The apparent incident of police brutality occurred yesterday evening when an estimate 1,000-1,500 students had gathered outside of the campus of the Athens Polytechnic following a march through the center of Athens.
The students were protesting an earlier incident outside the Athens Law School which saw students injured by riot police, as well the closure of Athens universities in the days leading up to November 17 to prevent occupations. The students are also angry at a number of changes to the running of universities including plans to guard the universities with private security companies.
The group initially intended to converge on the Law School however their way was blocked by riot police, according to reports. At about 19.30, according to Imerisia, there were some minor incidents as several individuals participating in the march through rocks at the police who responded with stun grenades.
The march then changed course and the group moved toward the Athens Polytechnic where they intended to hold an assembly. However the gates to the Polytechnic had been locked following the decision by the rector. This despite there being students inside the building who were unable to leave.
The group then attempted to force open a side gate. This appears to have been the trigger for the riot police to aggressively descend onto the assembled students.
Video taken from a balcony on Stournari street show riot police aggressively battering students with their truncheons as the latter are attempting to flee. As the large group is huddled around the side gate, a number of officers can be seen aggressively charging into the group, stamping and hitting students who appear to pose no threat.
Numerous observers noted the disconcerting symbolism of the heavy-handedness against students outside the Polytechnic just days before the November 17 anniversary of the 1973 student uprising*. The opposition party SYRIZA condemned the incident saying that it awoke ‘dark memories’.
According to Tasos Kostopoulos writing for Efimerida ton Syntakton, it was a sight "violent and unprecedented: without a rock being thrown, without the slightest clash preceding it, Stournari was suddenly filled with the trampled bodies of hundreds of unarmed young people who from one moment to the next became the field for tens of riot police to vent their anger.”
“Rushing forward suddenly with the cry, “Fuck them! Fuck them!” the latter visibly were enjoying themselves. For a quarter of an hour they were mercilessly beating fallen students, they were trampling them, they were spraying them in their faces, launching stun grenades into the crowd.” Kostopoulos writes.
“Having completed 30 years of this kind of reporting, it is the first time I have seen the violent break-up of a peaceful march turn in to such an overt ‘party’. Usually the riot police beat silently or, at most, with vague ‘war cries’. After the mass voting of the Greek police of the Nazi’s [Kostopoulos is referring to the high poll numbers of Golden Dawn among police], it appears that the time has come that we see its fighting units celebrate – literally – their own 1973 anniversary*.”
* The Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973 was a massive demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967-1974. The uprising began on November 14, 1973, escalated to an open anti-junta revolt and ended in bloodshed in the early morning of November 17 after a series of events starting with a tank crashing through the gates of the Polytechnic.
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