Merkel go home and take with you Troika, IMF, EU and your local collaborators

Tomorrow, Tuesday 9 October when German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be arriving in Greece, Athens will look like an occupied city in which martial law is in force. In the wider area of the city centre, demonstrations are not allowed, traffic and public transport is banned and the subway is closed. Even schools located in this area are informally ordered to remain closed. We as Greeks living in the Netherlands are appalled at this curfew which is incompatible with a democratic state.

Chancellor Merkel is visiting Greece at a moment when policies that herself, the Troika and the Greek governments applied and continue to apply, are causing an economic disaster followed by a humanitarian catastrophy. The recession gets deeper and deeper. In the end of 2012, the GDP of the country will have fallen cumulatively by 25% the last 4 years. Unemployment has climbed to 24% – which becomes 55% for young people. Wages and pensions at the private and public sector are reduced by 30-50%, suicides have increased by 50%. The public health system is collapsing with immediate consequences for the health of the public. Schools and universities are suffocating due to the lack of staff and funding. On the social front, police attacks whichever social group dares to demonstrate its objection to the governmental policies, migrants are chased and stabbed by neo-nazis in collaboration with the police.

Merkel is coming to put the final touch to the new austerity program that will give the final blow to the Greek people. The people will bear the new budget cuts of €11.5-13.6 billion with new wage, pension and benefit reductions along with the unprecedented sell-out of state property to the debtors. With the excuse of ‘doing everything needed to remain in the Eurozone’ the Greek government is pushing the new austerity package through and arranges for the police and the neo-nazis to attack everybody that resists.

We consider Chancellor Merkel and the policies applied by Troika and the Greek governments responsible for this disaster. This is one of these times when one needs to take sides and we choose to take the side of the people and the youth of Greece that tomorrow will try to break the curfew by demonstrating for their right to live. Merkel, Troika, IMF and their collaborators are unwanted in Greece. The people – immigrants and Greeks alike – have the right to define their own future. It’s high time to do so, regardless of the cost!

REinFORM