Funeral of Teen Leads to More Mayhem in Greece
Petros Karadjias/Associated Press
A demonstrator threw a stone at Greek riot police in Athens on Tuesday.
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By ANTHEE CARASSAVA and RACHEL DONADIO
Published: December 9, 2008
ATHENS Thousands of protesters marched on central Athens on Tuesday, facing off against police in riot gear and shouting anti-government slogans as Greece buried the teenager whose shooting by the police on Saturday set off some of the worst rioting here in recent years.
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Anti-Police Riots Continue in Greece (December 9, 2008) Violence erupted after the funeral of the teenager, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, 15, was held in the southern Athens suburb of Paleo Faliro.
The hour-long funeral went calmly but afterwards, as the hundreds of people who had gathered at the cemetery began to leave, bands of youths turned violent, hurling gasoline bombs and rocks as riot police moved in from the edges. Riot police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters.
Earlier, mourners had gathered quietly for the funeral, some bearing large wreaths of white carnations, one wearing eyeliner in red and black, the colors of the anarchist movement.
The mood in Athens remained extremely volatile.
The protests, which have tapped into a deep well of dissatisfaction on many fronts, are expected to continue at least until Wednesday, when a general strike is to take place.
The continuing tensions surrounding the shooting have increased the pressure on Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, whose center-right government has a majority of just one vote and who has failed to contain the rage sweeping the country since the youth was fatally shot.
Some of the worst violence took place Monday night, when demonstrators threw concrete slabs, rocks and flaming gasoline bombs at police officers and smashed storefronts and hotels.
Asked Tuesday why the violence had not been stopped, Information Minister Panos Livadas told the BBC that the government had chosen not to escalate the confrontation with the protesters. The choice we made was not to risk further innocent blood, he said in an interview with BBC World.
On Tuesday, after a quiet morning, the protesters regrouped and marched to the Parliament at Syntagma Square, shouting slogans like Down with the government of murderers.
The crowd of several thousand students, teachers and blue-collar workers was met by riot police officers with shields standing guard outside the Parliament. There were some scuffles between stone-throwing youths and the police, but nothing approaching the violence of Monday night.
Mr. Karamanlis warned earlier Tuesday that there would be no leniency for the rioters.
No one has the right to use this tragic incident as an alibi for actions of raw violence, for actions against innocent people, their property and society as a whole, and against democracy, he said Tuesday after an emergency meeting with President Karolos Papoulias.
Mr. Karamanlis was holding back-to-back meetings Tuesday with government members and opposition leaders in an effort to get their backing for security operations aimed at containing the crisis.
At the Athens police headquarters, a spokesman said 12 police officers had been injured in fighting with demonstrators that flared at 10 major flashpoints around the Greek capital Monday night. The confrontations also led to 87 protesters arrested and another 176 people detained and released, the spokesman said.
In the shattered city center Tuesday, fleets of street cleaning trucks began a major clean-up effort. Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis advised Athenians not to drive into the city center and asked them to keep their refuse indoors after rioters burned 160 big garbage containers in the streets Monday night.
Rioting also intensified Monday in the countrys second largest city, Salonika, and spread to Trikala, a city in the agricultural heartland.
But the evening demonstration in Athens, which had attracted thousands and was organized by the Communist Party, was accompanied by some of the worst of the violence of the past several days.
A strip of five-star hotels was ransacked, including the Grande Bretagne, where a life-size scene of The Nutcracker was knocked down, and the Athens Plaza, where a guard said guests had to be evacuated. A small fire burned in the lobby of the Foreign Ministry, The Associated Press reported.
The rioting began Saturday, shortly after the youth was fatally shot in what the police said was a confrontation with a mob. The government has charged one police officer with premeditated manslaughter in the case and another as an accomplice.
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Anthee Carassava and Rachel Donadio reported from Athens. Meg Bortin contributed reporting from Paris and Sharon Otterman from New York
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