La police grecque travaille

Grèce : Jeunes et policiers
se sont à nouveau affrontés à Athènes

Jeunes et policiers se sont à nouveau affrontés à Athènes vendredi, à l’issue d’un défilé dans le centre-ville de près de 3000 enseignants, étudiants et élèves contre la politique du gouvernement de droite.

Des escarmouches ont d’abord opposé, devant le siège de l’Université, des dizaines de jeunes encagoulés et des policiers des forces anti-émeutes (MAT), qui ont fait usage de gaz lacrymogènes pour les disperser. Les fauteurs de trouble ont mis le feu à des poubelles et lancé des morceaux de bois et des pierres sur les policiers.


Les incidents se sont poursuivis dans la zone, fermée à la circulation et où des centaines de manifestants sont restés massés. D’importantes forces anti-émeutes ont chargé à plusieurs reprises pour les disperser, effectuant de nombreuses interpellations.

Parmi les personnes interpellées à l’écart des échauffourées figuraient notamment 14 avocats, relâchés après une intervention du barreau d’Athènes, tandis que des journalistes et opérateurs ont été pris à partie par des policiers.

L’influente Union des journalistes d’Athènes (ESHEA) a protesté auprès du ministère de l’Intérieur contre «ces attaques brutales et passages à tabac».


«Il peut y avoir eu des excès condamnables, nous enquêtons à ce sujet, mais la police a fait son travail», a commenté le ministre, Procopis Pavolopoulos, sur la télé Méga.

En début de soirée, le calme était revenu après une ultime charge des MAT contre un groupe rassemblé près du siège de la police pour protester contre les interpellations.

La manifestation de départ, du siège de l’Université jusqu’au Parlement, commémorait la mort du professeur Nikos Temponéras, tué en 1991 à coups de barre de fer par un syndicaliste de droite à Patras (ouest).

Elle intervient un mois après la mort d’un adolescent tué par un policier à Athènes, qui avait déclenché une série de manifestations et troubles urbains à travers le pays.

«Temponéras vit, lutte pour la démocratie, la paix, l’éducation et l’emploi», proclamait la banderole du syndicat des professeurs du secondaire, l’Olme, en tête du cortège.

«À bas le gouvernement des assassins», «L’argent pour l’éducation et non pas pour les banquiers», «À bas le gouvernement du sang, de la pauvreté et des privatisations», lisait-on sur d’autres banderoles.

Le centre-ville avait été bouclé à la circulation, et de très nombreuses forces anti-émeutes y avaient été déployées.

Presse terroriste :
AFP, 9 janvier 2009.

Nouveaux heurts à Athènes en marge d’une manifestation

La police grecque a fait usage de gaz lacrymogène pour disperser des centaines de jeunes en marge d’une manifestation antigouvernementale, à Athènes, où on redoute une reprise des émeutes du mois dernier.

Plusieurs milliers d’étudiants, d’enseignants et de salariés de la fonction publique ont défilé jusqu’au Parlement, un mois après la mort d’un adolescent tombé sous les balles des forces de l’ordre, événement à l’origine des troubles.


«Des écoles, pas des bombes. Des moyens pour l’éducation», pouvait-on lire sur une banderole, alors que les manifestants annonçaient en chœur la chute imminente du gouvernement conservateur. Beaucoup ont par ailleurs scandé des slogans condamnant l’offensive israélienne dans la bande de Gaza.

Plusieurs centaines de militants anarchistes vêtus de noir et munis de masques à gaz ont rompu les rangs aux abords de l’université pour affronter les forces de l’ordre.

«La police les poursuit dans le centre d’Athènes et procède à des arrestations», a déclaré un responsable de la police, qui fait état de dizaines d’interpellations.

Presse terroriste :
Reuters / L’Express, 9 janvier 2009.

Université Aristote, à Thessalonique :
«Solidarité avec K. Kouneva.
Liberté pour tous les interpellés.
Tout le monde dans la rue,
contre le terrorisme de l’État et des patrons.»

Clashes in Athens during educational protest-march. Memories of the Colonels’ Junta awake as lawyers and journalists are beaten and arrested by riot-police

Clashes unravel in Athens after riot police attacks protest march. Police repression targets lawyers and journalists who try to help trapped protesters. Many were wounded, and one elderly lady seriously brutalised.

On Friday 9/1/09 protest marches took place in all major cities of Greece in commemeration for the assassination of the communist teacher Nikos Temboneras by Kababokas, a government thug, during the educational movement of 1991 against neoliberal policies.

In Athens, the massive march clashed with numerous police forces that under the orders of the new Minister of Public Order were following a zero-tolerance policy. The clash started outside the Parliament when riot police forces fired disoriantation grenades in the midst of the march. The clashes quickly spread without any property being destroyed. The situation became critical when riot-police forces trapped 80 protesters in an apartment block in Kolonaki, the old posh quarter of the center. Lawyers from surrounding offices swarmed to secure the exit of the protesters only to be beaten and arrested by the riot-policemen. One elderly woman of 70 was brutally attacked by the forces of repression, dragged onto the streets and risked her life. Others trapped in the building suffered from exhaustion and panic. Journalists who tried to record the siege were beaten and arrested by the police. After one hour, the protesters managed to leave the building in formation, after police forces were destructed by an attack on their back by protesters who erected flaming barricades and hurled stones. The protest march re-gathered later in the evening outside the HQs of the Greek Police shouting “Down with the Junta” and demanding the release of the detained and arrested. A delegation of the Lawyer’s Association tried to enter the building but was attacked by riot-police and beaten with globs leading to a further arrest of 15 lawyers causing an outrage across the country. Sponteneous protest marches against police brutality formed across greek cities, while renewed riots broke out in Exarheia in the center of Athens. There are several protesters and reporters seriously injured in hospital, while journalists claim one boy was attacked anew outside an Athens hospital by riot policemen, leaving him in a pool of blood, after he had his head stitched by doctors.


In Ioannnina protester occupied the Trade Union’s Center in solidarity to K. Kouneva, the cleaner syndicalist attacked last month by bosses thugs who is still in a critical state in hospital. In Thessaloniki during the protest the offices of Addeco, a labour subhire company, were smashed by protesters in solidarity to K. Kouneva. Protesters attacked riot-police forces guarding the police station of Ano Poli quarter leading to clashes into the center of the city.

Libcom, January 9th, 2009.

Repression escalates across Greece with arbitrary arrests, house searches and intimidation of the legal defence

Since the shooting of a riot-policeman in Exarheia on Monday 4/1, repression has taken the form of arbitrary house searches, arrests of anarchists, and widespread intimidation. Nevertheless, the movement is still on the streets with protest marches and new occupations throughout the country.

After the suspicious shooting against one riot police squad outside the Ministry of Culture on Monday 4/1 3:00 am, that has left one riot-policeman seriously wounded by AK bullets, and is alleged to be an act of armed revenge on part of the leftist urban guerrilla group “Revolutionary Struggle”, the entire area of Exarheia was cordoned off by police forces that unleashed a mass pogrom against anyone who happened to be drinking at the bars of the neighbourhood. 72 people were detained and many more beaten and abused as riot police units forced bars close leading even their employees to the Athens police HQs for questioning. The following morning found Exarheia still off limits with hundreds of police uniformed and undercover as well as a large contingence of the antiterrorist bureau in control of the area. The Polytechnic was ordered to close for the day. Forced to release all 72 detained on lack of any evidence, the police shifted its strategy of intimidation by arbitrarily breaking in houses in the wider area and detaining scores of people based on their ideological profile as anarchists. Five of the detained have been since charged with ridiculous accusations of “arms possession” for Swiss knifes and decorative Chinese swords, a parody of justice that has led to further public dismay.

As a final act of arbitrariness, on Wendesday 7/1, the police of Exarheia broke in the apartment of the lawyer Stavroula Yannakopoulou, known for her defence of political prisoners and victims of state repression. The lawyer arrived at her apartment after work to find the door smashed and her belongings in utter chaos. She first believed there had been a burglary and called at the Exarheia police station to report the crime: “I was rebuked by a plainclothes policeman who told me it was not a burglary and I should split! The same man reassured me nothing had been taken from or placed in my house by the police!”, reported the militant lawyer. According to Greek law house searches can only happen with the presence of the inhabitant or a neighbour. Yet the police failed even to post the required order of search on the house door after the end of the investigation. Neighbours reported that there were so many people going in and out of the apartment and making so much noise they thought the lawyer was having a party. The representative of the Lawyers Association, Costas Papadakis, also a defendant of political prisoners in the past, claimed that “this action is not the first one in our times, and is a message to lawyers who, doing their vocation, take up the defence of people accused for supposed terrorist acts, as well as items of police fabrications and state repression”. The Alternative Initiative of Athens Lawyers has condemned this “effort to terrorise” which cannot stand in the way “of the defence of social and civil rights”.

Similar arbitrary house searches were conducted in provincial cities, while in the northern industrial city of Ptolemaida a student and pupil public gathering was surrounded by riot-police forces that arrested the entirety of the rally in a move reminiscent of the military dictatorship of the 1970s – four people have been charged with “resistance against authority” receiving sentences of 2 to five months imprisonment.

Despite the climate of state-terror, the inhabitants of Exarheia refuse to bow to state terror and on the 5/12 organised a protest march against what they terms “the return of Nazi occupation”. The protest march started from the spot of the assassination of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, walked through the spot of the Monday armed attack against the MAT and returned to the square of the neighbourhood chanting anti-police slogans. At the same time, moves of solidarity to the prisoners of the insurgency and to Konstantina Kuneva, the syndicalist cleaner attacked with acid, go unabated. In Thessaloniki the offices of the Lawyers Association have been occupied, while the city’s central Labour Inspection Bureau was attacked and smashed by protesters in solidarity to Kouneva. In Athens, the Municipal Cultural Center of Byronas, a department of the capital on the slopes of Mt. Imitos, has been occupied by locals demanding total disarming of the police, immediate release of arrested insurgents, abolition of the anti-terrorist law, end of bosses terror against autonomous syndicalists like Kouneva, and an end to forest demolition for the construction of a bypass in the area.

Libcom, January 9th, 2009.