The leader of the New Left, Gabriel Sakellaridis, and the party’s MPs, Peti Perka and Theodoros Dritsas, to file a complaint against the president of Greek Solution, Kyriakos Velopoulos. The complaint is also signed by New Left MPs Sia Anagnostopoulou and Euclid Tsakalotos.
The complaint alleges incitement to violence under the provisions of the anti-racism law, specifically Article 1 of Law 927/79, as amended by Law 4285/2014.
On June 10, 2026, during an interview on the OPEN television station, Kyriakos Velopoulos was asked whether he would “sink the boat or not” that was carrying migrants and refugees in the Aegean Sea. The president of the Greek Solution party replied bluntly, “You sink it,” and later in the discussion he repeated this specific call, even showing indifference to the illegality of such an act.
According to the grounds for the lawsuit filed by the leader of the New Left and its four members of parliament, Kyriakos Velopoulos “urged the competent state authorities, as well as any private individual, to commit criminal acts (sinking a boat, that is, causing a shipwreck with the certain result of death) against individuals based solely on their race and national origin—namely, the fact that they are citizens of third countries that are not members of the European Union.”
Many weeks have passed since Velopoulos’s statements, but no judicial authority has taken action to prosecute him for his racist remarks, in which he incited violence against vulnerable migrants and refugees.
With today’s lawsuit, the New Left is taking this specific initiative with the aim of putting a stop to the hateful and racist statements made by far-right political figures. This move is part of the multifaceted struggle—both political and legal—that society and the Left must wage against the far right, the statement concludes.