![]() ![]() Dozens of shops were damaged and nearly 100 demonstrators were detained. A cloud of smoke billowed into the sky from the clashes. As protesters marked the sixth anniversary of the police killing of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos – an event that would trigger weeks of violence widely seen as the prelude to Greece’s great economic crisis – the 58-year-old acknowledged that the desire for a martyr is real among the country’s growing contingent of angry, unemployed youth.Ĭlashes between 6,000 protesters and riot police erupted in central Athens on Saturday as teargas and water cannon were used to beat back protesters in the bohemian Exarchia neighbourhood, where about 200 black-clad youths hurled stones and molotov cocktails. ![]() While the unrest was triggered by the Alexis Grigoropoulos murder by police, the reactions lasted for so long simply because they were rooted in deeper causes, like the coming economic crisis a year later, which was already being felt by poorer classes and younger generations through rising unemployment rate and a feeling of general inefficiency and corruption of the authorities, institutions and right wing politicians of the Greek state (mainly New Democracy and PASOK political parties).Death is not a word that crosses the dentist’s lips as he describes the descent of his son – his only child – from being a ski-loving model student to mascot for a seething segment of Greeks baying for a fight with officialdom at large.īut “martyrdom” is a distinct possibility. Outside Greece, solidarity demonstrations, riots and clashes with local police also take place in more than 70 cities around the world, including London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, the Hague, Copenhagen, Bordeaux, Cologne, Seville, Sao Paulo, as well as Nicosia in Cyprus, and Paphos proving for the first time before the “Arab Spring” that people could spread the news and react through protests for the same matter around the globe, from San Francisco to Wellington and Buenos Aires to Siberia. Protests and demonstrations, which escalate to widespread rioting, rock Greece every day and night for the weeks to come, while public buildings are being taken over and occupied by protesters in dozens of cities and towns around the country. The police bullet finds the heart and kills 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.Īs soon as the news of Alexis’ murder spreads mainly through the internet, hundreds of people from the rest of Athens gather at Exarchia, which is circled by hundreds of riot policemen and which in turn infuriated people and the neighborhood quickly goes “on fire” with flaming barricades and stone attacks against the police, that lasted all throughout the night.Īlmost from the same night, the Exarcheia riot spreads all over Greece, with attacks against police stations, even in greek villages. Two policemen shoot against a group of youngsters hanging out on a Saturday night, at the heart of the Exarcheia district of central Athens, an area with a long history of insurrection against authority and riots for socio economic and political grounds, inhabited mainly by anarchists, anti-authoritarians and liberals. We share below a documentary/political intervention “The potential to storm heaven”, covering the popular uprising in Athens and greece, following on the police murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in 2008 (posted on ), and from Ross Domoney, video of protests this year in Athens remembering the 6th of december … ![]()
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