Greece: Slaying of teenage boy by police sparks nation-wide protests.

The mood in Greece was still very tense for a third day on Monday as thousands of people demonstrated again in central Athens and almost every major city of the country to protest the shooting of a fifteen year-old kid by a 37 year-old special guard of the Greek police. Saturday and Sunday already saw massive protests and riots—not only by ‘anarchists’ and irresponsible ’students’, as the Greek authorities and international media claimed, but very broad layers of people who were enraged because of the apparent attempt of the government to cover up the story. Things were quickly getting out of control for the ‘vulnerable’ conservative government of New Democracy (ND) and prime minister Kostas Karamanlis, already troubled by a long, unending series of scandals.

Thousands of pupils and students and private citizens were out in the streets Monday, pelting the police with fruit, bottled water, and everything else they could get their hands on; on Sunday even a senior woman in Exarcheia district reportedly threw a flower pot against police officers. Dozens of arrests were reported. Police brutality was particularly evident in Syntagma (Constitution) square, where at least three special anti-riot policemen in full gear were recorded live on national TV dragging a teenager violently Monday evening. Even a middle-aged citizen in a business suit, among others, tried to intervene to save the kid—unsuccessfully.

Sources of the Home Ministry and the General Directorate of the Greek capital’s police force, locally known as GADA, originally leaked to the broadcast media information according to which the boy was among a group of thirty to fifty ‘anarchists’ who ‘ambushed’ a police car. According to these sources, policemen acted in self defense and the boy was ‘accidentaly’ hit in the stomach by a ’stray’ bullet that did a ‘ricochet’ that would make Lee Harvey Osvald jealous. The media’s original distorting of the facts had in fact the opposite effect as eye-witness accounts began to emerge; citizens did not hesitate to immediately call media by phone to reveal that the official discourse was in fact a pack of lies and that the policeman shot the kid aiming for his heart. Not long after the boy, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was pronounced dead by doctors in Evangelismos hospital, accounts of the incident were circulating in Greek citizens media, weblogs, Twitter and via other means of communication (Asteris, a Greek blogger and known rights activist, wrote an extensive piece about that [in Greek]) and everybody, including a leftist greek radio station, Sto Kokkino, called the episode for what it was: cold-blooded murder.

As the facts were becoming all the more clear, and it was understood that a special guard —member of a special branch trained by the Greek army’s special forces— had shot and killed an unarmed minor, hundreds of people begun to gather in the area to protest. Demonstrators chanted slogans against ‘murderers in uniform’, referring to the Greek police, set fire to garbage bins, numerous cars and shops were torched. Stores, banks, malls and other business establishments were targeted.

The arrest of the two policemen that were involved in the murder of the boy and the fact that Home Minister P. Pavlopoulos and Undersecretary for Public Order P. Khinofotis (a former chief of the Armed Forces) reportedly offered their resignations to the Prime Minister who ‘did not accept them’ were dismissed as a cheap ploy to cover things up. Pavlopoulos was soon on national TV to ‘condemn’ the killing, declare that the policemen who executed the minor would face ‘exemplary punishment’ and offer his ‘condolences’ to the boy’s family. But it was too little, too late.

Infamous Police Record

The events unfolding in Greece are not at all inexplicable if they’re put into context. Most of the international coverage is missing crucial background. The Greek police force is plagued by right-wing extremists; it was conceived during the US-supported military junta in Greece (1967-1974) and previously as a machine for ruthless repression; extensive pogroms against the left were systematically carried out by it since the thirties, during the civil war after the second world war, through the early eighties. Even people who were suspected to simply have friends in the left were sent to exile in remote Greek islands such as Makronisos, Yaros and Ikaria. Thousands of people were killed, tortured and ‘disappeared’, during those long years and thousands more were forced to migrate. Note that the police is always armed in Greece, partly because of its historic role.

The sharp divisions between the left and the greek right (the winning side in the brutal greek civil war) are still evident, although the country is today happily trapped into a two-party political system (or, more accurately, an one-party system with a center-right and a center-left denomination, as Noam Chomsky would put it). Greece is a member of the EU and NATO, sent troops in Afghanistan, Bosnia and even some to Georgia, has sent warships patrolling the Persian Gulf and had a crucial role quietly supporting the Iraq war providing a military base in Souda in the island of Crete, ignoring the general public who standed against wars of agression in principle and held huge protests against such acts. A superficial sense of economic progress in the country, mostly during the eighties and nineties, when governments of the the so-called Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, or PASOK, tried to create new tycoons and a new middle class, is starting to fade out. Despite the successes of greek capitalists here and there, rising unemployment, layoffs, privatizations of wide sectors of the economy, and the gradual fall of a growing percentage of the population into the ranks of the poor contributed to social tensions.

Greek police is actually no stranger to killing minors. In 1985, a 15-year-old boy, Michalis Kaltezas, was murdered by a policeman inside an armoured police van, a killing that had sparked similar spontaneous protests very similar to the ones that are happening these days. Also riots broke out after the slaying of a schoolteacher, Nikos Temponeras, in Patras during student protests in 1991. Furthermore, during the last couple of years a series of cases of police brutality —the murder of an immigrant only a month ago by cops, torture of Pakistani immigrants abducted by the secret service, the rape of an immigrant woman inside a police station, and the now-notorious beating of a student in Salonica that was recorded by TV cameras but nevertheless described by officials as an ‘accidental fall’ of the student who was ‘hurt by a flower stand’ (the jardinière case, as it became known when the media deconstructed the official folly), a crime for which the policemen involved were given a two-month suspension— created an atmosphere of anger that exploded last Saturday.

Historic Focal Point

Top brass of the police initially allowed itself to believe —making a grave error of judgement— that the case would be supressed by the media because of the single fact that it happened in Exarcheia, home to the Polytechnic, which was the focal point of protests against the junta in 1973, and remains a place where various anarchists groupings reside, often staging protests and happenings. Supposedly the police has trouble controlling the area, which corporate media routinely refer to as ‘avaton’, or no-go place. It’s a small, fairly bohemian neighborhood with lots of cafes, bookshops and galleries; gradually though it was depraved in recent years as drug addicts began to use it as sanctuary —some residents actually think and say openly that they were ‘encouraged’ to do so by a special intelligence branch of the police in order for it to plant useful informers there.

The police strategy backfired badly when details about the victim became known. A son of a wealthy civil engineer and a jeweller, described as a ‘tender’, kind teenager who ‘loved to count the stars’, Alexandros was not, in fact, even close to be a member of any of the anarchist groups in the area or even the broader left. Some of his friends did—but that was irrelevant. It was the simple fact that he was there that made the policeman decide to become judge and executioner. Eyewitnesses even said that the cop ‘touched his genitals provocatively and swore’ at a team of boys who were there that fateful evening.

Conspiracy Theories

Ironically, the police and the Karamanlis’ government tried to make it look like as if they were under attack, victims of some unknown dark ‘plotters’, ‘extreme elements’, who allegedly ‘are trying to use the incident for their own purposes’—who ‘they’ are and what their ‘purposes’ are remains a thing for fictional agents Mulder and Scully to figure out, because nobody else will. It’s not the first time this government tries to shed its responsibilities implying that is under attack by some dark powers it cannot cope with: during the wildfires in 2007, when vast parts of the country were destroyed, it claimed repeatedly that it was the work of ‘conspirators’ who were trying to topple it by arson or  foreign spies. It never provided any evidence whatsoever to back up its wild claims—its current conspiracy theories don’t seem to bare any more credibility.

The Greek left took part in demonstrations while its leaders tried to distance themselves from the rioting. The greek communist party, or KKE, the alliance of radical left, or Syriza, and many other smaller parties in the left condemned the killing and called the public to take part in protests on Monday. The resulting protests were impressively massive.  It quickly became apparent that the rage of the people was not easy to control—even embassies and consulates in Berlin, Germany, London, UK, and other European cities saw protests.

The crisis made headlines the world over; BBC started its coverage Sunday, reproducing the authorities’ version of events. Today, it noted melodramatically that

‘In a nationally televised address on Monday, Prime Minister Karamanlis called for calm, unity, restraint and a sense of solidarity with the dead boy’s family.

“Unfortunately, extreme elements have exploited this sad event for their own purposes,” he said.

Mr Karamanlis condemned the attacks on property by rioters as unjustified and said he had asked the economy minister to ensure that those who had suffered losses would be compensated.

Greek business owners have been horrified at the damage inflicted across the country. Banks have been a particular target.

Our correspondent says Mr Karamanlis’s unspoken message to Greeks at large is that if you do not stop rioting you will pay for it through your taxes in the end’.

That’s hardly the calm and reassuring approach which the goverment vowed to take. That’s not surprising, given that it has developed a pattern of knee-jerk reactions to every scandal it faced: when a prominent official tried to kill himself falling from a building late last year because he was recorded having sex with an assistant of his in the Culture Ministry, who threatened to reveal unlawful practices in the management of the ministry’s funds and assets, it also implied there was a ‘conspiracy’ against it by —you guessed it, dark and unknown ‘circles’.

Escalation

As I write, parts of the historic center of the Greek capital remain a battle zone with police forces chasing demonstrators and several buildings set ablaze. This writer cannot help the feeling that the police is actually permitting, if not leading, ‘extreme elements’ to create mayhem in order for it to have a perfect excuse to impose a state of emergency or some similar package of ’security’ measures.

That feeling is strengthened by the TV coverage speaking of ‘anarchists creating chaos and mayhem’ setting fire to buildings in Athens, even ‘looting weapons from a gunsmith’—which could be used as an excuse for policemen to open fire on protesters, or for the government to deploy the army. If that happens, it would create an even bigger backlash. The editor-in-chief of a greek daily, Kathimerini, even called the demonstrations a form of ‘terrorism’.

What the Greek government and the international media fail to understand is the depth of this thing. People are fed up; and despite the attempt of the powers that be to portray the demonstrators as ‘punks’, it is clear that this crisis is not going to go away.