Witnesses tell of Greek police 'brutality'

A British expatriate businessman living in Athens has told how a pre-bedtime stroll with his dog led to an introduction to Greek police violence.

The man, who is in his 30s, and has asked not to be identified, contacted the BBC after witnessing what he says was unjustified brutality and aggression in the popular bar district of Gazi in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The alleged clash happened not long after scores of masked youths attacked a police station in the nearby district of Exarchia, where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead a week ago by police.

The businessman said that while he was walking his dog and came across a "largely peaceful" demonstration passing the bars and coffee shops about 3km (two miles) from the Acropolis. He decided to tag along.

'Strip-search'

There was a "carnival atmosphere", he said, as the demonstrators chanted slogans and invited young Greeks to put down their drinks and join the group.

"As the group, numbering about 600, walked up Pireos Street, several bus loads of riot police arrived and began to deploy at the front and back of the demonstration and on side streets," he said.

"After the majority of the protesters had passed one of these side streets, a group of riot police charged and forced about 15 young men and women into a dark shop front on the corner of the street.

"As the protesters put their hands on their heads to signify that they were not intending to fight, the police began beating individuals with their batons, issuing threats of extreme violence. The women were handcuffed together and the men strip-searched.

"Additional police joined the group to stop passers-by witnessing what was going on. Four young men aged about 20 and clearly not connected to the demonstration walked past. They were ushered on.

"As they were walking away, a riot policeman ran up behind one of the men kicking him in the back making obscene comments about his size. As the man turned, the policeman began beating the young man with his baton, striking him on the head and the side of his face."

Police denial

The BBC asked Greece's police headquarters to comment on the allegations, and after initially denying knowledge of the case, returned our call within 10 minutes with a statement vigorously denying the use of force.

A spokesman said: "The incident happened late last night. A group of people were moving in Pireos Street. They started causing a disturbance and trashing things close to the Ministry of Employment."

"Three teams of police, comprising 60 officers were deployed and made 51 arrests in the presence of television cameramen," he added.

The police spokesman insisted this version of events was correct.

"If anything like the events described by your witness had taken place, the media would not have missed the opportunity to film it, as this is exactly the sort of thing they are looking for. It would have been extremely difficult to have missed such an incident at that particular location," the spokesman added.

'We are going to kill you'

Following the police statement, the BBC interviewed the British businessman again.

"I did not see a camera person there. I cannot believe they arrested 50 people. The impression I had was that there was no major trouble until the police arrived. I saw them smash a couple of cash machines and closed circuit television cameras on the street and there was some stone throwing," he said.

"There were elements who wanted to cause trouble," he acknowledged. "But others on the demo were trying to stop it. And it was the peaceful ones who ended up being beaten."

The witness, who speaks Greek, said he overheard the police saying to their detainees: "We have you now. You are out of your universities now… We are going to kill you."

One of the demonstrators told the BBC the same story almost word for word.

"The person in front of me was hit with a baton, as was the person behind. I fainted and they didn't get me. I was in a total panic. Anyone who moved got hit. Anyone who talked got hit," she said.

"A policeman kept on marching in front of us and screaming verbal abuse. He was saying we are going to kill you. It was very scary," she added.

'Enemies of democracy'

Since the death of Alexis, about 400 people have been arrested and 70 people injured.

The government has instructed the police to take a defensive stance to ensure that there is no more bloodshed.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis told President Karolas Papoulias that the "enemies of democracy" could not expect any leniency.

About 12 hours before Alexandros Grigoropoulos was killed, riot police are alleged to have baton charged several thousand economic migrants and would be refugees who were trying to obtain the necessary papers to claim political asylum.

During the panic, one young South Asian man plunged head first into a concrete lined canal and was critically injured.

He has been on a life support in intensive care for more than a week. On Monday, doctors are due to turn off the machine to see whether he can survive unaided.

Amnesty International has criticised the riot police for using excessive force during the course of the past week.

The police claim that they are amongst Greece's most poorly paid public servants and are often forced to take second jobs to make ends meet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7782907.stm

In Athens, the university of anarchy

ATHENS: Early Saturday morning inside the gates of Athens Polytechnic University, a dozen groggy young people in hooded sweatshirts slumped on folding chairs around a smoky fire. Others trickled in, holding cups of coffee. Small gypsy children scampered around with wheelbarrows, collecting empty beer bottles. One lit a cigarette.

But the young people and their friends were not simply recovering from a long night of drinking or studying. They were regrouping for revolution.

Many of the violent protests that have rocked Athens in recent days, after the police shot and killed a 15-year-old boy on Dec. 6, have taken place in and around the university, driven by a group of anarchists that has long occupied the buildings here. Garbage fires burn in its courtyard. On the streets outside, youths throwing gasoline bombs and rocks have clashed with riot police officers armed with tear gas.

The National Technical University of Athens, as it is officially called, is one of Greece's leading schools, training engineers, architects and scientists since 1836. It moved its main campus outside the city center in the 1980s, leaving its neoclassical downtown buildings largely to the whims of protest groups.

The university administration seems to view the squatters as uninvited house guests who overstayed their welcome so long ago that they have become fixtures. They hold regular demonstrations and often destroy university property.

But these protests have been different.

"In former times, a couple of years ago, there were only students protesting," said Constantinos Moutzouris, the university's rector. "This time there are all kinds of groups. This is difficult to control."

Conversations with those inside the university revealed a mix of students, older anarchists and immigrants protesting everything from police brutality to globalization to American imperialism.

Some are simply thrillseekers along for the ride.

Administrators say that evicting the anarchists now, especially after the protests of the past week, would entail a police operation they are unwilling to undertake for fear of instigating further violence or destruction.

Under an asylum law instituted after the police crushed a student rebellion at the polytechnic university against the military junta in 1973, the Greek police are not allowed on university property unless invited by administrators.

Yet unlike when the police killed protesters at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970, a tragic episode in a dramatic time, emotion over the Athens shooting has intensified, not faded, over time.

In Greece, the police are seen as both overly aggressive and disconcertingly passive. Although a police bullet killed the teenager, sparking the latest violence, the government then told the police not to use force to tamp down the protests, to avoid further mayhem. The cost of the ensuing riots, in which businesses and cars were torched, is estimated at $1.3 billion nationwide.

Outside the university gates Saturday morning, merchants were sweeping up the broken glass from their vandalized shops. The hulks of burned-out cars sat like carcasses in the streets.

Asked what the shops had to do with the death of the student, one black-clad young woman said, in perfect American English, that they represented "the corporate machine." The protesters do not have a traditional hierarchy, she said, but held "collective meetings" in the university auditorium.

Like rave parties, the protests are called through text-message chains or on Web sites like indymedia.org.

Protesters have said they will continue to demonstrate until the police charged with killing the teenager, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, are tried and jailed.

In an inner courtyard, someone has spray-painted "Don't Blame Us, The Rocks Ricocheted." A lawyer for the policeman who killed the teenager has said that the bullet was deformed, so that it was probably not a direct hit.

The Greek authorities have insisted that the violence has been driven by a radical handful, whom they refer to as "the known unknown."

That term is "nonsense," said Dimitris Liberopoulous, 44, a freelance book editor and anarchist sympathizer who discussed the protest movement over coffee in Exarchia, the neighborhood surrounding the university. "It's a game of semiotics," he said.

He said the authorities did not know who the protesters were, nor understand their frustration at class division, the poor economy, a broken education system and a corrupt government.

"We are thousands of people," Liberopoulous said. "We live in a parallel society with parallel values and parallel ideas."

That the authorities have not identified and arrested the ringleaders seems more a question of political will.

Greece has witnessed low-level political violence for decades. Starting in the mid-'70s, the terrorist group November 17 killed at least 23 people until the Greek authorities largely dismantled it before the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Last year, another group fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy here, causing damage but no injuries.

It is unclear whether the self-styled anarchists have ties with terrorist groups. But security experts fear that terrorist groups might see the new unrest as fertile ground for attacks.

They also worry that the anarchists themselves might up the ante.

More protests are expected this week, though Athens was largely calm Sunday.

"There's a proverb," Liberopoulous said. "That a civil war never ends."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/14/europe/journal.php

Athens hit by new protest rallies

Hundreds of people are staging fresh protest rallies in Athens, after days of rioting sparked by the killing of a teenager by police in Greece.

They gathered near the capital's police headquarters and the main court, where some of the protesters arrested last week were to appear before magistrates.

The policeman accused of shooting Alexandros Grigoropoulos, aged 15, has been charged with murder.

The shooting has also generated widespread anti-government sentiment,

Sixty per cent of those questioned by Greece's Kathimerini newspaper rejected the assertion that the disturbances have been merely a series of co-ordinated attacks by a small hard core of anarchists.

Another poll, in the Ethnos newspaper, suggested that 83% of Greeks were unhappy with the government's response to the violence. Kathimerini put the disapproval rating at 68%.

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the results appear to confirm what many commentators have been saying - that conservative Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis has pulled off the unique feat of alienating all sections of Greek society.

Mr Karamanlis - who is on Monday attending the funeral of former Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos - has rejected calls to step down.

He said the country needed a "steady hand" to deal with the economic downturn, "not scenarios about elections and successions".

Economy fears

The new street protests are being held amid a heavy police presence.

Demonstrators are chanting anti-government slogans, but no major incidents have been reported so far.

Further protests are planned later on Monday outside parliament.

They come after calm was briefly restored in the capital on Sunday.

In all, some 70 people are said to have been injured in violent protests across Greece during the unrest sparked by the shooting on 6 December.

On Sunday, the leader of the opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) demanded elections and said the government "ignores the calls of society, is incapable of steadily driving the country towards change, and is afraid of the people."

"It is wasting away, collapsing and dissolving into a dead-end... Its political time is finished," George Papandreou told a party meeting.

A top union official meanwhile warned that with around a quarter of the young age group involved in the disturbances being unemployed, the unrest could grow in the coming months as more people lose their jobs.

"A massive wave of redundancies will kick in come the New Year when, according to our estimates, 100,000 jobs will be lost, which represents an additional 5% on the unemployment rate," said Stathis Anestis of the General Confederation of Greek Workers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7783375.stm

Fears of unrest spreading across Europe

THE unrest that has gripped Greece this week is spilling into the rest of Europe, raising concerns that it could be a trigger for opponents of globalisation, disaffected youth and others outraged by economic turmoil.
Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks this week, while in France cars were set ablaze on Thursday outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux, where protesters warned about a looming "insurrection".

At least some of the protests were organised over the internet. One website Greek protesters use to update each other on the locations of clashes asserted there have been sympathy protests in nearly 20 countries.

But the clashes have been nothing like the scope of the chaos in Greece, which was triggered by the police killing of a teenager last Saturday and has ballooned into nightly scenes of burning street barricades, looted stores and overturned cars. Nevertheless, authorities in Europe worry conditions are ripe for the contagion to spread.

As Europe plunges into recession, unemployment is rising, particularly among the young. Even before the crisis, European youths complained about difficulty finding well-paid jobs – even with a university degree.

"Look what is going on in Greece," Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, told members of his UMP party this week, rejecting budget proposals that would have cushioned the wealthy from losses.

With memories fresh of weeks of rioting in 2005, Mr Sarkozy expressed concern that the anti-government backlash could spread to France: "The French love it when I'm in a carriage with Carla, but at the same time they've guillotined a king."

At the Athens Polytechnic, where many of the protesters are based, Konstantinos Sakkas, 23, said: "We're encouraging non- violent action. What these are abroad are spontaneous expressions of solidarity."

Internet sites and blogs have popped up to spread the call to protest. In Spain, Nodo50.org, an anti-globalisation website, greeted visitors with the headline "State Assassin, Police Executioners" and told them of rallies in Barcelona and Madrid.

At the Independent Media Centre, photos and video of the Greek demonstrations were uploaded and plans were listed for "upcoming solidarity actions" in London, Edinburgh and Berlin.

"What's happening in Greece tends to prove that the extreme left exists, contrary to doubts of some," said a French interior ministry spokesman. But, he added, the coming weeks would determine whether "there's a danger of contagion of the Greek situation into France".

One rally outside the Greek embassy in Rome turned violent on Wednesday, while in Copenhagen, protesters pelted riot police with bottles and paint.

In Spain, youths in Madrid and Barcelona attacked banks, shops and a police station. Eleven people were arrested at the two rallies, which drew about 200 protesters.

Daniel Lostao, president of the Youth Council, an umbrella organisation, said young people in Spain faced daunting challenges – soaring unemployment, low salaries and difficulty in leaving the family nest because of expensive housing. But he doubted the protests in Spain would grow. "We do not have the feeling that this is going to spread."

BACKGROUND

GREECE'S headline rate of unemployment – 7.4 per cent in September – is just below the eurozone average.

The key factor, however, is unemployment among those aged 15 to 24, which is 22 per cent.

"Young Greeks up to the age of 35, make up a silent majority of overworked, underpaid, debt-ridden and insecure citizens," said Generation 700 Euros, a group defending the 56 per cent of Greeks under 30 earning that amount a month.

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Fears-of-unrest-spreading-across.4790369.jp

Greek protesters rally outside police headquarters

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Youths protested outside of Athens' main police headquarters on Monday, in the second week of violent protests over the shooting death of a teenager.

The young protesters pelted riot police with flour and other objects, while police responded with tear gas.

Some 2,000 youths at the rally blocked one of the capital's main avenues, chanted slogans and set fire to trash bins before dispersing. Two demonstrators were arrested, police said.

Greece has seen its worst riots in decades after 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died Dec. 6 in a police shooting.

The riots quickly spread from Athens to more than a dozen cities. For a week, youths smashed and burned stores and cars, and hurled petrol bombs and rocks at riot police, who responded with stun grenades and large amounts of tear gas.

On Friday, the head of Greece's Retailers Association said riots in Greek cities had caused an estimated 100 million euros ($135 million) in damage to stores, and was likely to cost businesses 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) in lost revenue.

Dozens of people were injured in the rioting, while hundreds of stores were damaged or looted and more than 200 people were arrested. The policeman accused of killing the teenager has been charged with murder and is being held pending trial.

On Monday, students also staged peaceful blockades of several busy roads in the capital, marched through the city center, and protested outside Athens' main court complex, where four people arrested during last week's riots were ordered to remain in custody.

The protests are shifting from expressing anger at police to showing general anger at the country's increasingly unpopular conservative government and the economic hardships faced by many Greeks.

Socialist opposition leader George Papandreou renewed calls Monday for early elections.

"The government cannot deal with this crisis," he said. "It cannot protect people — their rights or property — and it cannot identify with the anxiety felt by the younger generation."

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose party has only a single seat majority in parliament, has repeatedly rejected calls to resign and call early elections, saying the country needed a steady hand in times of crisis.

Sunday was the first trouble-free day since Grigoropoulos' killing, but some groups, mostly left-wing students, have vowed to keep up the protests until the government addresses their concerns.

Protesters have called for riot police to be pulled off the streets, for police to be disarmed and for growing social inequality to be resolved.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIVDJEwIjDFDxGPN5HDQqTzoSVNgD953AA800

Updates from the Greek Insurrection: Occupation of the city hall of Sykies, Thessaloniki

There is a pandemic of occupations of city halls, following the occupation of the city hall at Ag. Dimitrios. Saturday the old city hall of Halandri was occupied and today the city hall of Sykies, a suburb of Thessaloniki. Three people arrested and then released during this occupation. I will provide more news and translated statements as they become available.

There have also been several takeovers of radio stations and other facilities. I am compiling a list.

One worrisome aspect from the US and European anarchist and left comrades. There is continuous reference to the greek "riots" (a term NEVER used by my greek comrades to refer to their actions or the situation, who call it explicitly a popular insurrection, but a term used all the time by the police and the mass media) and on the most spectacular attacks and property destruction, while virtually ignoring the insurrection and the grassroots organizing that is going on, such as the occupations of the public buildings, which are more popular in their compositions vs. the occupations of the universities which are student focused (and are protected by university asylum laws).

There is no split between those who are in the streets, those who occupy the universities and those who are taking over public buildings like the city halls. But to continue to refer to the "riots" is to completely, in my opinion, demean and ignore the true popular nature of the insurrection and to buy into the message of the spectacle that the state and the mass media are selling us. I beseech you to stop referring to the insurrection as riots and to help shift the rhetoric. Let us honor the nature of the insurrection by calling it what it is and by striving to understand its complexities and its intricacies, and not focus only on its more spectacular moments.

Words have meaning, and words like "known unknowns" "hooded ones" "self-styled anarchists" "looters" and "riots" are designed to disinform and disorient. Let us not become a party to that.

Greece: Students Remain on the Streets to Protest the Murder of Alexi

The protest movement against the murder of sixteen year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos shall continue, the students have decided.

Students will conduct protests outside the General Police Directorate of Attica (G.A.D.A.) and outside police stations in the rest of the country.

At this hour, students have blocked roads on Gregoriou Lambraki St. in Korydallos. In addition, students plan to shut-down the streets near the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defense, the Square of Kalogiron, and a number of other streets.



The spiritual center and public radio station of the municipality of Ioannina, the old City Hall of Halandri, and the City Hall of Aghios Dimitrios remain under the occupation of anti-authoritarians, with the goal of felicitating grassroot meetings.

The Ministry of Education claims that 100 schools are under the occupation of the students, but information from the students suggests between 400 to 600, and about 100 universities are under student occupation.

The students plan to remain on the streets all week and continue their protests.

SOURCE:
"TO VEMA" (15 December 2008, 12:11 p.m.)
http://www.tovima.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=1&artId=246746

Translator's note:
"To Vema" is one of the major dailies in Greece and typically has a centrist politics. The article was edited for brevity.

Greek riots eyewitness reports - 12 December 2008

Rundown of the days events of the sixth full day of rioting in Greece, including statements from workers and students in Athens.

Better than guerrilla radio
Anarchists take over the tv station Super B in Patra. They went live at 21.37pm

Part of the broadcast is viewable on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-a1jCD9sk0

#18, 18:40: 13-year old girl brutally arrested; murderer’s lawyer’s office attacked; high school students keep up the struggle and get targeted

Just about when the demonstration today was reaching its end, riot cops attacked at Korai Str in Athens, arresting at least four students. One of the arrestees was a 13 year old girl; nearby journalists who reacted to her brutal arrest were also beaten up heavily. Earlier, the office of Alexis Kougias (the murderer’s lawyer) were trashed.

High school students also held fresh demos across the country and neighbourhoods in Athens. The attack of the state’s mechanism on them is in full swing: Earlier today, a car with unregistered license plates (i.e. belonging to the undercover police) drove into two students outside a high school in Ilioupolis, Athens, leaving them both injured.

A more detailed summary of today’s events, hopefully with some thoughts on where things can go from here, will follow once we’ve had some rest!

#17 15.34 ATHENS: Parliament demo ends, retreats to occupied universities

15.34 The demo has ended and we have retreated in the three occupied universities, waiting for the pigs. Outside the law school a jeep is burning. They should be here soon.

15.46 The riot cops approach the law school. They are pelted with stones and molotovs, and retreat. One jeep and one riot cop on fire.

18.01: Let me update you about today's demo in Athens.

A pupil and student demo was organized for 12 o clock today, starting from Propylaia as usual. More than 10000 attended, the vast majority of them school kids and teenagers. It was again an angry demo, the school kids have been proven to be the BEST demonstrators during these days, focused and determined, they really seem that they are on the streets FOR A REASON. During the last 2 days, 25 police departments have been attacked all by school kids and teenagers. This is the best answer to the system and the media, who only talk about "vandals with covered faces" ... Well NO pupil had a covered face at all the demos.

The police was provocative from the very beggining of the demo. Chemicals were continiously thrown during the whole demo, as well as a lot of clashes with the police. They were hitting visiously and throwing chemicals, although we are talking about young school kids....

In Korai str they arrested and visiously hit a 13 years old girl.. A lot of journalists and reporters that were there they were filming them and shouting at them to stop hitting the girl.. The result was chemicals against the reporters and they started beating them... One journalist got badly hit. At a small alley near Panepistimiou str the RIOT police went in, in order to wait for the demo and hit it from the side. The people who were on that alley (the alley is full of cafes) starting shouting at the police to get out of there and a lot starting throwing at them glasses, chairs and stones. They threw chemicals against them but they had to run out of there as they were being attacked a lot. They turned to Panepistimiou str again where people of the public (even random pedestrians) were shouting at them and throwing them stones. Some of them tried to arrest a boy (about 15 years old) who was on the demo (not throwing stones) because he had his head covered (not face just head)..... The public managed to rescue the boy as they pulled him from them. Four pupils were arrested.

A lot of tension started also at Syntagma square, where a lot of chemicals were also thrown as well as stunt grenades. These grenades have been used a lot throughout the week.

Some comrades broke in the office of Mr Kougias, the lawyer of the cop, and trashed it completely. Kougias told the press that these actions are not going to hold him back from defending the cop....

A petrol bomb was thrown against this cop outside the Law Department of the University of Athens as an answer to the "fuck you" gesture that he did a few seconds before, to the comrades that have taken over that building. The other cops around quickly put out the fire and the cop was not injured. This triggered violence around the area of the Law Department for quite enough time.

The demo finished when heavy rainfall started.

A "sit down" demonstration (if I am using this term correctly) was also taking place at Syntagma square. At the beggining the MAT (RIOT police) was there and were trying to create trouble with the demonstrators but it was a peacefull demo so they left. Normal police went to replace them, they stayed at that point for some time and when they realised that the guys were not "terrorists" they left. An another sit down demo has been organized for 10 o clock tonight but I dont know if it will happen because of the rain.

Also a bicycle demo is about to take place today, normally bicycle demos have a lot of crowd but today because of the rain I am not sure how many will be there.

NOTHING IS OVER YET.. WE ARE ONLY IN THE BEGINNING.

NO PEACE NO JUSTICE

#16, 14.13 Student Demonstration at Parliament

14.13 the student demonstration in Athens is large, at least 5-6,000. The high school kids block is an amazing spectacle to watch. They chant “shoot us too!”. We are approaching the parliament now.

14.30 we charge at the cops. They respond with a fuckload of tear gas. People hold. “MURDERERS!” More and more people arrive. There must be at least 10,000 of us.

#15, 12:17 Athens: Business unusual

The ballistic examination report is expected today. “Leaks” in the media the previous days have been suggesting that the report will claim Alexandros was killed by a ricochet and not a direct shot (which is against what every single eye witness says). They have already reached their verdict - but so have we: At the occupied Athens School of Economics and Business, an enormous banner is about to be hanged reading “Cougias” (the lawyer of the murderer), “go ricochet yourself”.

The student demonstration is starting now at Propylea. I’m heading there and will report from the street.

#14, 11:57: Video from Patras, report from besieged Athens police stations

Video from the demonstration in Patras. Just to put this into perspective: The demonstration was called by the (anarchist &leftist) occupation of the “parartima” (branch of the university in the city centre). This was their callout. Under “normal” circumstances, around 100-200 people would respond. These are not normal days we are living, though: 5-6,000 people took the streets in Patras yesterday…

In Athens, as reported yesterday, at least 25 police stations were under siege by school students. The police station of Petroupoli was besieged for more than seven hours and its facade was entirely burnt by molotov cocktails. 3 students were arrested but the crowd succeeded in demanding their release, as happened a bit later when another two students were arrested only to be released again, under the pressure of the people in solidarity outside (these are all according to indymedia reports).

In the early hours, anarchists occupied the mainstream radio station Flash FM, broadcasting their messages for more than half an hour.

“We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society”

…you would be excused to think that the above extract comes from an anarchist statement; alas, no - it is from the statement issued by the association of employees of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens. Here’s a rough translation of the statement, as promised. Keep in mind that, as members of the association told some comrades, they tried to keep the style of the text as sober as possible, to ensure the maximum number of people take the streets with them.

STATEMENT

On Saturday night, the Greek police assassinated a 15 year old student.

His assassination was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was the continuation of a coordinated action, by state terrorism and the Golden Dawn, which aimed at university and high school students (with the private universities first), at migrants that continue to be persecuted for being born with the wrong colour, at the employees that must work to death without compensation.

The government of cover-ups with its praetors, having burnt the forests last summer, is responsible for all major cities burning now, too. It protected financial criminals, all those involved in the mobile phone interceptions scandal, those looting the employees’ insurance funds, those kidnapping migrants, those who protected the banks and the monasteries that steal from the ordinary people.

We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society.

There are no excuses, yet they once again try to use conspiracy theories to calm spirits down.

The rage that had accumulated had to be expressed and should not, by any means, end.

Throughout the world we are making headlines, it was about time that people uprise everywhere.

The generation of the poor, the unemployed, the partially employed, the homeless, the migrants, the youth, is the generation that will smash every display window and will wake up the obedient citizens from their sleep of the ephemeral American dream.

Don’t watch the news, consciousness is born in the streets

When the youth is murdered, the old people should not sleep

Goodbye Alexandros, may your blood be the last of an innocent to run

We are here/ we are everywhere/ we are an image from the future

If I do not burn

If you do not burn

If we do not burn

How will darkness come to light?

(Nazim Hikmet, “Like Kerem”)

Clenching fear in their teeth the dogs howl: Return to normality – the fools’ feast is over. The philologists of assimilation have already started digging up their cut-sharp caresses: “We are ready to forget, to understand, to exchange the promiscuity of these few days, but now behave or we shall bring over our sociologists, our anthropologists, our psychiatrists! Like good fathers we have tolerated with restraint your emotional eruption – now look at how desks, offices and shop windows gape empty! The time has come for a return, and whoever refuses this holy duty shall be hit hard, shall be sociologised, shall be psychiatrised. An injunction hovers over the city: “Are you at your post?” Democracy, social harmony, national unity and all the other big hearths stinking of death have already stretched out their morbid arms.

Power (from the government to the family) aims not simply to repress the insurrection and its generalisation, but to produce a relation of subjectivation. A relation that defines bios, that is political life, as a sphere of cooperation, compromise and consensus. “Politics is the politics of consensus; the rest is gang-war, riots, chaos”. This is a true translation of what they are telling us, of their effort to deny the living core of every action, and to separate and isolate us from what we can do: not to unite the two into one, but to rupture again and again the one into two. The mandarins of harmony, the barons of peace and quiet, law and order, call on us to become dialectic. But those tricks are desperately old, and their misery is transparent in the fat bellies of the trade-union bosses, in the washed-out eyes of the intermediaries, who like vultures perch over every negation, over every passion for the real. We have seen them in May, we have seen them in LA and Brixton, and we have been watching them over decades licking the long now white bones of the 1973 Polytechnic. We saw them again yesterday when instead of calling for a permanent general strike, they bowed to legality and called off the strike protest march. Because they know all too well that the road to the generalisation of the insurrection is through the field of production – through the occupation of the means of production of this world that crushes us.

Tomorrow dawns a day when nothing is certain. And what could be more liberating than this after so many long years of certainty? A bullet was able to interrupt the brutal sequence all those identical days. The assassination of a 15 year old boy was the moment when a displacement took place strong enough to bring the world upside down. A displacement from the seeing through of yet another day, to the point that so many think simultaneously: “That was it, not one step further, all must change and we will change it”. The revenge for the death of Alex, has become the revenge for every day that we are forced to wake up in this world. And what seemed so hard proved to be so simple.

This is what has happened, what we have. If something scares us is the return to normality. For in the destroyed and pillaged streets of our cities of light we see not only the obvious results of our rage, but the possibility of starting to live. We have no longer anything to do than to install ourselves in this possibility transforming it into a living experience: by grounding on the field of everyday life, our creativity, our power to materialise our desires, our power not to contemplate but to construct the real. This is our vital space. All the rest is death.

Those who want to understand will understand. Now is the time to break the invisible cells that chain each and everyone to his or her pathetic little life. And this does not require solely or necessarily one to attack police stations and torch malls and banks. The time that one deserts his or her couch and the passive contemplation of his or her own life and takes to the streets to talk and to listen, leaving behind anything private, involves in the field of social relations the destabilising force of a nuclear bomb. And this is precisely because the (till now) fixation of everyone on his or her microcosm is tied to the traction forces of the atom. Those forces that make the (capitalist) world turn. This is the dilemma: with the insurgents or alone. And this is one of the really few times that a dilemma can be at the same time so absolute and real.

11/12/2008 Initiative from the occupation of the Athens School of Economics and Business

#13 What to expect tomorrow (12.12.2008)

Friends call from abroad. “Is it over?” we can only laugh at that idea - What do you mean, is it over? It’s just about to start. Some comrades come back to the Athens School of Economics (our base), carrying incredible stories from the occupation of the town hall of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens. In a previous post we reported that the town hall was occupied by anarchists. Wrong: The town hall was occupied by the locals, whose statements so far easily overcome the “toughest” of anarchist speech. “This is civil war”, they write. “Alexis, we hope that your blood is the last of an innocent to run”. We’ve got a copy of the entire statement published by the area’s employees committee, and will be translating it tomorrow. It is, quite simply, a historical document.

As for what to expect tomorrow (12.12). There is a callout for yet another mass demonstration in Athens, at noon. A “revolutionary alleycat race” is called for 21:30. Its tag: “Come contribute to the chaos!”. Most university students will be holding department assemblies to decide whether they will proceed with occupations (surely enough, most of them will do so); we expect high school students to keep rocking, as they have all these days (and if information received so far is confirmed, regarding their plans, they might have some awesome surprises for us tomorrow).

“Is this over?” How, exactly, could it be? The murderer if Alexandros shows no remorse and is about to get away with it. The pigs keep provoking. Their political leaders remain unpunished. What single argument, what single reason is there for us to return to normalcy, to forget, to retreat from the streets? None. There is no way back now.

compiled from the posts of Dimitris on urban 75 and from www.occupiedlondon.org/blog

http://libcom.org/library/greek-riots-eyewitness-reports-12-december-2008

Violent protests resume in Greece

There have been further riots in Greece in protest at the killing by police of a 15-year-old boy eight days ago.

Violent clashes broke out in the capital, Athens, on Saturday evening following a day of largely peaceful vigils for Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

Youths threw petrol bombs at banks and the police station where the officer charged with the teenager's killing was based. Police responded with tear gas.

At least 70 people have been injured in the protests sparked by the shooting.

The unrest has spread throughout the country, and has prompted calls for Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and his government to stand down.

Mr Karamanlis has vowed not to be swayed by protests, insisting Greece needs experienced leadership at a time of economic crisis.

'Murderers out'

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the clashes on Saturday evening have been the most serious disturbances for several days.

Exactly a week after Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead, youths on motorbikes and others on foot threw petrol bombs and rocks at a police station in the Exarchia district, where the officer, who shot him and has now been charged with murder, was based. The protesters chanted "murderers out".

The trouble soon spread and rioters began setting up barricades in the area, and attacking banks, shops and an office of the environment ministry. Riot police positioned at street corners responded by firing tear gas at the protesters.

Several restaurants in Exarchia had already closed early in anticipation of the violence. Many shop owners meanwhile boarded up their windows as night fell.

Later, police charged a peaceful vigil in nearby Syntagma Square, when those taking part refused to move further away from the parliament building.

Meanwhile in Greece's second city of Thessaloniki, dozens of youths vandalised a gymnasium during a demonstration, according to the AFP news agency.

Silent protest

The protests in memory of Alexandros Grigoropoulos's death last Saturday in Exarchia had begun peacefully.

Students of the school the teenager had attended held a silent vigil during the day in Syntagma Square. Hours later, hundreds of others brought candles to the site, while others gathered at the site of the shooting.

In Thessaloniki, 300 youths gathered by the White Tower, a key monument.

Our correspondent says anger at the killing of the teenager has developed into a widespread sense of anger at Greece's government over the past week.

Thousands of Greeks have taken to the streets across the country, repeatedly clashing with police and vowing to overthrow the government.

Many have identified themselves as anarchists happy to use violence in what they say are legitimate protests against the government.

Some, though, have welcomed the return of a semblance of calm prior to the violence on Saturday evening. In Athens, Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis greeted Christmas shoppers with the city's brass band.

"People came up to me and were telling me that it was the first time they had smiled in days," the mayor told the Associated Press.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7782039.stm

Helsinki: Solidarity to Greece

Around fifty people gathered to the Greek embassy on Friday to express their support for the rebellion in Greece. There was also a demonstration in the city of Turku.

In Helsinki the protesters blocked the road in front of the embassy for almost an hour and then took to the surrounding streets and made their way towards the university of Helsinki and the central railway station. A greek comrade was teaching people their most popular chants like: Cops, Pigs, Murderers! The cops kept their distance and the demo was completed without any trouble.
More protests are planned in Helsinki.

“We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society”

…you would be excused to think that the above extract comes from an anarchist statement; alas, no - it is from the statement issued by the association of employees of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens. Here’s a rough translation of the statement, as promised. Keep in mind that, as members of the association told some comrades, they tried to keep the style of the text as sober as possible, to ensure the maximum number of people take the streets with them.

STATEMENT

On Saturday night, the Greek police assassinated a 15 year old student.

His assassination was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was the continuation of a coordinated action, by state terrorism and the Golden Dawn, which aimed at university and high school students (with the private universities first), at migrants that continue to be persecuted for being born with the wrong colour, at the employees that must work to death without compensation.

The government of cover-ups with its praetors, having burnt the forests last summer, is responsible for all major cities burning now, too. It protected financial criminals, all those involved in the mobile phone interceptions scandal, those looting the employees’ insurance funds, those kidnapping migrants, those who protected the banks and the monasteries that steal from the ordinary people.

We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society.

There are no excuses, yet they once again try to use conspiracy theories to calm spirits down.

The rage that had accumulated had to be expressed and should not, by any means, end.

Throughout the world we are making headlines, it was about time that people uprise everywhere.

The generation of the poor, the unemployed, the partially employed, the homeless, the migrants, the youth, is the generation that will smash every display window and will wake up the obedient citizens from their sleep of the ephemeral American dream.

Don’t watch the news, consciousness is born in the streets

When the youth is murdered, the old people should not sleep

Goodbye Alexandros, may your blood be the last of an innocent to run

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2008/12/12/we-are-in-civil-war-with-the-fascists-the-bankers-the-state-the-media-wishing-to-see-an-obedient-society/

Greek police fire tear gas on students, teachers

Athens - Greek riot police fired tear gas into crowds of protesting students and teachers, who pelted them with rocks and chunks of marble in front of parliament in the seventh day of civil unrest Friday.

Waving black and red anarchist flags, hundreds of students, made their way up the steps to parliament to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before riot police pushed them back.

Protestors also reportedly entered the main branch of the National Bank of Greece in the capital sending employees running in panic.

More school students were expected to mobilize in central Athens on Friday for further rallies and on Monday. Students occupied more than 400 school buildings across the country in protest.

The riots, which have spread to all corners of the country, are the worst in decades, destroying hundreds of shops, banks, buildings and cars in more than eight cities across Greece, including Athens and the port cities of Thessaloniki and Patras.

Gangs of hooded youths and self-styled anarchists have been smashing windows, looting shops and set up flaming barricades in streets across the country.

The violence was triggered by the police shooting of a 15-year-old boy last weekend but students have also been protesting growing corruption and economic and education reforms.

On Friday, dozens of students occupied the airwaves of radio station Flash for more than an hour, cutting programming to state their grievances against lying politicians, multinationals and journalists.

'We are against the government and the growing power by the police who believe that they can shoot whenever and whomever they want,' said Mario Bakiari, the president of the student body of the Athens district of Peristeri.

'There is no way that the government can justify banks a 28- million-euro bail-out plan yet no money towards the educational system. Classes are without heating and many times are held in portables.'

The riots have spread beyond Greece's border, hitting other European countries. Angry youths have reportedly also smashed shops, attacked banks and damaged police vehicles in Spain, France and Denmark.

Despite the intensity of the protests which have rocked the country for six consecutive days, public criticism over Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and his ruling conservative government's aloofness to the civil unrest increased.

The prime minister once again ruled out early elections during a press conference on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels on the economy on Friday.

'The Bell Tolls for Karamanlis,' the headline of the top-selling daily Ta Nea newspaper read.

The government, which has seen its popularity ratings fall sharply behind the opposition Socialists in recent months, promised once again to compensate businesses for the millions of euros of damage suffered - announcing loans, emergency subsidies and tax relief measures.

Store owners, which have suffered millions in damage, accused authorities of leaving their businesses unprotected as rioters smashed and burned their way through popular shopping districts. Although police have responded when attacked by firebombs, they held back when youths turned their rage against buildings and cars.

Many countries have issued travel warnings not to travel to Greece while the popular sites of Plaka and Monastiraki, located in the shadows of the Acropolis, were eerily empty of tourists. Even the Acropolis remained closed due to striking workers.

'During one of the riots dozens of workers were trapped inside as hooded youths started to smash the windows,' said Dimitra Anastasiadou of Zorpis Travel, which is located across the road from Athens University.

'We called police for help but they told us there was nothing that they could do and told us to protect ourselves.'

The shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police on Saturday sparked days of rioting across the country.

A ballistics report into the shooting was due to be made public later Friday.

The State Secretary for Police, Panayiotis Hinofotis announced possible new measures for the Greek police force on Friday, which include determining which officers should be entitled to carry weapons and annual psychological tests.

All police in the Greek force have the right to carry loaded guns.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1448072.php/Greek_police_fire_tear_gas_on_students_teachers

Greece 'runs out of tear gas' during violent protests

Officers released 4,600 capsules of tear gas during confrontations in Athens and nearly a dozen other cities since riots erupted over the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old schoolboy by a policeman last Saturday.

The greek government is urgently seeking fresh supplies of tear gas from Israel and Germany, the police said.

Yesterday, a report disputed claims by lawyers for the policeman accused of killing Alexandros Grigoropoulos that the bullet hit the boy after ricocheting.

The Kathimerini newspaper said that the results of forensic tests on the bullet indicated that it had been fired directly at the teenager.

Athens Bar Association condemned the policeman's lawyer, Alexis Kougias, for "desecrating the dead" by claiming that the 15-year-old had been a troublemaker.

The claims "constitute a moral murder which fuel tensions", the association said.

Yesterday, heavy rain helped to curtail demonstrations compared to the intensity of recent days but still students and Left-wing activists again hurled petrol bombs and stones at police outside Greece's national parliament building in the seventh consecutive day of violence.

A group of around 80 students peacefully occupied a radio station in Athens, reading a statement over the air and playing music, as many Greeks expressed their frustration with the dire political and economic situation.

"It was one of the most intense protests we've had in Greece, but today it could be the last day. I'm afraid it will be forgotten, like everything has been in the past," said Fani Stathoulopoulou, 25. "Politicians didn't react as they should."

Greece's socialist opposition has stepped up calls for the prime minister to call new elections, amid the worst unrest Greece has seen since a military dictatorship ended in 1974.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose conservative New Democracy party has a parliamentary majority of just one seat, said he had no intention of quitting.

"It's evident that we are undergoing a very serious financial crisis as well as a crisis in terms of what has been happening in the last few days and we therefore need a consistent, responsible government and a firm hand to guide the country," he said at an EU summit in Brussels.

"This is for me the priority and not any scenarios about early elections or a change in leadership."

As Mr Karamanlis spoke, about 5,000 protesters marched through Athens carrying banners saying: "The state kills" and "The government is guilty of murder".

Several schools and universities remained occupied by students and professors on one campus formed a human chain around the main university building to protect it from further damage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/3725047/Greece-runs-out-of-tear-gas-during-violent-protests.html

Violence returns to Athens' streets

More clashes have broken out in Athens between Greek youths and police outside the country's parliament in Syntagma Square.

Groups of students threw firebombs and rocks, while police fired back tear gas during an anti-government demonstration on Friday.

Several thousand people marched towards parliament chanting "blood demands vengeance" and "one underground, a thousand in the street".

Barnaby Phillips, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Athens, said that police had pushed the protesters from Syntagma Square to the nearby Ammonia Square and that the situation appeared "to have calmed down".

'Vengeance'

Phillips said: "They [the protesters in Syntagma Square] were pursued by riot police who were firing volley after volley of tear gas. The crowd were lobbing rocks and bricks and Molotov cocktails and trying to break their way into shop fronts.

"The police cleared them to the immediate vicinity of the square."

Phillips said many shopkeepers and businesses had begun criticising the government of its handling of the demonstrations.

He said: "The police are in a difficult situation. Ever since Grigoropoulos was shot... the last thing the police could risk was bloodshed or serious injuries among the protesters.

"So they seem to have more or less decided to let the protesters' fire burn out if you like."

The violence has shaken the weak conservative government of Costas Karamanlis, the prime minister, which was already under pressure over corruption scandals and unpopular reforms.

Greece's opposition has called for the government to resign.

High unemployment

Two more demonstrations were scheduled later on in the day in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city.

Hundreds of cars, banks and businesses have been wrecked by rioting over the last week as young Greeks voiced their anger at high unemployment and low wages.

Criticising the government's slow response to the crisis, the Ta Nea newspaper ran the headline "The Bell Tolls For Karamanlis" across its front page on Friday.

The Ethnos newspaper ran the headline "Government Under Siege; Education Protests Escalate".

Many Greeks voiced anger that Epaminondas Korkoneas, the policeman charged with premeditated manslaughter, did not express remorse to investigators.

He said he had fired warning shots at Grigoropoulos and others in self-defence, with a ricocheted bullet ultimately killing the 15-year-old.

Korkoneas and another officer are being held in jail pending trial by a prosecutor.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/12/200812121156115481.html

Greek riots eyewitness reports - 11 December 2008

More eyewitness accounts of the riots in Greece, and testimony about the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police.

#12, 21:41 ATHENS, PATRAS, THESSALONIKI, KOMOTINI: Fascists and cops get the response they deserve

Athens 2-3,000 took the streets responding to the callout of the Law school occupation for a demonstration. The cops seemed very passive, for once. There are rumours that they are running out of tear gas, which is why they had to play passive today. A large part of the demonstrators passing in front of the police lines spat at them, throwing them stones, paint.

Patras at least 5-6,000 people took the streets for the demonstration called by the university occupation and in response to the recent coordinated police &fascist attacks. Eyewitness says: “one of the most beautiful demonstrations I’ve ever been to. The atmosphere was simply amazing, an unprecedented amount of people on the streets… The riot police are still on the street, together with the hordes of their undercovers, but the demonstrators made them look so much weaker today”.

Thessaloniki Eyewitness account: “The demonstration, called by the occupation of the Theatre School of Thessaloniki, started off with around 500 people. High school students kept joining in though, so we ended up with 1,500-2,000 people marching through the working class suburbs of the city. The cops tried to provoke us but it was impossible. The most amazing thing about today’s demo was that the meet-up between the anarchists and the high school students that we were all hoping for, did happen”.

Komotini Reports are coming in on Athens IMC that the besieged students in the town’s campus have managed to leave. The students who were from the neighbouring city of Xanthi are on the way back; local students left the campus also. The fascists, undercovers etc who were following the demonstration with crowbards and knives, attacked and besieged the students with no excuse and no provocation from their side whatsoever. No passaran…

#11, 18:52, THESSALONIKI: Cops provoke 2,000-strong demo; students besieged in the Northern town of Komotini

Eyewitness in Thessaloniki: 2,000-strong demonstration in Thessaloniki is constantly being provoked by the police. In the Northern town of Komotini, in Thrace, 300 local students and students from the adjacent city of Xanthi are besieged in the university - around the university grounds, 200 riot cops, undercovers and Golden Dawn fascists are threatening to enter.

More updates will follow.

#10, 14:18: 25 police stations besieged by students. The murderer cop was member of a nazi group (?)

Mainstream media report that 25 police stations are besieged across Athens, with heavy clashes at some. They also report that more than 4500 tear gas cannisters have been thrown by the police these days; their supplies are running out (!) and more are being ordered from abroad.

Fresh demonstrations have been called for Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras and many more cities this evening. Reports on indymedia this morning claim that Alexandros’ murderer was a member of the nazi group “Golden Dawn” in the late eighties/ early nineties (without cutting his ties since) and that his family was active in the nazi collaborationist forces.

This is the global civil war: It is their world…

Homo Sacer Quartet

(an article written by our comrades at flesh machine)

A boy resides out-of-place. Two pigs charge into the out-of-place. In the conjuncture of these two trajectories, an event is born. The boy challenges the violation of the borders of his out-of-place by the pigs. The pigs park in-place and cross once again the limits of the heterotopia, on foot. The pigs injunct the boy. The boy responds to the injunction. The pigs shoot and destroy the life that “is not worth being lived”. The pigs return in-place. The borders of the out-of-place are ruptured and urban space, from end to end, is recomposed into a thick burning network of heterotopia: the city is on fire.

For sovereignty, every life out-of-place is a life that is not worth being lived. The state of exception is imposed, even by suspension, on every life out-of-place, on every life that is acted not as a contemplation of privacy and its commodity-panoply, but as a social relation, as a self-constituted construction of the space and time of conviviality. The sovereign exception is not so much about the control or the destruction of a excess in itself, but about the creation or the definition of a space where juridico-political order can be perpetually validated. The state of exception classifies space and the bodies within it. It puts them in order. It imposes order upon them. With assimilation, commodification, surveillance and discipline. Executing the delinquent with prisons, psychiatric units, marginalisation. And wherever, whenever might be necessary: with bullets, with bullets, with bullets.

In a society dedicated to the production of privacies, the murder of a boy can only be conceptualised in the terms of the value of his privacy, the ontological base of property: the sacred right to one’s own life. This is the only way in which death can be political: as a destruction of the source of property. The destruction of property, let alone its source, is a dreadful crime in the bourgeois world. Even, or especially when it is committed by the apparatus charged with its protection. But to destroy properties in order to take revenge for the destruction of property, that is a doubly nefarious crime: Have you not understood a thing? All those tears, all the dirge, the requiems are not for a boy that attacked the power-that-safeguards-property, they are for the power that failed in its duty: the duty to defend life as the ultimate property, as privacy.

The body of an enemy now deceased can be sanitized, pillaged, transformed into a symbolic capital for the reproduction of sovereignty and finally, in the announcement or reminder of the capacity for the imposition of a generalised state of exception. An emergency confirming the sovereign monopoly on the definition of the real through the abolition of its symbolic legitimisation. The sovereignty, in tears, shouts: you are all private individuals, else you are all potential corpses. And society falls on its knees in awe of its idol and shows remorse: mea culpa; from now on, I will take care of myself only, as long as you safeguard its reproduction. The return to the normalcy of the private is paved with the spectacle of generalised exception.

10-12-2008 fleshmachine from the squatted Athens School of Economics

Flesh Machine is an anarchist magazine “on the body and its desiring machines” published in Athens. It focuses on original publications and translations of articles and interviews on biopolitics, schizoanalysis, feminism, queer politics and the other wet aspects of capitalism and the revolution.

#9, 7.58: It is all up to the school students now

Undercover police arrest student demonstrator; Athens, 9.12

UPDATE, 13:22 The police station of Korydallos in Athens was attacked with molotov cocktails and stones. 700 students remain near a road leading to the local prison; there were clashes outside at least another six police stations in the capital.

Mainstream media report that at this point 10 major roads in Athens are blocked off by high school students. Reports come in, one after the other, of university departments being occupied by their students.

UPDATE, 8:08 The town hall of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens is now occupied by anarchists. Heavy clashes between police and anarchists at the Polytechnic during the night; one comrade injured. The occupation remains.

A kid of their age was assassinated. They took the streets to protest only to have tear gas thrown at them, to be violently arrested, to be shot at. Yet hour by hour, day by day, the school students on the streets become more militant and determined. So far they have attacked more than six police stations across Athens. Yesterday in the suburb of Petroupoli, around 100 of them attacked the local police station, smashing it up with sticks and stones. A few banks down the same road were also attacked. Until yesterday night at least 100 schools in the country were occupied by their students. This number is expected to jump up today, when most students are supposed to return to their schools for the first time after Alexandros’ death. Whether they chose to do so or not could largely determine the future of the revolt. Luckily, they seem to have no intention to return to normalcy: For today, 11.12, the students are planning decentralised road blockades across Athens. For tomorrow, Friday, demonstrations are called by university students in Athens and Thessaloniki - universities are also expected to be occupied in large numbers today and tomorrow. The Economics University anarchist occupation has decided to reach out to the students; newspapers, posters and leaflets are being printed right now, to be distributed to schools across the city asap. The future of our struggle seems to be dependent on them and I am confident we are in good hands.

Murderer on Alexandros: “He had exhibited deviant behaviour”

Short abstracts from the testimony of Epaminondas Korkoneas, the murderer of Alexandros, which was released today. I cannot make a single comment on this piece of filth. All I can say is Alexandros, RIP: None of us have any intention of retreating from the streets before some sort of revenge, before some sort of justice is paid for your murder.

Parts of the 11-page long testimony of the murderer:

“The deceased and his gang attended the swimming pool of Chalandri in Athens and participated in the violent events that occurred there, injuring citizens and the coach of Olympiakos Club by using various objects, including a crowbar. Following this they joined in with the commonly-seen hordes that gather to attack the offices of the Socialist Party, a customary occurrence in Athens on a Saturday night”.

“As a matter of fact, I have been informed that these youths, while residing in the affluent suburb of Palaio Psychiko, tend to hang out in the area of Eksarhia which they chose as their recreational area together with various sports grounds where they cause trouble, not showing the attitude and personality expected to be seen in a 15-year old teenager”.

“The deceased had been expelled by the Moraitis private school in Athens and changed schools often, a fact proving his deviant behaviour”.

In regard to the act of murder, he said:

“As for the events of Saturday: Seeing a group of around 30 youths at a distance of 10-15 meters from me, not being able to intercept their aggressive move toward us and being in a state of fear for our own lives, we moved, turning our backs against them. At the same time, in order to secure our exit, being shocked and in fear and since the crowd did not stop moving toward us despite my colleague throwing them a “sound” grenade, I pulled out my gun and guided by the instinct of survival I shot two warning shots in the air, maybe a third one that I hadn’t noticed but my colleague reminded me of later”.

His lawyer, Alexis Kougias (remember this name) stated: “It is now only up to the Greek justice to decide whether the youth was justly killed, or not”.

http://libcom.org/library/greek-riots-eyewitness-reports-11-december-2008

Unrest in Greece: A Declaration from the Athens Surrealist Group

THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY ALWAYS COMES WITH A KNIFE BETWEEN THE TEETH

The ne plus ultra of social oppression is being shot at in cold blood.

All the stones, torn from the pavement and thrown at the shields of cops or at the façades of commercial temples, all the flaming bottles that traced their orbits in the night sky, all the barricades erected on city streets, dividing our areas from theirs, all the bins of consumer trash which, thanks to the fire of revolt, came to be Something out of Nothing, all the fists raised under the moon, are the arms giving flesh, as well as true power, not only to resistance but also to freedom.

And it is precisely the feeling of freedom that, in those moments, remains the sole thing worth betting on: that feeling of forgotten childhood mornings, when everything may happen, for it is ourselves, as creative humans, who have awoken-- not those future productive human machines known as "obedient subject," "student," "alienated worker," "owner," "family wo/man." The feeling of facing the enemies of freedom-- of no longer fearing them.

It is thus for good reason that those who wish to get on with their business as if nothing happens, as if nothing has ever happened, are worried. The phantom of liberty always comes with the knife between the teeth, with the violent will to break the chains, all those chains that turn life into a miserable repetition, serving to reproduce the dominant social relations. Yet from Saturday, December 6, the cities of this country are not functioning properly: no shopping therapy, no open roads leading us to work, no news on the government's forthcoming recovery initiatives, no carefree switching from one lifestyle TV show to another, no evening drives around Syntagma Square, etc., etc., etc.

These days and nights do not belong to merchants, TV commentators, ministers and cops: These days and nights belong to Alexis!

As surrealists we were on the streets from the start, along with thousands of others, in revolt and solidarity; for surrealism was born with the breath of the street, and does not intend to ever abandon it.

After the mass resistance before the State murderers, the breath of the street has become even warmer, even more hospitable and creative than before. It is not in our competence to propose a general line to this movement. Yet we do assume our responsibility in the common struggle, as it is a struggle for freedom. Without having to agree with all aspects of such a mass phenomenon, without being partisans of blind hatred and of violence for its own sake, we accept that this phenomenon exists for a reason.

Let's not allow this flaming breath of poetry to loosen or die out.

Let's turn it into a concrete utopia: to transform the world and to transform life!

No peace with cops and their masters!

All in the streets!

Those who cannot feel the rage may as well shut their traps!

Athens Surrealist Group
December 2008

Greek protests spread with arrests across Europe

Demonstrations against the killing were seen in cities across the continent with left-wing radicals and other sympathisers taking to the streets.

In Spain, 11 protesters were arrested and several police officers injured when clashes took place in Madrid and Barcelona.

In Copenhagen, 32 people were arrested when their protest in support of the Greek protests turned violent.

In neighbouring Turkey, about a dozen left-wing protesters daubed red paint over the front of the Greek consulate in Istanbul.

Around 150 people belonging to a Danish underground movement took to the streets, throwing bottles and paint bombs at buildings, police cars and officers. In Moscow and Rome, protesters threw petrol bombs at Greece's embassies.

Journalists came under attack for the first time in the riots, with a Russian news crew assaulted by a mob of about 50 youths, some of them reportedly drunk.

A correspondent and a cameraman for Russian television channel NTV were injured in the confrontation, which happened while they filmed clashes in Exarchia, a crucible of student radicalism.

In Athens, around 40 youths threw stones at riot police near university buildings in the volatile Exarchia district where 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead on Saturday.

They were met with volleys of tear gas and three arrests were made, police said. Overnight, students hurling petrol bombs and stones again battled riot police in Athens, in a continuation of the worst riots to have hit Greece in more than 30 years.

There were similar clashes in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where more than 80 shops and 14 banks were damaged, with students continuing to occupy university campuses.

Despite the turmoil that has rocked Greece since Grigoropoulos was killed, embattled Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said he would fly to Brussels to attend a European Union summit. His conservative government has a parliamentary majority of just one seat.

Corruption scandals and attempts at economic reform have made Mr Karamanlis' administration deeply unpopular, but he has so far resisted calls to resign and call early elections.

Epaminondas Korkoneas, 37, the police officer accused of shooting the teenager, has been charged with voluntary homicide and "illegal use" of his service weapon. He was ordered to remain in custody by an Athens magistrate.

His partner, Vassilios Saraliotis, 31, was charged with being an accomplice and will also remain in custody. The pair have been held since Sunday.

Under questioning by a magistrate, Mr Korkoneas said he had acted out of self defence when a group of youths began throwing firebombs and other objects while threatening to kill him and his partner.

His lawyer said the bullet which killed Grigoropoulos showed signs of having bounced off a hard surface, indicating that the boy was killed as a result of an accidental ricochet.

Greece has a history of clashes between the police and left-wing, anarchist groups.

A student uprising in 1973 helped bring an end to the country's military dictatorship a year later.

But the scale of this week's violence has left the country in deep shock as Greeks count the cost of the destruction.

The Athens Chamber of Commerce said 435 businesses had been hit during the violence, with 37 completely gutted, estimating the damage at GBP 44 million (50 million euros).

Under the headline "Greece in self-destruct mode" the conservative daily newspaper Kathimerini said in an editorial: "This is a country with a state that is in a shambles, a police force in disarray, mediocre universities that serve as hotbeds of rage instead of knowledge and a shattered health care system. It is also on the brink of financial ruin."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/3706849/Greek-protest-spread-with-arrests-across-Europe.html

"Alex was here" - windows smashed at Greek consulate in NYC

Several windows were smashed at the Greek consulate in NYC last night, along with graffiti reading "Alex was here," "Murderer" and a circle A. This action took place the night before a scheduled solidarity demonstration at the same location.

Nothing is missing, everything is here: once again, everyone, adventurism gets the goods.



Athens on fire-so are our hearts!
This is global social war!

Greek police charged with murder

A Greek police officer has been charged with murder for allegedly shooting dead a teenager.

Police officer Epaminondas Korkoneas was charged with murder and police officer Vassilios Saraliotis was charged as an accomplice to murder.

On Wednesday, the Athens court ordered both men to be held in jail pending their trial. No date for the trial was set.

But lawyers defending the officer who fired the shot say the bullet ricocheted and accidentally killed the teenage boy.

Violence has erupted in Athens, the Greek capital, as people across the country took part in a general strike against the government's economic policies.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/12/20081210203626128216.html

Greece strike hit by violence

Violence has erupted in Athens, the Greek capital, as people across the country took part in a general strike against the government's economic policies.

Groups of youths threw petrol bombs near the country's parliament on Wednesday and riot police fired tear gas to disperse the cowds as more than 10,000 people marched through the city's centre.

The march and strike follow five days of rioting in Greece after a 15-year-old boy was shot dead by police.

The strike has paralyzed much of the country's infrastructure, closing down schools, public services and hospitals and grounding flights.

Other major demonstrations took place in the northern cities of Thessaloniki and Kavala.

Barnaby Phillips, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Athens, said: "The trade unions here are saying that they succeeded in paralyzing Greece today. Certainly the airports were closed, large parts of public transport were closed and civil servants did not go to work".

Police had deployed more than 15,000 officers in the capital and arrested scores of people ahead of the rally, Panayiotis Stathis, a police spokesman, said.

An appeal by the government to put off the strike, which had been planned weeks in advance of the shooting, was earlier rejected by union leaders.

Political scandals

The killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police on Saturday has touched a raw nerve among young Greeks, angry at years of political scandals and rising levels of poverty and unemployment, worsened by the global economic downturn.

A lawyer for the two officers accused of the killing has said that ballistics show that he was killed by a ricochet and not a direct shot.

Phillips said: "This is potentially good news for the Greek police, but it is coming from the police defence lawyer.

"We haven't heard from the ballistic experts themselves and I think it is going to be very difficult to convince the people on the streets that Alexandros was not deliberately murdered".

One of the officers has been charged with premeditated manslaughter and the illegal use of a weapon and the other as an accomplice. Both have been suspended from duty.

The guard house at the entrance to the courthouse where the two officer were testifying on Wednesday was fire bombed by protesters.

Financial cost

Costas Karamanlis, Greece's prime minister, has vowed to end the country's worst unrest in decades.

He pledged aid packages of $12,000 to stricken businesses, a tax freeze and government-guaranteed loans to restore buildings and property burnt or stolen by looters.

"The government is determined to consolidate the feeling of public safety and to help businesses get back on their feet," he said in a televised national address.

Some newspapers in Greece have put the damage that has taken place across the country at $1.3bn.

Vassilis Krokidis, vice president of the Greek commerce confederation, said: "In Athens, we had 565 shops suffering serious damage or being completely destroyed."

Phillips said: "The prime minister is trying to regain the political initiative but his political opponents are circling, calling for early elections.

"I think the government must be hoping that once today's general strike is over, and if tonight can pass off peacefully, and that's a big if, then maybe the momentum may start to go back in the government's favour but it's early to speculate like that".

A spokesman has denied reports that the government plans to declare martial law.

http://english.aljazeera.net//news/europe/2008/12/2008121013235469504.html