“They kicked me hard in the ribs and broke my nose. I was in pain everywhere, and I ended up on the scene of a war, in evangelistic emergencies.” Manolis Psarros is an archaeologist at the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades who was attacked in Mykonos in mid-March. Speaking to the ERT program Fasma and Giannis Papadopoulos, he stressed: “There is a regime in Mykonos that operates by its own rules.”

Mr Psarros spoke of his nightmarish experience: “I remember walking on asphalt, walking up to the car, and then I don’t remember anything. I remember being in the evangelist emergency room and my brother was on top of me. I tell him what happened? I was told that someone stopped you at the car. But then the system of Mykonos started working in my head. We think the kick is coming from there because of some of the things I’ve been doing lately. We think it’s from there – I didn’t have any animosity with anyone or any personal problems.”

The archaeologist was found covered in blood in the KAT area in Kifisia. He was wounded in the back of the head, had broken ribs and comminuted fractures of his nose and face. He was taken by EKAV ambulance to Evangelismos. The investigation into his beating was conducted by the Kifissia Security Department with the assistance of the Extortion Prosecutor’s Office. From his hands are issued permits for the construction of hotels, entertainment centers, records of violations and abuses, many in the archaeological service attribute the attack to abuses during construction in areas of archaeological interest that take place in Mykonos.

The life of Mr. Psarros after being discharged from the hospital is not easy: “I have difficulty getting up, I sleep badly, I cannot turn over, etc., I have had rib injuries and the pain is known to last for many days.”

During this period, he had two or three pending cases with serious irregularities and omissions. “As a Service, we are waiting for help from the Urban Development and the Ministry of the Environment. I have to say that we don’t have it. Basically, these are cases that are primarily ecological in nature and urban-housing-spatial and there is a gap.

When asked about this, he notes that he did not expect something like this to happen to him, that he would become a target, “but I knew that there is a regime on Mykonos that operates by its own rules, and the state should be able to control this “.

Asked how widespread violations of urban planning in Mykonos are, he notes that “they account for 80% of cases.”

“We have too many hotels that get permission for 600 square meters and build 1200, and then the law comes and they populate them, or there is a gradation in the settlement. There is legal regularization, that is, inclusion in the provisions of law 4495, which is the current law, under which buildings are now regulated, and there is also a second category in which these square meters were made after 2011, which is provided for by law and usually they are not regulated.

He then adds: “The complaint was filed by a resident of Mykonos who presented us with a list. He started by reacting because we trespassed on his property, and he told us that you know something, here you are doing it, but there is much more. So, having also carried out preliminary work without his knowledge, in 2018 we drew up a document and submitted it to the Department of Urban Development. During that period, there were 35 cases of buildings in Mykonos that were built without the consent of our service and had either minor violations or very large ones.

What violations? “Arbitrary. Grows a mushroom overnight. Huge earthworks to open another builder’s pen in the wilderness. All this can have an impact, destroy ancient monuments. We are not saying that there can be antiquities wherever excavations are made, but if they exist where with such arbitrariness, they will be destroyed.

“It goes without saying that out of the 500 permits we issue a year, 400 or so, two or three will issue antiques. It’s just that it’s very important for us and for the history of the island, what happened, how it happened, how the people of this particular island lived in the shadow of the cosmopolitan Delos,” he emphasizes.

Mr. Psarros then notes that “there were engineers who were faithful, that is, reverently following the formalities of applying for a building permit. That is, they first came to the Archaeological Service. There are others, mostly general contractors rather than engineers, who do not follow this method and build a house and then turn to settlement laws and inhabit it. We, as the understaffed, are doing our best to find what is there, if any of them are near archaeological sites, bring them to the surface and prevent the damage from spreading to the wider environment.”

“I was hit in the face by those who were doing their job”

“I think everyone will be afraid, but in conclusion, I’m not afraid because I have nothing to hide,” he says, adding that “I’ve been slapped in the face by the whole Archaeological Service trying to do their job.” with little money. There must be a balance reflecting the public interest and the extent to which private interests can be used, the extent to which public goods can be exploited.