Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Greek police run out of tear gas as rioting continues

by James Hider - (Times Online)

Thousands of Greek protesters clashed with riot police yet again in Athens today, as police started to run out of tear gas after battling rioters day and night for a whole week.

Police sources said their riot squads had fired 4,600 tear gas canisters this week as rioters torched hundreds of banks and shops and occupied their campuses, where police after forbidden by law from entering.

The police have asked Israel and Germany to send them emergency supplies, while protesters claimed that they had been using old stock from the 1980s in a desperate bid to contain the rioting. They claimed that corroded chemicals were causing some demonstrators to collapse and need medical attention.

“We found tear gas canister dated from 1981,” said one demonstrator, calling himself only GK. “The old chemicals make us sick, people have fainted and have trouble breathing,” he said.

With the running street battles showing no sign of letting up, a march by students, anarchists and youths in masks ran into immediate trouble as rioters hurled rocks, fruit and chairs from street cafes at police trying to contain the latest rally.

Police responded by firing stun grenades and snatching rock-throwers who approached too close, at one point knocking down a Greek journalist with their plastic shields. As the masses approached parliament and challenged the police ranks, officers used remaining supplies of tear gas to drive them from the square before the assembly building.

The demonstrations started a week ago after a police officer shot dead a 15-year-old boy, claiming he had fired a warning shot in the air as youths threatened him and a fellow officer. The two policemen are in detention, with their defence lawyer claiming that an as yet unreleased ballistics report shows the boy was killed by a ricochet rather than by direct fire.

But the anger unleashed by the killing has acted as a lightning rod for smouldering discontent at a variety of social ills, from unemployment to police brutality and government corruption.

Left-wing demonstrators today chanted “Cops are murderers” and carried placards saying “Bullets in the kids, money in the bank” and “Down with the government of property and privatization”. One protester had even trained his pet dog to carry a poster in its mouth with the logo “Down with the state and all masters.”

Thousands descend on Athens police HQ

Riot squads ringed Athens police headquarters Monday as Greek protesters targeted state institutions, while the right-wing government faced new headaches with the re-emergence of a land swap scandal.
Protests marked court appearances for six militants among 86 arrested during weekend violence following the police shooting of a teenager earlier this month.

As the country marked its tenth day of demonstrations, Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis went to Cyprus for a funeral.

More rallies were planned for the night, but for the first time demonstrators admitted a fear of their days-long mobilisation “deflating.”

More than 1,000 youths descended on the capital’s police base to lead coordinated action disrupting traffic, public buildings and state radio broadcasts across the country.

But the only clashes involving firebombing and tear gas — the cocktail of choice for Athens radicals — came outside the prison where two officers await trial over the December 6 killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos.

With one Sunday poll showing majority public support for a “popular uprising” against Karamanlis’ administration, protests were also mounted in Thessaloniki, Patras, Ioannina and on the island of Lesbos.

“Solidarity with state hostages,” read a banner outside the high court as university and school students sought to step up their presence on the streets in a bid to keep their movement in the news.

Despite discrepancies between state and student figures for schools occupied, ranging from 100 to as many as 400, the country’s education system was far from functioning as it should on Monday — with just a handful of teaching days left before Christmas.

In a sign of enduring anger, banks were also targeted in the central town of Volos overnight — as a sprawling mound of candles, football scarves, cigarettes and other mementoes rose at an impromptu shrine at the spot where Grigoropoulos fell.

Meanwhile, findings from the first of five parliamentary inquiries into shady deals with an influential Orthodox monastery were released. The probe by Karamanlis’ majority glossed over faults in government conduct which went back 10 years to the previous socialist administration.

Results from separate investigations by opposition groupings and subject-specific parliamentary committees were to emerge later Monday.

The influential Vatopedi Monastery in northern Greece is under investigation over a series of property swaps of valuable state land that lost Greek taxpayers millions of euros (dollars).

Two members of Karamanlis’ inner political circle have already quit the government over the affair, former merchant shipping minister Georgios Voulgarakis’ wife having been implicated in the transaction.

But the head of the Orthodox monastery was seen to have acted in contempt of the parliamentary commission looking into the scandal.

Despite the troubles at home, Karamanlis went ahead with a planned visit to Cyprus for the funeral of former Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos, who died of cancer Friday.

The premier has rejected calls to quit, although opposition socialist leader George Papandreou on Sunday demanded fresh elections.

He told a meeting of his PASOK party that Karamanlis’ government “ignores the calls of society, is incapable of steadily driving the country towards change and is afraid of the people… Its political time is finished.”

Greek rioters use lasers against police as violence over boy’s death continues into second week

By Daily Mail

Protesters in Athens targeted police officers with lasers yesterday as riots sparked by the police killing of a 15-year-old boy continued into a second week.

Although the intensity of protests has tailed off in recent days pockets of violence are still occurring and more rallies have been planned for this week.

Today, around 50 demonstrators hurled eggs at police outside the main Athens court, where a hearing took place for dozens of people arrested during Greece’s worst riots in decades, sparked by the killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on December 6.

Students, unions and leftist groups have called demonstrations this week against the conservative government, which has a one-seat majority.

They have planned demonstrations on Wednesday and Thursday against education and pension reforms, privatisations and tax rises.

Last week’s protests fed on growing anger over political scandals, high youth unemployment and low wages, and the impact of a global recession on Greece’s e240 billion economy.

‘It was expected this would continue for a second week,’ said Kiki Toudoulidou, a 37-year-old teacher’.

‘If the government was handling the situation in the right way, we wouldn’t have reached this point.’

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis’s ruling New Democracy party has denounced the riots as the work of a small group of hardcore anarchists, but at their peak early last week thousands of youths ran riot through 10 Greek cities, wrecking hundreds of cars, banks and businesses.

Mr Karamanlis, whose hands-off response to the riots has been criticised by Greek media, travelled to Cyprus today for the funeral of former president Tassos Papadopoulos.

An opinion poll published yesterday by Kathimerini newspaper put disapproval of the government at 68 per cent, with 60 per cent of those polled saying the riots were a social uprising rather than an outburst by an isolated fringe of violent protesters.

Around 565 shops were damaged in Athens, causing more than e200 million of damage and ruining the Christmas shopping period.

Central Athens was quiet today as many shoppers stayed away.

‘There is no business. People are disappointed and angry,’ said Dimitra, 61, a shopowner who declined to give her second name.

‘The protests will continue. They only needed an excuse.’

The policeman charged with killing Grigoropoulos has been jailed along with a colleague pending trial, while more than 400 protesters have been detained during the unrest, but most of them have been subsequently released without charge.

A parliamentary committee was today due to unveil the findings of its inquiry into a government land swap with an Orthodox monastery which an initial prosecutor’s report suggested had cost the taxpayer more than e100 million.

Greece was ranked as the most corrupt country in the euro zone by the Berlin-based Transparency International watchdog in its latest global survey of corruption perceptions.