Saturday reports from Greece

It's been one week today, since the murder of the 16year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the two cops in Athens and the protests are still going!

In the small hours there were arson attacks against banks and ATM machines across Athens.

In the morning at the Athenian suburb of Halandri there was a peaceful demonstration and the protesters besieged the local police station for a while.

A peaceful gathering by pupils also took place outside the parliament. The riot squads were deployed in front of them as they do always in the past week.

Peaceful demonstrations took place in Thessaloniki, Chania (where protesters occupied a local radio station) and Patras (where the windows of a bank and a police station were smashed).

In the evening things started warming up.

There was a gathering on the square outside the Parliament for a peaceful sit in protest. After a few hours of people just being there, at around 1.30am, the riot squads surrounded them, threw some tear gas and started pushing them away. The protesters put their bodies to resist but the cops forced them to move across the street, on Sintagma square. Then they opened up the street to the traffic. When a small number of protesters (5-6) tried to return where they were originally, the cops pushed them on the street, while cars were passing by (it's a big street with heavy traffic) and they were nearly hit by the cars. At 3.30 the riot cops threw tear gas and pushed off the few remaining protesters with their shields again and removed them from the Sintagma square (Sintagma means constitution by the way, how ironic)! There may have been one arrest here.

Photos from overhead camera: http://indy.gr/newswire/dielysan-me-tromer-bia-tin-sygkentrosi-sto-syntagma

There was also a gathering on the exact point and time that Alex was shot dead a week ago.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyYUUkQqspA

Part of that gathering attacked the Exarchia police station (the police station of the killers) and the cops there used tear gas to drive them away. Afterwards there were scattered street fights and classes in the area and outside the Polytechnic University. There are reports of arrests. For yet another time the inhabitants of the area were shouting at the cops and tried to move them away from the neighborhood. There were scattered fights around the Polytechnic University all night

Another part of the gathering decided to make spontaneous demonstration and headed to the areas were there are many bars and cafes (it's Saturday night and lots of people would be gathered there) to inform more people. As they were heading to Psiri the cops attacked them with tear gas and managed to break them up. A few minutes later however they re-grouped and more people joined them! They made a big demonstration passing through Psiri, Gazi, Thisio, Monastiraki, where some banks and surveillance cameras were smashed, and they were heading to Omonoia square to split up. Just before arriving there the police attacked again and made more than 20 arrests. The arrestees were brutally beaten! It is still unknown how many people were arrested in Omonoia but some say that they will be released without charges.

Earlier in the evening there was an arson attack against the ministry of public works and a bank.

Today it was made known that immigrants who were arrested and accused of looting are all charged with 18 months in prison and deportation. There are cases of someone charged for stealing a mobile phone when the phone belonged to him and another for the possession of an alleged stolen mobile phone charger!

The article in english: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=943704

There was an article today on a newspaper of Iraklio city on which the cops are saying among others:

“more than 20 men of the police dressed in plain clothes were put among the demonstrators to make arrests”, “all the people arrested have been taking part on vandalisms” but later say “one of the police officers was disguised so well that his colleagues arrested him and he had to tell them his name to be released”. So if you put together the two later quotes, the “arrested” cop was either vandalizing OR the fucking cops had no idea what were doing and arrested whoever! It is also said that “our men [cops in plain clothes] were asked not to carry their guns or their police badges”, which is of course illegal, since the cops have to carry and SHOW their badges when making arrests. Those of course are just small letters in the “free democratic greek state”!

There is a call for international action on Saturday December 20th.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/415271.html