Ta Nea, 7 December 2009

Street fighting Greeks

Published on 7 December 2009 at 13:32
Ta Nea, 7 December 2009

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Thousands of protestors gathered in the streets of Greece’s major cities on 6th December to pay their respects to Alexis Grigoropoulos, the 15-year-old boy shot dead by a policeman a year ago. To avoid a repetition of the riots that followed his death, Ta Nea writes that the new Socialist government, which has only been in power for two months, decided on a ‘zero tolerance’ policy. This involved deploying almost 10,000 police in Athens to surround about 200 youths who were using the university campus as a base. Under orders to protect "the cities and their inhabitants", the police made a record number of arrests, the Athens newspaper reports. However, they could not prevent some shop windows from being broken, and several protestors and policemen were injured. The dean of Athens University was rushed to hospital following a mild heart attack after being assaulted by youths. Protests continued in several large cities on Monday, and the atmosphere remains extremely tense.

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