Pitched battles over open refuse dump outside Athens

8th July

Pitched bat­tles between locals of Gram­mati­co, out­side Athens, and riot police forces over the con­struc­tion of an open refuse damp with locals dig­ging trench­es, build­ing bar­ri­cades and torch­ing bull­doz­ers; scores have been wound­ed as bat­tles con­tin­ue amidst spread­ing fires.

More than 1500 locals of the Black Moun­tain vil­lage of Gram­mati­co, out­side Athens, have erect­ed bar­ri­cades and dug trench­es in order to stop the begin­ning of an open refuse damp (XYTA) con­struc­tion in their area. The locals torched the com­pa­ny’s bull­doz­ers after riot police forces arrest­ed and beat the resist­ing may­or, refus­ing to take him to the hos­pi­tal to treat his wounds.

One of the local coun­cil mem­bers has been declared: “There are fires every­where and strong police forces. We are afraid of a mas­sacre. The police is using bru­tal force and we have scores of wound­ed cit­i­zens. The riot police forces (MAT) have reached our last bar­ri­cade. If they man­age to cross it, then the sit­u­a­tion will be out of con­trol. How­ev­er this will prove hard, as it is our strongest bar­ri­cade. We have dug the earth plant­i­ng trac­tors and bull­doz­ers in it. All the vil­lage is here and is ready to fight”. Many peo­ple have been arrest­ed dur­ing the clash­es, and sev­er­al police­men have been wound­ed by pro­jec­tiles. The fire brigade has deployed 3 air­plane, 3 heli­copters and over 15 fire engines in order to fight the fires caused by the riot police mind­less use of tear gas and “blast and flash” grenades and are threat­en­ing a chil­dren sum­mer camp near­by.

The con­struc­tion of XYTA around the coun­try has cre­at­ed a chain of vio­lent envi­ron­men­tal strug­gles, whose pro­to­type is Lefkim­mi, a Cor­fu vil­lage which has been resist­ing State plans for 18 months, los­ing one com­rade in the bat­tles with the police.