Bearded Tourist Ban

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31366, 11 May 1967, Page 13

Bearded Tourist Ban

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright)

ATHENS, May 10. The Greek Ministries of Interior and Public Order have banned the admission to Greece of tourists with beards or long hail*, the “New York Times” news service reported. The order, effective today, also bars the entry of tourists “clothed in rags or slovenly dress.” If the bearded or longhaired male tourist insists on entering, the announcement continued, “he must cut off his hair and beard and not let them grow again.” Judging from recent attacks in the controlled press on “beatnik tourists,” it seems to be aimed at the Bohemian set, the news service said.

But at the moment there was nothing in the order to distinguish between the neat-ly-trimmed grey beard and the tangled brown beard of social protest. Regime’s “Vision”

The order is the latest in a series of measures taken by the new regime in its vision of a Greece returned to the practice of Spartan virtues and the Christian religion. The campaign began a few days after the coup, when the Interior Minister, Mr Stylianos Patakos, who supervises the country’s moral tone, banned mini-skirts for schoolgirls and long hair for schoolboys. The new order goes beyond beards and hair—it also bars poor tourists, however modestly dressed and shorn. No tourist will be admitted unless he has at least 80 United States dollars. If he intends to stay longer than

10 days, he must have more, though the sum is not specified.