Helen Vlachos

Helen Vlachos (, ; , ; 18 December 1911 – 14 October 1995) was a Greek journalist,

Soon after the coup of 21 April 1967, she closed down her newspaper Kathimerini as a protest against the dictatorship. In October 1967, her description of one of the junta principals, Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, then Minister of the Interior of the junta, as a clown, led to her house arrest, for which she later wrote a book under the same title.

For her refusal to acquiesce to the Greek junta's demands that she censor her publications, her resistance against the regime of the colonels, and her contributions to freedom of the press, she was posthumously recognised as one of the World Press Freedom Heroes by the International Press Institute.

Life

Helen Vlachos (Eléni Vláchou) was the daughter of Georgios Vlachos, who founded Kathimerini, one of Greece's premier newspapers, in 1919.

Life under the colonels

"They cannot tell me how to run my newspapers any more than I can tell them how to run their tanks" Helen Vlachos

The coup d'état of 21 April 1967, which overthrew the legitimate government of Greece, started at 2 a.m. local time. Soon after the coup had begun, Vlachos arrived at the offices of Kathimerini in the early hours of the morning, in complete shock, surprise and disarray, to plan the publication of what was to be the only edition of her newspaper during the dictatorship and started to organise the photographic and other recorded material which was to be included in that special edition.

The junta then tried to pressure her to republish her newspapers but she steadfastly refused choosing instead to criticise them at every opportunity.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa she described the junta members by saying: "All in all they are mediocre and colourless, except of course Pattakos. He is a mediocre man who acts like a clown". As far as the regime's strongman Georgios Papadopoulos was concerned, Vlachos told La Stampa that she feared him less than "going to the dentist".

The interview to La Stampa proved too much for the dictators, who sent the police to her house to summon her to appear in front of the Athens Military Court where she was interrogated for four hours. At the end of the interrogation she was told that a date would be scheduled for her trial by the end of October. Hearing that she exclaimed: "This is going to be a lot of fun!". as a clown,

Two days later she was on her way to London, having successfully escaped from house arrest with the help of her friend Leslie Finer, an author who worked at the Greek Embassy in Washington and who arranged a secret British flight for her.

In response to her death, the Prime Minister of Greece Andreas Papandreou said about her: "She was a truly great figure in Greek journalism... She was unwavering in her principles and her beliefs... Her immediate reaction to the coup of 21 April 1967, with the cessation of publication of Kathimerini and her other publications, is a crowning moment of resistance in the field of journalism."

Marriage

In 1935, Vlachos married Ioannis Arvanitidis. Vlachos and Arvanitidis later divorced. In 1951, she remarried, to Konstantinos Loundras.