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Voxpress:

"You will never be Greek, Albanian, Albanian"; when Elina Tzengko 'nails' Hellenic racism

2022-08-22 09:29:12Sport SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
"You will never be Greek, Albanian, Albanian"; when Elina Tzengko
Elina Tzengko (Dzhengo)

"I am Elina Tzengko (Xhengo), the daughter of an Albanian builder and an Albanian cleaner. I was born in Greece, I love this country, but I am also from Albania. And today I proudly carry the Greek flag". This is epigrammatically the life of 19-year-old Elina, who gave Greece a European gold medal in the javelin, but offered much more.

A sportswoman who joined the circle of those who unwittingly or intentionally gave a strong punch to racism, xenophobia, fascism well hidden in Greek society. Fortunately, a minority that cannot shape public opinion, but that can damage this country, the Greece of refugee grandparents and immigrant fathers.

What beautiful stories does sport make? Only he can overcome stereotypes, hatreds and passions, unite the peoples, erase from the map the "garbage" of the extreme right that tarnishes the Hellenic public life, which, unfortunately, he once brought into the Parliament.

Elina Tzengko's trainer, Giorgos Botskariov, with a Russian father and a Pontian mother, with a shocking family history, the kind that only life is born of. Of those who do not distinguish nations, blood, borders. But he sees people who have other origins and live elsewhere. People who fight two or three times harder every day to prove their worth in the arena of life. Far from the racists who bluntly say: "You are born Greek, you don't become one!"

Far from those who contemptuously say "Albania" or "Pakistan", children like Tzengko bring gold medals. She is the daughter of the Albanian cleaner of your house, but also the one who takes care of your mother as if she were her own mother. He is the builder, the plumber, the shopkeeper... who was born in Greece to foreign parents, but who every day becomes a victim of racists.

"You will never be Greek, Albanian, Albanian", - some even shout. The same ones who say "my country" about Antetokounmpo and Dorsey's national basketball team. Because they are colored, so they are not... Greek, in their minds.

But here comes an Elina, a John, once a Pirro, a Mirela, a Kahi to raise the Greek flag. The same flag that some "Greeks" had refused to Odise, the best student of the school in Michaniona, near Nea Kallikrateia where Elina Tzengko grew up.

"Greece, the flag belongs to you", they wrote in 2000 on the eve of a shift in Greek society towards fascist, racist, far-right parties. As we said above, life weaves beautiful stories, away from hatred and passions. Stories that make Greece change, if it can.

Children who are born in Greece, go to school there, why should they not be proud of their origins, why should they be treated differently... They cannot suffer for years and feel alienated in the country where they were born and educated, because they do not are… super athletes.

Why should those immigrant children who can't get legal documents pay? But even all those parents who are treated with reservations even today, work without insurance, are the poor "devils" of the fields, hotels and many other jobs... demeaning to the Greeks. And who looks at them with half an eye muttering: "I'm not racist, but they are foreigners, they will definitely be thieves, rapists. They are not a race like ours…”

Albanians in Greece have surely heard all this. But life is different and needs to be improved. Because the person matters and not the race, these are for the racists, for the nostalgic of the dark times.

Even for those who today want to enter Parliament by playing on fear and promoting the theory of "population replacement". Fortunately, some clean faces are emerging, mainly from the field of sports, also Albanian, to remind the Greeks of the supreme value of love for one's neighbor without distinction. Because the strength of a country lies in its differences, not its similarities.

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