Protests erupt across Greece

THE MURDER of a 15-year-old student by police in Greece's capital of Athens has sparked mass demonstrations and riots around the country as Socialist Worker went to press.

The killing, which prompted protests targeting the conservative government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, took place on December 6 in a popular district of Athens, where clashes between cops and young anarchist groups are common. According to eyewitnesses, the cops went after such a group of about 30 young people, exchanging verbal insults with them.

Then, one of the cops threw a stun grenade and, while the crowd was dispersing, another took aim at the group and fired three shots. One bullet hit 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the heart.

The murder triggered an immediate reaction. Thousands of angry young protestors fed up with continuous unpunished police violence seized the center of Athens in a matter of hours. Armed with Molotov cocktails and stones, the demonstrators attacked symbols of the police, setting patrol cars, banks and department stores on fire in the angriest riots to erupt in Greece in years.

The murder shocked the whole country, and on December 7, there were mass protests. In Athens, about 10,000 people marched to police headquarters. "It's not the first time," one protester told BBC News. "They always kill people--immigrants, innocent people--and without any excuse. They murdered him in cold blood. I think [the rioting] is justified. Peaceful demonstrations cannot get a solution to the problem."

According to a report in the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia, 70 people have been killed by police in the last 10 years.

Despite apologies from the government and promises by authorities to meet out punishment for the murder, protesters continued to take to the streets, as even bigger demonstrations spread outside of Athens to literally every city of Greece--marking the first protests in many of them for decades.

Although the first protests were spontaneous, protests on Sunday, December 7 and Monday, December 8 were called by left-wing parties in an organized response to the violence of the cops, but also to the deep economic crisis and high unemployment that disproportionately affects young people, with devastating results. In one Athens protest on December 8, several thousand students, teachers and blue-collar workers marched on the parliament at Syntagma Square, shouting slogans that included "Down with the government of murderers."

Most impressive has been the participation by tens of thousands of young high school students, who angrily marched on police stations to stage die-ins and pelt them with tomatoes, eggs and stones.

At the universities, teaching staff started the week on December 8 with a three-day strike, and students began occupations at two campuses in Athens. High school and primary school teachers began a strike on December 9 to protest the murder, and new demonstrations took place in that day following the funeral of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

A 24-hour general strike has been called for December 10, to protest the economic policies of the government and police violence. Although the strike was called weeks ago, in the wake of the killing and recent protests, it has taken on even more urgency.

Prime Minister Karamanlis, whose center-right government has a majority of just one vote, is in a precarious position. His government is already facing crisis because of a series of financial scandals, the economic crisis, high unemployment and rising prices. Karamanlis is under immense pressure to resign.

So far, the government has refrained from unleashing a complete crackdown on the protesters, worried that doing so could possibly be the final blow that topples the Karamanlis government. A crackdown on protesters occupying universities could be especially volatile, considering that Greek police and military forces have been barred from entering college campuses since 1973, when tanks were used to smash an uprising at Athens Polytechnic, and more than 20 people were killed.

Karamanlis, meanwhile, was reportedly holding emergency meetings with opposition leaders in an effort to get their backing for security operations to bring protesters under control.

As Panagiotis Sotiri, a spokesman for Uniting Anti-Capitalist Left, a coalition of leftist groups that helped take over the Athens Law School, told Reuters, the protests are not only a result of the killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, but are "a struggle to overthrow the government's policy." "We are experiencing moments of a great social revolution," he said.