Thousands march as strike shuts down Greece
Riot police clashed with demonstrators outside parliament today as a general strike paralysed Greece, shutting down schools, hospitals and international flights and raising pressure on a fragile government reeling from four days of riots.
The lawyer for the two officers charged after the fatal shooting of a teenager which set off the unrest said ballistics show 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was killed by a ricochet and not a direct shot.
Lawyer Alexis Cougias said the report corroborated the officers’ account that they fired warning
shots and did not shoot directly at the boy.
One officer has been charged with murder and the other as an accomplice. They were to appear in court later today. Authorities have not made the ballistics report public.
The rioting and demonstrations were set off by anger at the shooting but fed by months of widespread discontent with the conservative government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose party holds a majority of a single seat in the 300-member parliament.
More than 10,000 people marched through the centre of the city to protest at the conservative government’s economic policies. Riot police began firing tear gas when a small group of youths threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at them near Parliament in the centre of the Greek capital.
Flights to and from Athens International Airport were cancelled, and public hospitals across Greece were operating with a skeleton staff. Schools and universities were closed.
Karamanlis has faced growing opposition over changes to the country’s pension system, privatisation and the loosening of state control of higher education, which many students oppose
because they feel it will undermine their degrees.
The government’s support has dropped lower as gangs of youths maraud through cities across the country, torching businesses, looting shops and setting up burning barricades across streets.
Storeowners accuse riot police of leaving their businesses unprotected as rioters smashed and burned their way through popular shopping districts. Although police have fired volley after volley of tear gas when attacked by protesters, they held back when youths turned against buildings and cars.
Local media reported early today that groups of civilians had begun taking matters into their own hands, confronting looters in the western city of Patras and the central city of Larissa.
Opposition Socialist leader George Papandreou claimed the conservatives were incapable of defending the public from rioters.
But Karamanlis has so far ignored mounting calls for him to resign and call early elections.
“The government wanted us to postpone this protest, but they are the ones who have to do something to stop this violence and to improve the quality of our lives,” said one demonstrator, drama student Kalypso Synenoglou.
Greece has a long legacy of activism; it was a student uprising that eventually brought down a seven-year military junta in 1974.
