BY NATASHA TERLEXIS
ATHENS, Greece - "What does the flag symbolize for you?" asked the presiding judge. "If you claim it's an old rag, then how do you explain that people have tears in their eyes when [Greek weight lifting champion Pyros] Dímas raises the Greek flag in foreign countries? Do you have tears in your eyes? Aren't you Greek?"
This is the kind of courtroom questioning that permeated a summary trial here December 14. That day the court convicted 101 youth for their involvement in events on November 17 - the 22nd anniversary of the student uprising at the Polytechnic school against the military junta.
The youth, most of whom called themselves anarchists, were among 126 arrested by riot police on November 17 and charged with disturbing the peace, destroying a national symbol by burning Greek flags, and causing damage to the Polytechnic school. The campus is the major center of political activity in the Greek capital.
Most of the youth did not show up for the trial and were sentenced to 40 months in prison. A few who appeared in court and testified were given four-month sentences.
The trial was conducted without defense attorneys. When the court announced it would try the defendants in groups of 25, the Lawyers Association of Athens decided to abstain in protest. Neither the police nor the government provided any witnesses identifying any particular individual for any specific act. "Their presence at the scene is sufficient," stated the public prosecutor.
Most of the defendants are now free pending appeal and may be allowed to buy out their sentences. Approximately a dozen have arbitrarily not been granted bail and are in jail.
The mass arrests came after police special forces entered the university grounds, which are legally protected from cop incursions through the university asylum. "It is unacceptable that the asylum, abrogated by the military junta 22 years ago, is now trampled upon by a state and a government considered `democratic,' " said a statement issued by the student assembly at the Polytechnic school of fine arts. The statement called the police riot "immoral, fascist, and unconstitutional."
A day of rebellion
November 17, a national holiday, is broadly considered
here - especially among students and other youth - as a
day of resistance. It is a day to protest government and
employer policies that seek to further shift the burden of
an economic depression onto the backs of working people
and to undermine democratic rights. The General Federation
of Greek Students (EFEE) organizes a march on November 17
every year.
On that day in 1973 the military regime then in power sent tanks into the Polytechnic and crushed a student rebellion in blood. The students had been occupying the school for four days. Tens of thousands of working people had begun to heed their calls - issued through a radio station built on campus - for a popular uprising to overthrow the junta. Thousands had begun swelling the grounds surrounding the Polytechnic to offer solidarity. The colonels had taken power through a U.S.-backed coup in 1967 aimed at crushing a wave of labor protests. The army stepped down and turned over the government to bourgeois politicians who returned from exile in July 1974, eight months after the Polytechnic uprising.
As November 17 approached this year, several university faculties and a few high schools were under occupation. Students were protesting a new education bill, which the social-democratic government of ailing Andréas Papandreou presented in parliament. The bill opens the door to privatizing college education. Private schools in higher education are prohibited under the current constitution.
Thousands of youth gathered at the Polytechnic from the morning on, crowding around literature tables and forming contingents for the traditional demonstration. In the early evening, the march of tens of thousands set off for the parliament building and then the U.S. embassy. The EFEE did not organize defense of the university grounds.
A few hundred youth stayed behind. They went into the school grounds to hold a meeting on "a more militant commemoration of the 1973 uprising," as one of their leaflets put it. Riot police, surrounding the Polytechnic in full regalia, and gangs of thugs associated with the fascist organization Chrisí Avgí (Golden Dawn), began provoking skirmishes with the students and passersby.
"We were drinking coffee" at a shop in a nearby square, Yánnis, a student, told the daily Víma. "Then we decided to head toward the Polytechnic to see what was going on. As we got close to the university building, a group of Chrisí Avgí thugs assaulted us. They hurled raw insults and began beating some from our group. The students inside the Polytechnic saw the incident, opened the school door, and we entered to get away."
On the pretext that the youth inside intended to occupy the school, the riot police began to rain tear gas onto the grounds.
"We were meeting in the architecture building to decide what to do," said a student in an interview. "Some thought we should occupy the place in solidarity with the prison occupation in Korydalo's taking place at the same time." Inmates there had been protesting overcrowding and other inhuman conditions. "Suddenly tear gas bombs began to drop like rain. We were trapped."
A few dozen individuals inside the Polytechnic who were prepared for a confrontation fell right into the cop provocation. They began throwing petrol bombs at the police and set fires inside the school. Skirmishes went on late into the night. National television began broadcasting images of "Athens burning." A compliant dean eventually ordered the police onto the campus, the first such incursion in 22 years.
Battle for public opinion
By the next morning 504 people had been arrested, in
their majority between 14 and 17 years old. Many were
beaten while in police custody. The police subsequently
laid charges on 126.
"I'm tired of these people destroying everything every so often for no reason," said an airline worker at the Athens international airport, where I work. "It's time the police did something. Don't we have a state here?" It was a typical comment reflecting the headway the government initially made through the media coverage.
Government officials indicated in public statements they would be able to use such views, which dominated public opinion in the days immediately after the cop riot, to deal tougher blows to democratic rights. But things quickly began to unravel.
Television footage of a 16-year-old being beaten bloody after his arrest shocked many people. Discussions at workplaces, schools, and elsewhere turned toward the conduct of the police. "I didn't like the cops before, but I'm not even going to say good morning to one of them any longer after what I saw them do," said one of my co- workers.
The government, however, decided to maintain its tough posture. University professor Giórgos Roúsis and well- known actor Vasílis Diamantópoulos were indicted for "publicly praising a criminal act," because of their antigovernment stance during a televised debate. The two pointed to conditions that lead young people to rebel in whatever way they see fit.
These indictments drew widespread criticism. Daily newspapers published statements by several members of parliament, authors and other artists, and well-known lawyers condemning the conduct of the police, the sweeping charges against the students, and the new indictments.
Subsequently, two demonstrations of 300 and 1,000 respectively took place in Athens in December demanding all the charges be dropped.
Messages protesting the railroading of the Polytechnic defendants can be sent to the ambassador at Greek consulates or embassies around the world. They should be addressed to Greek minister of justice Yiánnis Potákis.
Natasha Terlexis is an airline worker at the Athens international airport.