Thousands march in Greece to mark anti-junta uprising
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
Thousands of people demonstrated in Greece on Monday to commemorate a student uprising against a US-backed dictatorship that was brutally crushed in 1973.
More than 15,000 people marched in Athens, police said, in a protest monitored by thousands of officers, helicopters and drones.
Another 10,000 demonstrated in Thessaloniki, where a US and a NATO flag were torched. Protests also took place in other major cities.
The annual demonstration in Athens traditionally passes in front of the US embassy to protest Washington’s support for the dictatorship, and is frequently marred by clashes between youths and riot police.
Many protesters in Athens were carrying Palestinian flags, and the march is expected to culminate at the Israeli embassy.
Police on Monday made 11 arrests before the protest, a police spokesperson told AFP.
Anger against the conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been growing for months, after the country’s worst train tragedy in 2023 that claimed 57 lives, most of them young students.
Opinion polls have shown a large majority of Greeks believe the government tried to cover up evidence into the cause of the crash.
There was further criticism in October after a law was enacted to ban demonstrations in front of Greece’s foremost military monument, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, near parliament.
Greek university students in 1973 staged an uprising at the Athens Polytechnic against a US-backed military junta that had ruled the country since 1967.
It was crushed by the army and police, killing at least 24 people.
The crackdown shocked Europe and is widely considered to have helped break the dictatorship’s grip on power.
Democracy was restored months later, after the Greek junta engineered a coup d’etat in Cyprus that prompted a Turkish invasion and occupation, which divides the island to this day.
The United States, Greece’s main financial backer, did not oppose the junta, which former US president Bill Clinton acknowledged during an official visit to Athens in 1999.
Source: AFP
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