A 77-YEAR-old Greek pensioner penned his political testament on Wednesday, before he blew his brains out in front of the Greek parliament, a parliament which has supported ministers imposed by the EU and the European Central Bank pushing through massive austerity measures that have turned Greeks into paupers.
In his letter, Dimitris Christoulas made it clear that the reason that he killed himself was that he was too old for ‘dynamic action’ and to ‘pick up a Kalashnikov’, but was unwilling, in a situation where the ‘occupation government. . . have crushed any possibility of survival based on a dignified pension which I had paid for 35 years’, to ‘start searching in rubbish bins for my food’.
Getting to the root of the matter he added: ‘I believe that the youth who have no future, will one day take up arms and in Syntagma square they will hang upside down the nation’s traitors as the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945 at the Piazza Porretto in Milan.’
He made his revolutionary call on behalf of the entire older generation of Greeks who now cannot even afford to eat.
It will be answered by the youth, 50.4 per cent of whom are unemployed, and by a working class 21 per cent of which has lost its jobs, while all have had their wages and all social benefits slashed, with many workers now living off soup kitchens.
In fact, the response to his call was immediate. Crowds flocked into Syntagma Square on Wednesday and Thursday, and yesterday morning riot police launched major operations using tear gas to try to clear the square, attacking anyone in sight.
The Greek Photoreporters’ Union (EFE) has announced that its President, Marios Lolos, was amongst those seriously injured in Wednesday’s riot police attack on demonstrators in the Syntagma square.
Lolos has been hit on the head by truncheons and is to be operated on. In a statement, EFE says that Lolos was ‘targeted’ by riot police. The EFE stated that such police attacks on journalists are ‘systematic and repeated’ and aim to ‘shut up free expression and terrorise journalists and photographers’.
The Greek trade unions must call an indefinite general strike in response to these attacks and Christoulas’ death, to bring down the government.
On Thursday night thousands of people visited Syntagma square paying their respects to the old age pensioner. Hundreds of school students turned up in the square in the evening shouting slogans against the government and police. Once again the riot police attacked them, making use of tear gas.
The Greek workers and the Greek youth are rising and will take revolutionary action against the EU and the Greek ruling classes that drove Christoulas to suicide. They will bring down the Greek regime, that has been appointed by the European Central Bank, and bring in a workers and small farmers government to begin the Greek and European Socialist Revolutions.
In fact, what is happening in Greece is happening to pensioners, youth, the working class and the middle class all over the EU – in particular in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, France and the UK.
Everywhere there are pensioners and whole families who have not got the money to feed themselves.
Everywhere in the EU the youth have a zero future, while a vast army of the unemployed is being built up to lay the basis for slave labour states.
As Christoulas predicted, it is the youth of Greece and the youth of Europe that will lead the fight to smash the European Union and replace it with the Socialist United States of Europe.
They will do this by building up big sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Greece and all over Europe that will provide tens of thousands of the most resolute leaders to organise the Greek and European socialist revolutions, to put an end to the plague of EU capitalism and bring in a socialist Europe.