Over 30,000 Greek students and lecturers demonstrating against the government’s Education Bill were viciously attacked by the armed riot police outside the Vouli (Greek parliament) on Thursday night in Athens.
Street battles followed throughout the city centre with riot police making use of huge amounts of tear gas; some gas grenades were thrown by the riot police straight in the midst of demonstrating students and lecturers; riot police went wild against students hitting everyone on their heads with batons.
The three metro underground stations were filled with tear gas with hundreds of passengers in pain and tears.
But despite the orchestrated police barbarous attack, the thousands of students stood their ground and the police failed to disperse the demonstration.
Hospital spokespersons said that there have been over 100 students and lecturers treated; one student has been seriously injured by riot police batons.
Greek police said that there were 61 arrests and 12 students have been detained.
Yiorghos Papandreou, the leader of the opposition social-democrats stated that the government are to be blamed for the police attacks and called for the resignation of the Minister for Public Order Viron Polydoras.
Thursday night’s riot police violence was the worst since US President George Bush visit in the early 1990s.
The students’ unions along with the university lecturers’ federation POSDEP and the school teachers trade union OLME were to stage a mass protest rally against police action last Friday night in Athens.
Mass rallies took place on Thurday night in all Greek university cities; in Salonica riot police attacked the 3,000-strong student demonstration.
While the armed riot police were attacking students just outside the Vouli, inside, the government majority of 14 passed the reactionary Education Bill. Both the students’ unions’ and POSDEP’s leaders vowed not to obey the new law.
At universities and technical colleges throughout Greece, mass and intense general meetings deliberate on continuing the widespread student occupations amid violent attacks from right-wing student supporters of the government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis.
The weekend before last, at the Annual Conference of POSDEP, the government and their supporters suffered a huge and humiliating defeat; of the 450 delegates, 94 per cent voted against the Education Bill; there were just five votes cast for the Bill and one abstention.
In the executive elections that followed, the right-wing, PASOK supporters and a breakway right-wing formation of ‘willing’ lecturers, were routed. The current leadership of POSDEP, represented by the president of the federation Athens Polytechnic Prof Lazaros Apekis increased their vote by almost 30 per cent.
Last Thursday’s rally and demonstration through the Athens city centre marched in militant mood to the Vouli where the Education Bill was debated. Students marched under their occupation co-ordinating committees huge banners proclaiming their total opposition to the Bill and their intention and pledge to ‘annul the Bill in practice’.
Students shouted slogans and chants against the Bill and the Minister for Education as well against the two main bourgeois parties of New Democracy and PASOK and against the European Union.
The march was headed by the Athens Polytechnic street-wide banner; contingents followed from the universities and the technical colleges of the capital; then large contingents of students from the universities in the provinces and then contingents of university and school teachers.
As the head of the huge march reached the Vouli, about 30-50 self-proclaimed ‘anti-state’ youths started throwing fruit and plastic water bottles at a large force of armed riot police stationed across the Vouli building outside the Grand Bretagne hotel.
The riot police immediately reacted with scores of tear-gas and smoke grenades; the demonstration was cut in two but all remained disciplined and closed ranks. For the next half hour the demonstrators witnessed the riot police throwing literally hundreds of tear-gas grenades and the youths responding with stones from the pavements.
Another hour passed and the demonstration stood firm outside the Vouli; then students’ and lecturers’ delegates crossed over the square and called on the cut-off front of the march to return; the marchers at the front, the Athens Polytechnic contingent of some 3,000 students came back shouting militant slogans against police brutality and government policies.
They were enthusiastically received by the main part of the demonstration. It was then decided to proceed, to pass by the Vouli and to continue to the Athens University main building, about half a mile away.
But as the demonstration moved ahead some water bottles were thrown at the riot police now stationed very close to the centre of the demonstration.
Absolute havoc followed, as the riot police made an obviously predetermined attack on the march; they were hitting with their long clubs everyone in sight; many demonstrators, especially young girls, were thrown on the ground stepped upon by the riot police boots, kicked and hit again on their heads.
Once again the front of the march was cut off but now they had nowhere to go but to the large area of the Unknown Soldier monument just underneath the Vouli’s main entrance. They were trapped and the riot police made the best of their chance; they snatched dozens of demonstrators, rolling them on the floor, kicking them and clubbing them.
By now the whole area of the Vouli and of the Constitution Square was filled by the intense tear gas fumes.
A section of the march managed to break through towards Athens University while the rest of the march, some 20,000 people, remained put.
But now the sheer brutality and unprecedented attack of the riot police had transformed the mood of the marchers; the shouts calling for the resignation of Karamanlis and the chants ‘down with the junta of Karamanlis’ dominated the whole of the march for the next half-hour as the students’ and lecturers’ leaders deliberated what to do next.
Again it was decided to march on through the square in front of the Vouli, on to the University of Athens main building. A large portion of the march moved on; but some 10,000 students in the back of the march refused to be moved on.
They were the contingents of supporters of the KKE (Greek Communist Party). The leaders of the POSDEP and of OLME (school teachers union) appealed to them but to no avail.
The march then moved on; it passed the Vouli with the riot police looking on. But as it approached the University of Athens building, its surrounding area designated an ‘academic asylum’ where no state forces are allowed, hundreds of riot police attacked.
The march retreated to the front of the University of Athens building but the police entered the ‘academic asylum’ and hit anyone in sight. The General Secretary of the Secondary Teachers Trade Union OLME, Grigoris Kalomoiris, was singled out and beaten up on the ground; he was taken for treatment to a hospital. Riot police made dozens of arrests and retreated.
Further down, in the Omonoia Square, where the students from the provinces had gathered to board their coaches, the police mounted another attack with liberal use of tear-gas.
Now the whole of the Athens city centre had become a battlefield; the main streets and squares were filled with scattered clothes, mobile phones, banners and flags.
But the government plan to disband and humiliate the demonstration had failed; the demonstration was cut in three, but its sections remained disciplined and firm. But the sectarian tactics of the Greek Communist Party’s leaders had split the march. The KKE Stalinists had organised a trade union rally just a mile from the battle fields.
Instead of calling the trade unionists to come to the support of the students, the KKE leaders took their contingents away from the students’ march to join the trade unionists. Even then, following the joint KKE-sponsored trade union and student rally, the Stalinists refused to even protest against what was going on.
Last Thursday night’s battles mark the new stage of the students’ and university lecturers’ resistance to the government ‘reforms programme’ part of which is the Education Bill, now a law.
Students were organising many different events during the weekend and a large concert with all the top singers is due this evening.
But it was clear before the mass march, that the KKE leadership and parts of the students’ and POSDEP’s leaders want to call it a day and ‘continue the struggle against the government by other means’, the usual formulation for a sell-out.
Neither the KKE Stalinists nor the students’ and POSDEP leaders are calling for the working class to join them.
Their excuse is the treacherous stand of the GSEE (Greek TUC) leaders who have refused even to issue a statement in support of the students’ struggle.
Under this pretext, they stopped mobilisations at trade unions and GSEE offices to force the trade union bureucrats to call strike action.
It is clear that the Karamanlis government survives due to this treacherous stand by the KKE and the trade union bureaucracy; Karamanlis himself was out of the country attending the EU Spring Meeting confident that the riot police and the other state agencies ‘would do their job’.
It is abundantly clear that the most urgent political task is the building of a revolutionary leadership in the trade union and students’ movements in Greece; this is demanded by the objective revolutionary conditions.
The forces of the Workers Resistance Group, supporters of the ICFI, distributed leaflets calling for a general political strike and the resignation of the Karamanlis government, pointing out the revolutionary situation at hand and calling on the working class to join the students’ struggle.
They are determined to establish a section of the ICFI in the days immediately ahead.
