July 2015
Opinion

The deal was likened to the imperial politics of the 19th century

Leading UK campaigners against global debt have slammed the creditors over a deal reached between the European Union countries and Greece, drawing parallels with the way debt was used to control Latin American nations in the 1980s.

“This is not an agreement but an outrageous imposition on the Greek people. If implemented, it will continue the five-year long crisis in the Greek economy since the first disastrous bailout of European banks in 2010 for another decade or more, ” said Tim Jones, economist at the Jubilee Debt Campaign.

Jones explained how “Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America suffered from 20 years of economic stagnation and increasing poverty in the 1980s and 1990s because of a refusal to cancel debt and the imposition of austerity overriding democracy. The same now awaits Greece and the Eurozone unless there is a sudden change of direction.”

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has labelled the international creditors’ actions against the debt-ridden country as a form of financial “terrorism”.

“Is it so unthinkable to put the rights and livelihoods of ordinary people ahead of threatening the interests of the banks? The European governments and institutions seem to think so,” said Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now, adding that “the lives and rights of millions of Greeks, and now the very existence of the EU as a democratic union, come a poor second to the economic fundamentalism of Merkel and the Troika."

He described the deal forced on Greece “as nothing to do with a democratic union of countries, but rather resembles the imperial politics of the 19th century,” said Dearden.

The latest deal means Greece will have to cut spending through tough austerity measures, in exchange for staying in the eurozone and receiving as yet undefined financial aid.

Greek banks have been closed for two weeks and ATM's have limited withdrawals of 60 euros, or US$66 per day as Europe turned off financing for the banks.

Greece has received two previous bailout packages in 2010 and 2012, worth a total US$ 272 billion from the so-called troika - the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank - with nearly all the bailout funds being used to rescue European financial institutions.

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