London: Greek embassy blockaded in solidarity with murdered comrade

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from imc-london, 8 December 2008:

After police shot and killed a teenage boy last Saturday (6 December 2008), protests have errupted all over Greece. Today the Greek Embassy in London has been blockaded since the early morning hours. Clerks were sent home, and police closed off the road.

There have been reports of some arrests and police violence, one officer being caught on tape when hitting a handcuffed protester. The press has been forcibly removed from the site of the protest.

Showing up at Speakers Corner at 9:30 am, it looked like just another typical London protest with 20 people holding up a banner for an hour or two. But after a short delay and more people arriving, we were informed that there had been a change of plans. The group headed for the tube and got off at Holland Park, where the Greek Embassy is located.

On arrival we were greeted by 20 protesters already well established litereally on the doorstep, effectively blocking the entrance. The newly arrived tryed to join their comrades, but only few made it through the police line. Besides slogans in Greek and English, a Greek flag was burned.

Amazingly the FIT did not show up untill around noon, presumably they were being kept busy at Stansted. Instead there was the Met and diplomatic police, who are fully armed with machine guns.

People kept arriving, raising the head count to about 70 protesters untill police closed off the street and did not allow people to join the protest, while escorting selevted persons past the protest as if they were expecting the crowd to charge at random people on the street.

At 11:30am the embassy staff was sent home, followed by an increase in police numbers. The protesters stepped from the sidewalk onto embassy grounds, but police moved in and pushed them forther down the street, leaving only the 20 protestors on the steps. Two arrests were made and one of the officers assaulted two journalists, pushing them around and grabbing their cameras.

One protester was hit in the head by an officer while already being handcuffed and the press was forcibly removed from the site of the protest to behind the police line further down the road.

At 3pm the last blockaders agreed to leave after negotiating not to be searched for weapons, while marching away from the embassy with their banner, they were then attacked by the police. One or two more arrests were made and police were randomly pushing people around. Again police also attacked the press.

Solidarity actions are also happening elsewhere, the Greek Embassy in Berlin was occupied this morning.

[original article]

See Newswires: Greece for the latest articles from external newswires

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Evening Standard: Greek demos spread to London

Kiran Randhawa
08.12.08

CHAOTIC scenes erupted at the Greek Embassy in London today as demonstrators burned the country's flag in protest over the killing of a teenager in Athens.

About 50 protesters in dark clothing and balaclavas took down the national flag, replaced it with a flag bearing an anarchists' logo and chanted in Greek: "The police are pigs and killers."

As officers attempted to put up barricades to make the Holland Park protest peaceful, two of the group ran out to police to stop them. After a scuffle both were handcuffed and arrested.

Detective Inspector David Morgan said: "It looks like they are planning to be here all day. We are trying to put up a pen for them to protest in and get them away from the steps of the building." The circumstances surrounding the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, 15, are disputed.

Two policemen in the often volatile central Athens district of Exarchia claimed they had come under attack on Saturday night by a group of about 30 youths, and that three warning shots and a stun grenade were fired when they sought out the group a few minutes later. But witnesses say the policeman intended to shoot the youths. The two policemen have been arrested and charged, one with murder and the other as an accomplice.

Rioting, much of it by self-styled anarchists, broke out across the country within hours. About 70 people, including 37 police, were injured.

The Greek police officers' association has apologised to the boy's family, and president Karolos Papoulias sent a telegram to his parents expressing his condolences.

In the port of Thessaloniki today, riot police fired tear gas at youths smashing shopfronts and throwing rocks at a police station. There were running battles between police and about 400 school students in Veria, about 40 miles west of Thessaloniki and there was also violence in the central city of Trikala.

In Athens, high school students blocked streets across the city, while dozens of youths were still barricaded at two university campuses. Under Greek law, the police are barred from entering university campuses.

Violence often breaks out between riot police and anarchists during demonstrations in Greece. Anarchist groups are also blamed for late-night firebombings of targets such as banks and diplomatic vehicles.

The anarchist movement partly traces its roots in the resistance to Greece's 1967-74 military dictatorship. The youths tend to have anti-capitalist and anti-establishment principles, and a long-running animosity to the police.

The conservative government of prime minister Costas Karamanlis is increasingly unpopular and has struggled to push through economic reforms.

In Berlin, 15 Greek youths occupied their country's consulate. Police said there had been no violence.

[original article]

See also: Sky: Flag-Burning Gang Storm Embassy

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More from the newswires, keyword: Greece...

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See balkans.puscii.nl for rolling updates from the streets

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December 2008: Greek translators needed urgently

* Please forward widely *

Indymedia activists in Greece are *urgently* in need of help with translations from and into Greek.

There is a lot of international attention for what is going on in Greece now and there are many articles on the Athens IMC website - in Greek language.

The Athens indymedia website is currently struggling with a huge number of people accessing the site. The global Indymedia network is now working on a different solution and this solution needs help translating technical terms into Greek.

If you understand Greek and want to help translate either the Greek content of athens.indymedia.org or (mostly easy) technical terms into Greek to help the new site come to life, please contact these addresses:

==> www-gr[AT]lists.indymedia.org for *content*
==> imc-tech[AT]lists.indymedia.org for *tech terms* <==

Please be patient - the Greek activists are under a lot of pressure now.

Another option is of course to pick interesting articles in Greek language from IMC Athens, translate them and post the translations as articles. This would also be appreciated.

You won't be expected to do more than you can. Any bit of help is a great help.

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A beautiful slogan is echoing across the city: “the people will have the last word / these are Alexis’ nights”.

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