GREEK workers and youth demonstrated in their hundreds of thousands last Wednesday throughout the country as part of a 24-hour general strike against the barbaric austerity policies of the government.
But the huge strike march in the capital Athens was attacked by the riot police with truncheons and with teargas.
Thirty two protesters were injured and hospitalised.
A 31-year-old man, Yiannis Kafkas, a post-graduate student, was hit by a riot policeman’s metal-tipped truncheon, according to eye witnesses, and is hospitalised in a critical condition having undergone an emergency operation for a haematoma in his head.
The hospital’s trade union branch of state hospitals doctors (EINAP) issued a statement denouncing the riot police’s action and the government and the Prime Minister for a ‘murderous attempt on the life of a citizen and as well as of the demonstrators’ and called for the ‘punishment of those guilty of this murderous attempt’.
Another 29-year-old man was seriously hurt when he fell while being chased by riot police. He was taken to the hospital where doctors operated on his spleen.
Police said there were 30 arrests made.
Hundreds of workers congregated on Wednesday afternoon outside the Nikea Hospital where Kafkas is in an intensive care unit.
A leading police officer who arrived at the hospital was attacked.
Late on Wednesday evening, hundreds of students and youth blockaded several major roads in Athens in protest against the police violence.
Several trades unions called a protest rally in Athens for yesterday.
‘The EINAP trade union at the Hospital of Nikea where Yiannis Kafkas was operated on issued the following statement on Wednesday afternoon.
‘Today we became witnesses of the endless and inconceivable barbarism employed by the Accord government to suppress every healthy reaction by the citizens who are resisting the plans of international and local capital, faithfully practiced by their servants in our country.
‘Tens of injured – demonstrators beat up by the riot police – were brought in to our hospital by ambulance or came here by themselves. Most of them have fractures on the head.
‘Amongst them is a 30-year-old demonstrator who was brought in to the hospital in a very serious pre-death condition, with a huge haematoma inside his head. Right now he is being operated on by our colleagues who are trying to save his life.
‘We denounce the police arbitrariness and barbarity. We denounce all the members of the Greek government as well as the Prime Minister for this murderous attempt not just against one of our fellow citizens, in a serious condition with his life in danger, but also against the other demonstrators.
‘The violence and the oppression against the people who resist are unacceptable.
‘The government, with its shameless tactics of the rape of all democratic rights necessary for survival, and through the practice of naked violence which threatens the lives of the citizens, the only thing that it can achieve is to raise our insistence and determination to fight until the end, so that our people have bread, education and freedom. We will not keep quite until those guilty of this murderous attempt are punished! We will not keep quite until our people win what they deserve.’
