Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Greece: The police transformed the biggest student demonstration since last year

Aris Oikonomou | 15.03.2007 11:02 | Education | Social Struggles | World

This Thursday March 8 in Athens and Thessalonica, two great demonstrations took place at the time when the Parliament voted the new law -cadre. In Athens, 40.000 demonstrators were in the streets, 5000 in Thessalonica. The demonstration of Athens was regarded as the main event and gathered demonstrators from all of Greece. That of Thessalonica was more local and gathered students from the city itself and north of Greece.

University professors were also present with the students, whose trade union (POSDEP) has been in strike for 5 weeks, but also of the representations of primary and secondary education teachers, pupils, parent organizations and several sectors of the industry.

This great human river which flooded the streets of Athens during more the 6 hours, once more, showed that the struggle against the law -cadre and the revision of article 16 is not in the hands of a minority. The political message was clear as the central banner of the National Committee of Coordination of the Students’ Struggle “It is the struggle of all the people. For a public, free and of quality education”.

However this massive proof of dissension frightened once more the government which ordered with its police force (in uniform and not) to behave like true wild men. It is usual for the police to use force in demonstrations: teargas grenades, pepper spray and physical force. However this time, it behaved extremely violently, it made uncontrolled use of teargases, it even used asphyxiating gas, fire bombs (for the first time) and the indistinctively hit passers by.

The justification for this behaviour was the action of the “hooded people”, in the head of the demonstration, who threw stones and “cocktails molotovs”. However none of these were arrested. Police forces used them a pretext to break the demonstration and to make arrests. Within the movement the question is posed if these “hooded people” are police forces or people from the movement? And even if they belong to the movement, can one tolerate their actions considering its results?

In any case the Greek anti-riot police force (MAT) and the Minister for Justice, B. Polydoras, received congratulations by the government for the 61 arrests and the “effective” answer to the “anarchists”. It is important to stress that the 61 arrests are the result of two attacks by the MAT in the demonstration. The first at one block of students from Crete and the second at one block of students from Thessalonica. Both had strictly nothing to do with the “hooded people” since these blocks were at the end of the demonstration and the “hooded people” where mainly at its head. Moreover 49 of the arrested students have ridiculous charges: “disturbance of social peace”, “organization of terrorist group”, “attempt to release a prisoner”. All leftovers of time of the dictatorship in the 60s-70s.
The law-cadre was voted. But the students, the professors, the KKE and Synaspismos say “Your law clearly will never be applied. We will oblige you to withdraw it”.
The occupations continue, the demonstrations against the law-cadre, the revision of article 16 and police repression take place the every day in all the Greek cities, blockings of streets, concerts in support of the struggle of the students, new General Assemblies to continue the struggle are continuously organised…

Everyone feels the breeze coming from France… this movement can and wants become the Greek version of the anti-CPE movement.

Meanwhile a new national demonstration for free and public education is taking place in Athens on Thursday 15th of March. Will we be the witnesses of a new savage attack on by police forces?

To Be continued

Photoreport:
 http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=669011
 http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=669106
 http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=669071

Videos
 http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=670289
 http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=671381

Aris Oikonomou
- e-mail: sasgamw@hotmail.com

Additions

pics

15.03.2007 16:04

40 000 in Athens
40 000 in Athens

cop is throwing fire bomb
cop is throwing fire bomb

fire bomb thrown by cop
fire bomb thrown by cop

fire bomb thrown by cop
fire bomb thrown by cop


attack on police
attack on police

.

manne


Greece: clashes outside the court

15.03.2007 16:07

x


Comments

Display the following comment

  1. cop is kicking someones´ head — x

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech