THOUSANDS of school students in all Greek cities participated in militant mobilisations against the government’s austerity laws and police violence on Thursday, the fourth anniversary of the killing of 15-year-old schoolboy Alexis Grigoropoulos by a policeman in Athens that led to the December Uprising in 2008.
In some Greek cities, school students attacked police stations and set up road blocks. In the capital Athens, about 2,500 school and university students marched through the city centre at lunchtime chanting slogans against the hated riot police.
The most popular slogans were ‘We will have the last word – these are Alexis’ days’ and ‘The government is giving cash to the banks but bullets to the youth’.
At the front of the march were two school students’ banners one of which read ‘Alexis you live on – the cops shot your generation’, and the other, ‘They have killed Alexis, they are stealing our life – struggle for their overthrow!’.
The government mobilised thousands of armed riot police which occupied the Athens central area and closed down Metro stations. The students’ march was flanked both sides by hundreds of riot police in a provocative way. At the end of the march the riot police attacked the school students with tear gas.
During the day many local school students’ marches took place in Athens districts. By the afternoon the police announced that there had been some 20 arrests and over 50 school students taken to the central police HQ.
In the evening, a second march of over 5,000 students and workers took place in Athens. At the head of this march a large Athens Polytechnic banner declared opposition to the government’s policies, to the EU and to the IMF.
In contrast to last year, no teachers’ trade unions or school students’ parents associations participated in the marches.
Again, hundreds of armed riot police flanked the evening march. As demonstrators gathered around the spot where Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead, the riot police launched a vicious attack with tear gas and noise and smoke bombs. The clashes between riot police and demonstrators spread throughout the district of Exarkhia in central Athens.
