We decided to go to the Syntagma Square today as soon as it became clear that the SWAT would attempt to disperse the demonstrators, forbidding them to remain on the Square, which as an act run against the Constitutional Rights of the Greek Citizens.
Our intention was not to allow the SWAT teams to encroach on the Constitution and refuse the demonstration the chance to develop in its peaceful character, exactly as the protesting Greek Citizens wanted and had planned rather than be dispersed and put out in the usual manner.
Carrying a Greek Flag on our shoulder, our IDs visible, and just in case, the Constitution of Greece in our pockets, we walked our way towards the Square via Patriarchou Ioakim and Academias Streets.
To start with, SWAT teams had blocked our way (we had already gone past their police coaches that were used to barricade any access to Syntagma), despite the fact that we explained that we wished to go to the Monument of the Unknown Soldier, and that we assumed full responsibility for our safety (because they were blocking our access there for the sake of ʽour safetyʼ, even if other Citizens were simply stating that they needed to cross). Afterwards, and not without tension, and after having told them that blocking our access is illegal since we are Greek Citizens on Greek soil, they let us through, particularly after we demanded that they gave us the names of their leaders under whose orders they had been acting and their numbers which were not visible on their shoulders as they should have been.
At the Square, we made our way towards the SWAT teams who had assumed the usual circle around the Monument of the Unknown Soldier and we once more told them the same arguments, asking them to let us through so that we could deposit our Flag on the Unknown Soldier, being our own way of protest.
The usual youngsters (who ranged in age from the really young to middle-aged men) had already started attacking the SWAT teams, without any mottos but only using verbal insults of a personal nature. I shouted to them that there was no need for them to do so and that they had every Right to cross the SWAT line peacefully, if they showed them their IDs and the Greek Flag on which the SWAT teams had sworn allegiance to.
To my great surprise, the youngsters got even more agitated than the SWATs and grabbed our flags and wrenched them away from us, while they started shouting that they had no IDs that they were no Greeks and that their purpose was to dissolve Greece. My daughter saw a group of youngsters holding our flag burning it and rushed on her own (no SWAT did anything to stop the Flag from burning), grabbed the Flag and put its fire out. The Flag was almost totally burned but it could still be recognized. She crossed the SWAT line shouting to the arsonists that they should be ashamed only to hear that the Greek Nation is none of their business.
But the SWAT teams did not let her through to the Monument. Because she would not leave and because SWAT teams did not want to expose themselves, she was told that they would ask for permission to let her deposit the flag.
In time the permission was given (as my daughter heard on their leaderʼs radio) but at that time one of the youngsters or one member of the SWAT present then threw a flash bomb and tear gas, the whole SWAT line moved towards that spot and under his pretext threw my daughter out of their line not allowing her to cross back in, while she had tear gas thrown on her face.
During the time that the SWAT leader was waiting for the permission, he told her that if she wanted to have a future, she should leave Greece, using in this way the usual governmental arguments to push people to turn themselves into immigrants (besides we see such arguments been used time and over again in anonymous blogs) and stated his admiration towards Germany saying that his daughter was a student there and that he was prompting her to stay there for good ʽbecause Germans are good and they work their butts offʼ.
It was shown to us, beyond any doubt, that the usual ʽscene-crashersʼ who throw stones and fight the SWATs are in fact of unknown ID, non-Greeks who deploy their force against Greece, not against GAP and his junta, and cooperate seamlessly with the SWATs in a play specially designed to disperse the demonstrations of the real Greeks, and attract attention away from them.
These people seemed to become very agitated by the sight of my Greek ID card that I was visibly carrying and they were asking me very intensely to get out of the way so that ʽthey could wage war against SWATsʼ because their motto was ʽfreedomʼ but they could not answer ʽfreedom from what?ʼ since what they were asking was not freedom from GAP that all Greeks are asking.
They also DID NOT wish to enter the Parliament, and neither did they wish to let anybody else enter, nor did they wish to see anything changed from the existing government.
Finally, one of them who was delirious shouting that ʽhe did not want to hear anything about Greece, or about how to enter Parliament peacefullyʼ, and because ʽI did not let them or the SWAT attack each otherʼ (which was true as I was in between standing on the marble wall, and then in front of the ornamental monument shields saying that the SWAT teams must first hit me to get to the people and that the others (the ʽscene crashersʼ) also had to stone me first before they hit the SWAT). Thus, they were forced under the circumstances, rather than attacking each other, to stand in and talk.
The conclusions reached out of this experience and witness statement are the following:
1. SWATs themselves are of unknown unidentifiable ID, since we cannot possibly know if they are real Greek policemen or mercenaries or members of a special invisible army.
2. The ʽscene crashersʼ are not Greeks, but are Greek-speaking, educated in Greek schools but without Greek conscience or ethnicity harboring great hatred, not against capital or liberalism or any of those facts that are responsible for the social injustice and suffering, but the Greek identity. They are not interested to topple the junta who are draining Greece but they mar the workersʼ movement too, because being jobless and unemployed and very young to have entered the labor market (they did not seem to realize what work meant) they self-declared themselves ʽworkersʼ or ʽpro-workerʼ, whom they name as being only Albanians as well as some other aliens, including Turks.
3. The real Greek demonstrators are pushed away from the areas filled with ʽscene crashersʼ which are always the most critical ones. In this way, the real danger which is the Greek protester, stay safely away from the Syntagma Square and the Parliament, and all you can see, always, is the SWAT teams on the one side the ʽscene crashersʼ on the other, acting out their innocuous little game, at least for the government/junta, but particularly destructive ʽcops and robbers gameʼ for the struggle of the Greek Citizens and of every single one wishing to see social justice done.
4. Both the SWATs and the scene crashers are greatly scared of the possibility to see ʽblood being shedʼ. Precisely, in other words, what the government had announced. Cooperation and communication between the SWATs and the scene crashers is state-of-the-art and well orchestrated.
Both the SWATs and the scene crashers wanted me out of the way because I was endangering their little act and there was a risk of me entering the Parliament legally, with whomever wanted to follow me or stop their engagement altogether. At the end, the scene crashers literally grabbed me to get me out of there while the SWAT teams were throwing enough tear gas to make it impossible for me to keep talking. Their cooperation was complete in their joint efforts, both from the SWATs and the scene crashers, to ʽprotect meʼ.
Staging this performance every time, they have rendered demonstrations controllable and innocuous for the government, especially after the unionistsʼ failure to drive and contain the reaction of the Greek demonstrators, that is, during the demonstration itself.
The time has come for us to isolate the party mechanisms of indiscriminately every political party that participate (either in or out of government) in this exercise of control of the Greek people and cancel every such effort using these manners, just as the histrionics with blazing Greek motifs of Georgiadis and the endless groveling charades of his leader Karatzaferis, in fact boycott the real manifestation of the Greek people.
The time has come for us to stop acceding to the presence of an unidentifiable army who protects the junta government donning a SWAT team uniform as well as the hooders and the scene crashers.
The time has come for us to decide as Greek People to get our country back without permitting any unionist, NGO member to SWAT to cut our impetus and Will to act.
Posters at the Villa Hypateia declare that the ʽprime of the Greek societyʼ is its immigrants, and apparently that is why the GAP junta is straggling the natural prime of the Greek society which is of course the Greek youth.
When our country is going to the dogs, we owe it to ourselves to decide if we really wish to found a Greek State functioning under real Human Rights for all, or be under the unnatural abomination where instead of Human Rights, we shall witness the few and their cronies having super-privileges while servitude and selfdom for all the rest.
The time has come that each of us either decides to act or remain indifferent and faces his or her responsibility for acting so.