More than 11,000 people, according to police, gathered in Athens, northern Thessaloniki and other Greek cities on Tuesday to commemorate the 2008 killing of a teenager by police, protests that came a day after the police shot a young gypsy.
As every year, on December 6, students and the left demonstrate in memory of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, killed at the age of 15 by a policeman’s bullets in 2008 in the Exarcheia protest district, near the center of the Greek capital. .
This tragedy shocked Greece and sparked unprecedented riots throughout the country for several months. The police officer who shot Alexis Grigoropoulos was sentenced to life in prison for intentional homicide before being released last June after an appeal trial.
An important security device
Nearly 600 pupils and students demonstrated in Athens on Tuesday morning ahead of a large demonstration of nearly 6,500 people on Tuesday evening in central Athens closed to traffic.
More than 4,000 police officers were mobilized and Syntagma Square, a regular scene of clashes with police, was surrounded by a cordon of riot police, according to an AFP photographer.
In Thessaloniki, the second largest Greek city in the north of the country, some 5,000 people demonstrated on Tuesday night, according to police.
Thessaloniki, symbolic city
It was in this city that on the night from Sunday to Monday, a 16-year-old from the Roma community was seriously injured in the head by a police shot.
Operated on the head, the young Rom remains in critical condition, according to media reports.
The policeman opened fire during a pursuit of the boy who had fled from a gas station without paying a 20-euro bill. He was arrested and arraigned Tuesday for “attempted murder” before being released on probation.
This case, which aroused great emotion and is part of a context of repeatedly denounced police violence, sparked angry demonstrations in the Roma community of Thessaloniki and Athens on Monday night and Tuesday.
“These days are Alexis’s” was written on a large banner in front of the demonstration in Athens, as participants denounced police violence and impunity.
Other slogans referred to the police shooting against the teenager in Thessaloniki: “Rome lives matter.” “It wasn’t the money or the gasoline, the policemen shot because he was a gypsy” was written on the wall of an Athenian street.
Source: BFM TV
