Police brutality during the marches to comemmorate the first anniversary of Alexandros Grigoropoulos murder surpassed any limit today, in a coordinated operation of barbarity and crude violence against protesters across greece. Under socialist orders police violence has left dozens of people wounded.

In Athens the protest march called at 13:00 in Propylea was attacked by riot police forces before even starting. Protesters fought back erecting flaming barricades and forcing the police to retreat with use of rocks. Protesters also occupied the rectorial headquarters of the University of Athens in Propylea, lowering the greek flag and flying a black flag in its place. The march continued to Omonoia square where more clashes took place and several shops were destroyed -one consumed in flames. At Syntagma square motorised police forces (Delta team) charged the march from Ermou street. After the charge the Delta-team thugs dismounted and threw rocks at the protesters. As a cause of the police orgy in violence, an elderly member of the Worker’s Revolutionary Party-Trotskyist (EEK) has been reported to be in serious condition due to head injuries: Ms Koutsoumbou, a veteran prisoner of the anti-dictatorship struggle, was hit by a Delta force motorbike during the mounted charge on the crowd. According to Savas Michail, leading member of EEK and major radical philosopher, Ms Koutsoumbou is in intensive care having received far worse hits than during her tortures by the colonels’ junta. One more man has been hospitalised with serious injuries. At the time 60 people are reported detained.

In Salonica the 3,000 strong protest march turned violent when riot police attacked it without any provocation with tear gas and blast grenades. Clashes ensued along the main avenue of the city. The police surrounded some 200 protesters outside the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace, but were liberated by the rest of the march. The previous night the police broke the university asylum in the Salonica Polytechnic arresting 8 people who the authorities claim had attacked the International Expo with molotov cocktails. The march in Salonica has not been concluded at the time of writing and the situation is particularly tense as the protesters are returning to the main avenue to protest against police brutality.

In Larissa the protest march proceeded through the main streets of the city smashing CCTV cameras, coming under attack by riot police forces. The protesters errected barricades and engaged the cops with stones and other projectiles.

There is little information about the course of the marches in other greek cities.

At the same time, the 21 people arrested in the anarchist social centre Resalto last night have been charged under the notorious anti-terrorist law for construction and distribution of explosives (beer bottles and two bottles of heating oil).

The protest marches for the 1st anniversary of Alexandros Grigoropoulos murder by cops will continue on Monday, while at 21:00 on Sunday there will be a memorial demo at the spot of his shooting in Exarcheia.

Originally posted here.

When Greece erupted into riots after the shooting of a 15 year old by a Athenian cop, I was amazed at the nonchalance quite a few self-labelled ‘Libertarians’ took to the events.  Amazingly, some ‘Libertarians’ argued that the 15 year old brought the shooting on himself and claimed the riots were entirely unjustified.  There was something insulting about the tone of such people.  Apparently, it was propaganda to correct statements made by the Greek Government and Mainstream Media that slandered the victim by claiming that he (and thirty others wearing hoods and armed with molotov cocktails) attacked the cop first, despite the eye witness accounts and video footage that showed no violent crowd.  It was more or less asserted that ‘the Greeks reacted unreasonably‘ to an incident that the ‘kid brought upon himself’.

That being said, much time has passed since then.  Lest people forget, what I want post here was an article picked up by LibCom.org and reported in the Athenian Indymedia about an attack on a young Greek Folk singer.  I want to repost this story because it illustrates, perfectly, what the Greek Anarchists and others who took part in the unrest are tasked with opposing and how ill-informed (to put it politely) those critics were.

Athens Indymedia:

Greek neonazi fascists para-state thugs used extreme sexist violence against a defenceless young lady in Athens, spraying her face for refusing to read their flyers, while the nearby police car did not intervene. The woman is still in hospital.

At 1 Octover 2009 in Greece, midday, about 30 neonazi thugs, members of the Chrysi Avgi para-state fascist organisation, gathered around the Katechaki Metro station in Athens to distribute their propaganda and put up hate-speech banners, all handling Greek flags.

A young lady, singer and artist Sofia Papazoglou, happened to be at that Metro station and the fascists forced her to get one of their flyers, which after she recognised as racist she threw it away in a trash bin a few metres away from them, without provoking them. Immediately, however, 10 (ten) para-state neonazi sexist thugs attacked the defenceless woman using extreme violence and spraying her face, in front of Metro employees.

The nearby police car did not intervene at all, allowing the neonazis to finish their sexist attack against an innocent artist. The defenceless young woman was taken to a hospital after Metro employees called an ambulance, and she is still being taken care of there. Her vision is still not completely resumed.

The ANTARSYA and EEK(Trotskyists) political parties immediately published communiques in support of the victim of this sexist attack by para-state fascists.

LibCom.org:

Sofia Papazoglou, a popular folk singer was attacked by members of the Golden Dawn neo-nazi party in Athens after throwing election leaflets handed to her in the garbage. The singer remains hospitalised with serious burns from use of unidentified acid spray and with impaired vision.

Sofia Papazoglou, a popular folk singer of the “entehno” genre known for her progressive politics was attacked on Thursday 1st of October outside the metro station of Katehaki, in Athens, by ten members of the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn when she threw election leaflets handed to her by the thugs in the garbage. The Golden Dawn was created in the 1980s by the convicted neo-nazi bomber Mihaloliakos at the orders of the imprisoned head of the military junta of 1967-1974 Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. Since, the Golden Dawn has been waging a campaign of terror against the left wing and anarchists as well as immigrants, people of color and jews. Nevertheless, as it comes under the explicit protection of EYP, the greek secret services (the daily eleftherotypia has published a pay-sheet of Mihaloliakos by EYP), the neo-nazi group has never been persecuted and is allowed to participate in national elections. As a clear indication of the above patron-client relation with the secret services, the election campaign booth of the neo-nazis was placed this year directly under the headquarters of the EYP, in Katehaki avenue, a few meters away from the main riot police camp of the greek capital. When Ms Papazoglou threw the racist leaflets in the bin, ten thugs attacked her with a still unidentified acid spray in the eyes and then proceeded to beat her up savagely. The police did not intervene and the folk singer was taken to hospital after the intervention of metro workers. Half an hour later the neo-nazis were dispersed by anarchist who arrived at the spot upon hearing the news of the new vicious attack.

Ms Papazoglou remains in hospital with impaired vision and serious burns and bruises on her body. The Golden Dawn denies involvement in the incident, decrying it as “rumors spread by dirty jews and freemasons” and “protectors of ecologists and greens”…

Moments ago a report by Foreign Correspondent ended and the particular subject of the report was Greece.  Over all, while I think it’s mentioning of the word ‘Anarchist’ presented a chance for exposure to Australian audiences, the report, ironically enough, lack any explanation of what Anarchists stand for.  Any discussion of the Anarchists was a discussion from a position of the old commenting on what amounts to a caricature of Anarchists as ‘rebellious youths’, which is the only impression you can get when you interview cops, a university professor, a teenage boy, a politician — practically anyone but someone who ascribes to the Anarchist ideology.

While I must give credit in the attempts of the reporter to give  a description of what has happened in Greece since the shooting of Alexandros, somehow the report itself fell short and left me feeling angry.  There was much discussion of the damage the Anarchists have caused in the riots since the end of last year, the street fights with police and much footage of the riots, giving the impression that this is what the Anarchists have to offer.  There was no discussion of the ultra-nationalist efforts calling for racial purity and the ousting of immigrants, or the collaboration between ultra-nationalist groups and the Greek police.  There was no mention of the defence Anarchists have given to immigrants that have sufferred attacks by these groups.

I think, however, the biggest critique I can offer of the coverage was in their explanation of the terrorist groups, Revolutionary Struggle, to which the foreign minister of Greece offerred this comment;

“I believe this is the worst fascist ideology. It has nothing to do with any values, it has nothing to do with any political thinking, it’s pure violence, so we are facing it again after November 17.”

The irony of it all is there is no distinction made in the report between Revolutionary Struggle, the group conducting all the bombings and murders, and the Anarchists on the street working in solidarity with immigrants.  Revolutionary Struggle, from my information, operate on a militant Marxist-Leninst ideology which it has inherited from November 17.  Unfortunately for the minister who seems to have her ideologies mixed up, this group ain’t fascist and unfortunately for the reporter, they ain’t Anarchist.  Golden Dawn are the fascists along with the nationalistics in the Greek government and Revolutionary Struggle are Leninists.  Yet the way in which the story was reported allowed Revolutionary Sturggle to bleed together with the mention of the Anarchists, never mind they each have a distinct set of ideas — chiefly that the Anarchists are not about to potentially blow up an entire block.

My last and final complaint is that the cover-up following the shooting of Alexandros was non-existent, instead merely confined to almost a footnote in the tale.

Although I suppose I may be mistaken as there is potential that future reports will elaborate more on the situation.  Not to mention I doubt we can expect much more from the media — at least the term ’self-described’ Anarchist didn’t appear.

PS:  I’ll post the report at a later date so everyone and anyone can judge whether I’ve over-reacted or not.  It’s not yet up on the Foreign Correspondent website.

It’s amazing.  The events in Greece take an increasingly Syndicalist turn and new clashes arise between the police and the Anarchists.  But as these events unfold in the land that birthed both Democracy and Anarchism, the “self-styled” and “self-described” Anarchists, as the media has been describing them, are being increasingly becomming the victims of propaganda.

World wide, media outlets are painted the Anarchists (as per usual) as hooded bandits indiscriminately destroying whatever is in their path out of a lust for chaos and violence.  The following extracts are taking from this article, care of ManBear2Pig on the Forums of the Libertarian Left, demonstrates this.

Firebombs and breaking glass, tear gas and burning cars. The images from Greece this month were enough to put the fear of youth into the hearts of European leaders.

…

Experts speak of another worry, which is the seemingly anachronistic resurgence of vague radical movements, loosely called anarchist, which hark back to the destructive ideology of Mikhail Bakunin, the 19th-century Russian revolutionary, and to the rebellious rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s.

Some of it isn’t that threatening, like recurring play of the 1979 song, “Another Brick in the Wall,” by Pink Floyd, on Alpha radio during the week-long protests in Athens. “We don’t need no education / We don’t need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom,” goes the angry refrain.

But the violence wasn’t far behind the slogans. By the third day of rioting, the estimated damage in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece’s two biggest cities, was more than €1 billion, or $1.4 billion.

From these passages alone the reader is lead to believe that the Anarchists, in particular the Anarcho-Syndicalists are a random mob of violent thugs. The specific reference to Russian revolutionary and the 1960’s and 1970’s immediately takes the readers mind to the Soviet Union and the hippy’s.  So what is the image we are given from this piece of journalistic writing?  The Anarchists are “a bunch of violent hippy communists that model themselves after Che Guevarra.”  Think I’m exaggerating?  Read this paragraph:

The role of these so-called anarchists in the weeklong protests is still not clear. But their message - loaded with anti-capitalist, anti-government and anti-globalization themes - is unmistakable. Also clear is their bent for violence.

Can’t make it much clearer than that.  What’s better is that there is absolutely no understanding of the position of the “self-described” Anarchists.  No attempt is even made to research the background and provide a general idea of what they stand for and why they are anti-government, anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation.  Neither is any decent information provided explaining the long running feud between the Anarchists and the Greek police or the economic circumstances that have lead to this saga.

The most important phrase, found frolicking through-out its unnatural habitat in the lines of text in this article, is the phrase, ’so-called Anarchists’.  It’s a lovely little piece of political spin that does nothing but cause the reader to connect definition of anarchy as ‘chaos’ to this political group that incorporates it into their name.  You’ll also see it appear in other forms such as, “self-titled,” and, “self-described.”  Even other Anarchists have taken the mainstream media line and so applied the same or similar terms to the Greek Anarchists based on the place that violence has taken in the uprising, regardless of cause, context and circumstance.

There is much propaganda being spread to marginalise the Greek Anarchists and polarise them from “common decency.”  Mainstream media outlets originally decried the violent protests as they took the police line — the same police line that involved 30 hooded teenagers attacking them with molotovs, bricks and all sorts.  Then they turned tail, reported that the kid was shot unjustly and now have returned to the side of the government by condemning the “anachronistic” and “violent” Anarchists. The coverage of the protests has been non-specific and one-sided, which translates every report into something along the lines of, “this is more stupid street fighting by stupid people who can’t understand that the boy was in the wrong and you should all get back to work.”  Thank Christ for internet forums, the blogosphere and alternative media outlets, is all I have to say.

But hey let’s end this on a different.  Seems the workers have taken over the union and town halls.

The action forms part of a strategy to counteract the designs of the union bureaucracy to distance its membership from the current revolt, and protest its management and mediation of workers’ struggles in Greece. The occupants aim to create a space in which to facilitate a grassroots and self organised workers response to the crisis, and bring the wider working class into the events unfolding on the streets of Greece. Town halls in Athens and Thessaloniki have also been occupied in order to hold general assemblies.