December 17th, 2008
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By ANTHEE CARASSAVA
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Published: December 17, 2008
ATHENS — Student protesters evaded security guards at the Acropolis on Wednesday and unfurled two giant pink banners over a wall near the Parthenon to rally support for continued demonstrations against the government.
A student threw an orange at riot police near the entrance of Athens' main court complex on Wednesday.
The protests this month after the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old Athens boy have rattled Greece, but life in Athens and other cities has recently returned to normal.
One of the banners proclaimed “Resistance” in Greek, English, Spanish and German, and the other called for mass demonstrations across Europe on Thursday. The police here were already bracing for more protests.
The stunt was the second in two days. On Tuesday, another group of young protesters stormed into the state NET television network and interrupted an afternoon newscast that featured a speech by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis on the violent protests.
The rioting that erupted in the days after the boy’s death on Dec. 6 has caused damage estimated at $1.3 billion.
Greece has frequent protests, but the violent ones this month have been the worst in decades.
Anarchists have been at the center of much of the violence. But the shooting exposed other underlying issues, and many Greeks — who tend to have a high tolerance for protest — have sympathized with the rioters’ criticism of the government. The street demonstrations have brought out a variety of people, including labor unionists and opponents of the government’s economic policies, as well as the more violent protesters.
Even those who were taken aback by the violence also expressed anger at the way the police acted over the shooting. Amid uncertainty about what exactly happened, the police acknowledged that shots were fired in a clash between two officers and a group of youths in Exarchia, a neighborhood of Athens where many leftists live and gather. A bullet hit the boy, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, who died on his way to the hospital.
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