Strike, demonstrations, clashes (Athens-Thessaloniki-Larissa) — luxury cars, cash machines, CCTV & McD all trashed or burned

12/12/2007
All reports come from athens.indymedia.org Anoth­er report in greek can be found at www.anarchy.gr.

CCTV camera bagged12/12/2007
All reports come from athens.indymedia.org Anoth­er report in greek can be found at www.anarchy.gr.

One-day long gen­er­al strike was called by fed­er­a­tions, labor unions and syn­di­cates that belong to the GSEE (gen­er­al syn­di­cal­ist union), PAME (tied to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty) but also inde­pen­dent syn­di­cates and oth­er groups, against gov­ern­ment plans to over­haul the pen­sion sys­tem (rais­ing retire­ment ages, cut­ting ben­e­fits etc).

Athens: The police repeat­ed­ly attacked with tear gas and flash light and sting ball grenades in order to tear apart the anarchist/antiautoritarian blocs (more than 1.500 per­sons) from the oth­er demon­stra­tors (more than 150.000) while the demon­stra­tors fought back with stones and sticks. A lux­u­rius car had its win­dows bro­ken and was set on fire, togeth­er with a bank’s ATM and a police sur­veil­lance cam­era. Near Great Britain hotel, the cops attacked again the demon­stra­tion but were held back by the peo­ple. In Omonoia Square, the cops attacked once again the demo and cut back the anarchist/antiatoritarian blocs. In Panepis­timiou street, some demon­stra­tors attacked the cops and set free 2 per­sons that were hand­cuffed by the cops, in a pre­vi­ous police attack. Then, there was a con­stant tear gas attack and police strik­ing the demo in order to sep­a­rate the anarchist/antiatoritarian blocs from the rest of the demon­stra­tors, though they nev­er man­age to do so, thanks to the strong self-defence of the anarchists/antiautoritarians and the sup­port of the rest of the demon­stra­tors that did n’t run away, regard­less the amounts of tear gas and police attacks. In the same time, employ­ees of “Olympic Air­ways” some of them protest­ing with greek flags against the bunk­rupt­sy of this state-spon­sored com­pa­ny, were offer­ing flow­ers to the police­men ouside the par­lia­ment house… Dur­ing the demon­stra­tions, bank ATMs and sur­veil­lance cam­eras were destroyed, and 2 line­men of the Pub­lic Pow­er Cor­po­ra­tion got arrest­ed a few hours after the demon­stra­tions, for cov­er­ing up police sur­veil­lance cam­eras with bags. In total, there were dozens of arrests, and 4 of them are pros­e­cut­ed under mis­de­meanours (dis­rup­tion of pub­lic order, dam­ag­ing pub­lic prop­er­ty).

Thes­sa­loni­ki: Demon­stra­tors broke down the McDon­alds at Lagka­da street and bank win­dows, and burnt up pow­er sup­ply box­es of police sur­veil­lance cam­eras. In total, more than 30.000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the demon­stra­tions.

Laris­sa: Paint bombs and eggs were thrown at banks and par­ty offices.

March­es and open gath­er­ing were organ­ised in most cities and towns of the coun­try.