Rhodes meeting on hell-raisers
As yet another British tourist received a stiff fine yesterday for indecent exposure at an infamous seaside resort on Rhodes, the island’s police authorities conferred with regional officials, hoteliers and the British consul on coping with the hordes of rumbustious UK nationals flocking to Greece this summer for booze-fueled holidays. Although a public oral-sex display on Corfu and an attack on a shopowner under the Acropolis – both involving Britons – caused a considerable stir earlier in the summer, matters came to a head with last Tuesday’s murder of a 17-year-old UK national in a bar at the Faliraki resort on Rhodes. A fellow Briton has been charged with the killing, in which a broken bottle was used. On Wednesday, the National Tourism Organization said it would «resist tour operators that sell package tours at ridiculously low prices and attract tourists who… cause trouble.» During yesterday’s meeting on Rhodes, British consul Donald Holder said the British police would be willing to cooperate with Greek authorities on addressing the problem of UK troublemakers on the island. Dodecanese prefect Yiannis Machairidis argued that tourists were a necessary evil. «Greece, Rhodes, Faliraki need English tourists, and isolated incidents with youngsters are not representative of the country’s culture,» he was quoted as saying by the Athens News Agency. «However, everyone should respect [Greece] and its laws.» A spokesman for Rhodian hoteliers called for a ban on package tours that advertise sex games. Meanwhile, a Rhodes judge sentenced an 18-year-old British tourist, whose name was not made public, to seven months’ imprisonment for displaying his buttocks to passers-by on a Faliraki street. The man bought off his sentence for 1,825 euros.
