Greek govt riles critics with military monument protest ban
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
Every hour on the hour, day and night, Greek soldiers change the guard in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens.
The elaborate practice of the “evzones”, elite infantry conscripts wearing skirts, white stockings and clogs, routinely draws a wall of tourist smartphones.
But the near-century-old monument they guard has become a political battleground after the conservative government’s contentious decision to ban demonstrations there.
The government majority approved the amendment on Wednesday, causing fissures among even the ruling party.
Anyone found guilty of demonstrating at or damaging Greece’s top military monument, located just below parliament, may now face up to one year in prison.
Observers noted that the defence minister, now tasked with protecting the monument, was absent from the debate on the issue Tuesday.
Inaugurated in 1932, the marble cenotaph honours the memory of Greek soldiers fallen in combat.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s critics accuse him of trying to silence protests, which have been growing since the Tempi train collision of February 28, 2023 – Greece’s worst rail tragedy.
In the square leading to the cenotaph, relatives and friends have written the names and ages of the disaster’s 57 victims in red paint.
Determined not to let the names fade, they returned on Sunday to refresh the paint.
“The names of the dead will remain there until final justice is served,” Maria Karystianou, head of the Tempi Victims’ Relatives Association, said in a post last week.
Two and a half years later, the tragedy still provokes anger and calls for justice amid widespread distrust of political leaders accused of negligence.
Surrounded by pots of basil, stuffed animals, lanterns and religious icons, this improvised tribute is maintained by a citizens’ collective claiming to be apolitical.
Every evening, at 11:18 pm (2018 GMT), the moment the two trains collided head-on, the collective reads out the names of the dead, most of them young students returning from a long weekend.
Critics say Mitsotakis was spurred to action after the father of one of the victims, Panos Ruci, set up a tent near the monument in a 23-day hunger strike.
Breaking for health tests, Ruci stayed there until October 7, when judicial authorities agreed to exhume his son’s body for toxicology tests.
The 48-year-old’s protest drew daily visits from politicians, artists, school children and other Greeks wanting to express solidarity.
‘Not a billboard’
Addressing parliament, Mitsotakis emphasised the need to “preserve the sanctity” of a place “of memory for the dead… who allowed us to be free and to offer this freedom to our children”.
The cenotaph “is not a billboard for claims, however respectable they may be,” he said.
Referring to collision victims’ relatives, Mitsotakis stressed: “None of us can grasp their grief or their anger… But activism of this kind, in a sacred and historical place, does not serve their cause”.
The main left-wing party, Syriza, has called the amendment a “Trump-inspired” measure that is “a direct attack on democracy”.
The government insists that only the space in front of the monument is affected – about 4,500 square metres (50,000 square feet) compared to Syntagma Square’s 25,000 square metres just opposite.
“Everywhere else, gatherings remain obviously free,” the prime minister said.
Heated demonstrations also occurred on Syntagma Square during the 2009-2018 debt crisis, when evzone sentry boxes were set alight several times during violent clashes between police and protesters.
Historians are divided, with Athens’ Benaki Museum’s head archivist Tasos Sakellaropoulos calling the tomb a “place of silent collective memory and respect, not of pain or anger” in Kathimerini daily.
But Giorgos Mavrogordatos, emeritus professor at the University of Athens criticised the evzone display as “extravagant figures resembling ballerinas for the pleasure of tourists”.
“This has nothing to do with historical memory: it is a purely arbitrary invention of recent years,” Mavrogordatos wrote in Kathimerini.
Source: AFP
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
