http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_190729164313109
Syntagma Sq., Athens, Greece, Earth 15/6/2011
Hundreds of thousands of protesters again at Syntagma square and other locations around the Parliament, only this time non-violence came to an end by the well-known troublemakers, the paragovernmentals and the police.
While a peaceful demonstration was in progress, some troublemakers anarcho-nazi were fighting amongst themselves and the police without grief. Paragovernmentals were of course not absent, although you could not distinguish them so easily. The police, in order to break up this crowd of no more than 500 people, were shooting whatever they had in their arsenal of expired teargas from 1995, that bombed onto the entire peaceful people gathered there.
Syntagma square, where the "Direct Democracy" movement has being camping for days, was being continuously bombed with teargas to disperse the troublemakers that went to hide among the peaceful crowd, yet the people were leaving for a while and returned back again when the cloud had been dissolved. This happened several times.The Square's infirmary personnel was spraying everyone with Maalox anti-gas spray and handing out masks. The police, seeing after a while that the teargas does not work, started shooting countless killer choking-gas shells. There were falling everywhere, even on heads. As a result, the square was now a great white cloud of dense choking-gas, I was seeing everything blurred and aside from my eyes, my skin (hands, face etc) was itching and tingling much. If you inhale even a little, your throat, nose, abdomen, lungs and heart start hurting.
While you are in the dense cloud, your breath is abruptly stopped and you simply beg to die quickly, because the pain is terrible and continuous. The police did not hesitate to throw gas inside the subway closed space entrances (with tragic consequences) as well as the square's infirmary, where some protesters sought refuge. Most of the people ran to the stairs in panic like zombies, holding their chests and abdomen struggling. Some were fainting, some were vomiting, others were trampled and those who had anti-asphyxiating masks and stayed behind, were badly beaten from the the police. Many of them had nothing to do with the troublemakers. Everywhere you heard: ''a doctor-a doctor!'. We were lucky we didn't have any dead.
As soon as you exited the cloud and got some fresh air, you slowly returned back.
However, everybody was going back to the square and started dancing as soon as the cloud was dissolved. The asphyxiating gases fell 3 times and 3 times we returned back.The tear gases were falling like rain before that, and all the time we kept returning back. Apart from the courage and the determination of the crowd, the loudspeakers on the poles had a key role, calling people back to the square again and again. This has never been done before...
The police took over the square when it was evacuated due to the chemical weapons, but to no effect, because whatever they bombed, after a while we were gathering again. Some demonstrators were even jumping from the small walls located around the square, people were coming from everywhere, police squads could not operate encircled, so they made continuous irregular retreats.
Later, things became more calm and the square was washed from volunteers to clean the remnants of the chemical weapons in order to cleanse the atmosphere.
The message we sent to the rest of Greece and abroad, as it is written on our new banner, is that we are not indignants but determined.
Relevant pictures, REUTERS News Agency:
http://www.bt.dk/udland/nu-slaas-de-i-gaderne-i-athen
Relevant videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGj-3KhRlHc
Text by: Drogoom
Translation by: Kostas - Muadib
Nu slås de i gaderne i Athen | http://www.bt.dk
I must say that when I look on the Youtube-clip and the pictures from bt.dk , I first thought about Tunisia, Egypt or something similar.
But this is Europe!
Anyone with some more info here, about the greece DD-movement?
It would be encoraging for us here in calm north to hear that the Direct Democracy ideas are glowing intense now in Athens!
I searched a bit on internet and also found this:
http://www.facebook.com/eagainst
Seems to be a loose network encouraging the free flow of information in the political system.
Quite cloose to the goals of AD, isnt it?
