VIOLENCE RETURNED to central Athens yesterday, as thousands of Greeks took to the streets in protest at a government programme to remove 30,000 civil servants from their posts by Christmas.
The 24-hour strike and associated protest demonstration through Athens was called by the country’s public sector and private sector trade union federations.
Lawyers, doctors and nurses also participated in the strike, ministries and government agencies were shut, trains stood still and planes were grounded.
However, most other forms of public transport in Athens operated for most of the day.
“I’m very disappointed with what’s happening. I think everything is going down in Greece,” said Panagiota Tzevelekou, one of the estimated 16,000 protesters.
“I am used to living under different conditions, but now I’m being forced to change my whole quality of life,” said the 54-year-old secondary teacher, adding that salary cuts and tax hikes had seen her monthly net salary plummet by 40 per cent to €950.
But yesterday’s demonstrations, like many before them, were far from bringing the country to a standstill. Most workers in the private sector went to their jobs, while many state schools continued to function as normal in many city districts and areas across the country.
One protester attributed the relatively low turnout to what she described as a rising tide of “passive resistance”. “I know a lot of people who used to come to demos but now they simply don’t pay their taxes,” said Theodora Oikonomides, adding that this was not a choice but a necessity. “They simply cannot pay and can no longer borrow from their friends, as they’re penniless too.”
The pending property tax was also the reason why businessman Yiannis Mantheakis (53) attended the protest: “I face a bill of €12,000-€15,000 under the new property tax, for an office block I inherited five years ago but haven’t been able to rent out.”
Tensions erupted on Athens’s central Syntagma Square shortly after 1.30pm, when riot police clashed with black-clad youths, many of whom made little attempt to conceal their faces. As the first volley of tear gas rang out, the bulk of the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators dispersed.
Under the gaze of those who remained, small groups of young men and women who appeared to be in their early to mid-20s smashed marble cladding around the square, using it to pelt platoons of riot police.
“They are rebels without a cause,” commented one onlooker, Haris Boulios (22), who accused the rioters of wrecking the demonstration.
As the customary cat-and-mouse chase between the two sides continued, some uninvolved citizens just went about their daily business on what was a warm, sunny day, in a sign at how accustomed Athenians have become to city centre demonstrations.
Between a momentary lull in the clashes, an elderly couple and a young woman balancing on high heels walked calmly through the square.
However, when police fired tear gas into the concourse of Syntagma metro station – moments earlier a large number of black-clad protesters had entered the underground – other citizens not participating in the protests were left gasping for air. In ugly scenes elsewhere, a Greek photojournalist, Tatiana Bolari, was punched in the face by a riot policeman. “I heard an officer telling his men ‘Get rid of the journalists’,” Bolari told a private television news programme after the incident.