The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 19th March 2021
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 19th March 2021
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
A YEAR previously, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and members of his government were praising doctors, the “health heroes” as they called them, for their fight against the Coronavirus pandemic. The government had even urged the people to show their appreciation to the country’s healthcare workers by applauding them from their balconies.
But apparently the healthcare workers are “heroes” only as long as they remain silent and do not fight for the rights of their co-workers and society. The president of the National Federation of Doctors of Public Hospitals (OENGE) Afroditi Retziou was recently questioned by police – because the Federation mobilised and organised protests demanding the recruitment of doctors, as well as more PPE and safety measures for healthcare workers.
In a statement, Retziou said: “The struggle A YEAR previously, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and members of his government were praising doctors, the “health heroes” as they called them, for their fight against the Coronavirus pandemic. The government had even urged the people to show their appreciation to the country’s healthcare workers by applauding them from their balconies.
But apparently the healthcare workers are “heroes” only as long as they remain silent and do not fight for the rights of their co-workers and society. The president of the National Federation of Doctors of Public Hospitals (OENGE) Afroditi Retziou was recently questioned by police – because the Federation mobilised and organised protests demanding the recruitment of doctors, as well as more PPE and safety measures for healthcare workers.
In a statement, Retziou said: “The struggle that hospital doctors, all healthcare workers, are giving is a struggle for the protection of our people’s health and lives, a struggle for the defence of our rights and dignity. No matter how many laws they will pass, no matter how many repressive mechanisms they will use, they don’t intimidate and terrorise us.”
As PAME (All Workers Militant Front) pointed out: “The government, in the face of the third wave of the pandemic, a year after its outbreak, has funded billions to big business, tourism groups, and aviation companies. They ran to buy police and repression equipment and want to bring thousands of special guards, cameras and police to Universities, Metro, and wherever else they can imagine. But they insist on not hiring drivers for public transport, teachers for schools, and medical staff for hospitals!”
As the third wave takes more lives every day and the public hospital beds become full to capacity, the aging, underfunded Greek healthcare system is close to collapse with very few vaccinations having been done and at an agonizingly slow pace. People are getting angry and fed up with lengthy lockdowns, which are crippling the economy thanks to the austerity government’s cuts to the public sector.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a wave of public protests and demonstrations have been met by savage reprisals by the state police. The latest orgy of Greek police brutality took place on Sunday 7th March, in the Athenian district of Nea Smyrni. Widely circulated videos and images showed a young man being severely beaten to the ground by riot police patrolling in the area. The man can be heard shouting “it hurts” whilst passers-by express outrage.
The KKE (Communist Party of Greece) strongly denounced the incident in a statement issued on by the Press Bureau of the CC of the KKE: “In the face of the pandemic, the government doesn’t find it necessary to support the public health system, to provide free tests and increased protection measures in workplaces and transportation, but [instead it deploys] more police forces to intimidate the people and families with little children, thus imposing terrorism and authoritarianism.
“The New Democracy government bears full responsibility for today’s attacks of police forces against residents in Nea Smyrni.”
No sooner had things returned to normal, a peaceful rally organised by PAME turned into an all-out battle on Tuesday 9th March between protesters who were demonstrating outside the area’s local police station and a whole column of heavily armed riot police. Stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown by a group that had split from the organised march and live images were shown all over the right-wing media because one, out of so many hundreds of policemen, got injured. The media never report the past deaths in custody nor police shootings of innocent civilians.
After the rally had finished, PAME said: “In the last [few] days, while the working people suffer and the Greek Government takes no measures for the protection of Health, against the big employers, with dozens of dead inside the workplaces, with a National Health System crumbling because of shortages and the Government bargaining its funding to Private Health Corporations, the only measure imposed is the escalation of state oppression targeting the workers and the youth. Their masks have fallen! The extreme oppression and state violence against workers, students and locals in the neighbourhoods has nothing to do with the protection of Public Health!
“Enough is Enough! We Break Repression – They Will Not Intimidate Us! Police repression and violence shall not pass! Down with the authoritarianism of the New Democracy government.”
Things have now quietened down but who knows what might stir up peoples’ anger again? Could it be the Government’s agent provocateurs in the rallies, or the Greek police which is infiltrated by former Golden Dawn and other extreme right factions?
Only time will tell in this delicate time for a country battling a pandemic under an austerity government and people forced to live under lockdowns or face punitive fines of €350 for going to work. The people are demanding more is done to fight the pandemic before the tourism season starts rather than spend money on arming an already militarised police and giving corporate tax cuts to its wealthy elite.