OPINION

Respect the flags of other countries as you do your own

Regarding the burning of the German flag by OTE employees: What would happen if German employees who work for a German company in which a Greek company wished to buy a stake burned a Greek flag that had first been defaced by putting a certain emblem of the Greek junta on it? Would this not cause an outcry in this country which would spread all over the world? But obviously Greeks can burn foreign flags «unpunished,» and, I am sure, would be astonished if the Germans started wishing for Greece to be thrown out of the European Union, a country which, it seems, tolerates such behavior of its citizens, who obviously have forgotten that Germany, for more than a quarter of a century, has paid two-thirds of the money Greece has received and still is receiving from Brussels. I hope that at least the more sophisticated citizens of this country do not share the opinion that burning other countries’ flags is the right thing to demonstrate against any country, especially when it belongs to a member state of the same union. I therefore expect to read and hear from other Greeks, other than the flag burners, that they share my opinion. GERHARD FISCHER, Athens.

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