Education Min to ANA: 'Violence and lawlessness have no place in universities'

Her belief that the new law on university asylum shields the unobstructed circulation of ideas and academic freedom at large, in both research and teaching, expressed Education Minister Niki Kerameus, who spoke to Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) on Saturday.

She noted that "unlawful acts, which in the past violated the notion of asylum, such as acts of violence, intimidation, obstruction of assemblies and conferences, will now be prevented."

Kerameus highlighted that common law will be implemented at universities "as applied in every public place in the country, where authorities intervene in every crime."

"The protection of university sites is implemented in two stages: firstly, by restoring alleviative, modern, democratic asylum legislation, and secondly, by demonstrating zero tolerance for infringing behavior and aberrance, thus signifying the government's message to any and all direction(s), that the law will be applied rigorously," she explained.

"The political will of the New Democracy government is clear. Violence and lawlessness have no place in universities," the Education Minister characteristically pointed out.

Explaining further, she said that SYRIZA's law 4485/2017 introduced a distinction as to whether the offense is a misdemeanor or a felony, in the first instance authorities would require the permit of the university's rectorate to intervene, in the second instance they could intervene without it.

This differentiation presupposed the convening of the rector's council to legally characterize the criminal act, and this would take hours, sometimes even days, for the university's plenary council to assess offenses that usually took just a few seconds to commit," Kerameus concluded.