"At least before I fell I got the chance to hear: Bread-Education-Freedom"…

Journalist Manolis Kypraios is now disabled because of the brutal violence he suffered at the hands of the repression organs of the State while he was covering the strike movement on the 15th of June. Specifically, a member of the riot police intentionally threw a stun grenade within inches of his head, causing total hearing loss in both ears, even though our colleague had identified himself as a journalist. The brutal behaviour of the riot police was unequivocally denounced by the board of directors of the Athens Journalists Union, and a case has been filed at the public prosecutor’s office. Manolis Kypraios is therefore the first documented case of a fellow human being who loses entirely one of his five senses and becomes disabled due to police violence during recent demonstrations. We publish below the shocking account of events he provided in full solidarity and sympathy with his plight.

Manolis Kypraios’s shocking eyewitness account to Exandas Documentaries

“It was about 9 o’clock in the morning on the 15th of June when I arrived in Syntagma by metro. I chose to exit from the Hotel Grande-Bretagne exit instead of the central part of the square. Once I arrived on the sidewalk I saw on Vassilisis Sofias Avenue something that froze me in my tracks.

A wall of iron. A wall similar to the one I had seen opposed by Israeli soldiers in full gear to unarmed Palestinians.

I was instantly overtaken by a sense of foreboding and inner dread, if you will. This time they’re ready for anything, I told myself.
This made me more careful and more guarded. ‘Fire’ could break out at any moment.
The simple Greek citizens who were there were also puzzled by the police ‘robocops’, as they called them ironically, because of the specially reinforced uniforms they were wearing.
Time was going by and I was standing at the far end of Syntagma Square when a hail of chemicals, teargas and stun grenades suddenly began. It was massive and indiscriminate. People ran away in panic to hide. So did I in a corner on the Mitropoleos and Filellinon junction. In one hand my mobile phone to broadcast, and in the other my camera. Endless minutes passed, I was crying and having difficulty to breathe. ‘You’ll make it,’ I was telling myself to take heart. Then I saw hooded thugs with bludgeons emerging from behind the riot police in the arcade of the Ministry of Finance. I froze.
This is something I shouldn’t miss, I thought.
But suddenly an elderly man collapsed in front of me. I didn’t hesitate for a second. Together with some fellow citizens, we picked him up and carried him to the makeshift clinic in the square.
What I saw reminded me of the field hospitals I’d seen in Kosovo. A true battlefield in the middle of the capital of my country. Of the Hellenic Republic.
I moved on. Now clashes were taking place on the corner of Filellinon and Xenofontos streets. More intense. No thugs there. The riot police were throwing stun grenades and chemicals indiscriminately for no reason. It was the same scene. No mercy on anyone. The riot police were hitting everything and everyone with their truncheons. A frenzy of anger and violence. Like a herd of sharks.
This caused me to enter an arcade on Filellinon street, to broadcast and take pictures from there.
That was the fatal mistake I made.
A riot police team was retreating. The platoon leader asked me why I was taking pictures.
As I am familiar with the procedure, I told him that I’m a journalist and showed him my ID from the Journalists Union. In vain. It made him angry.
He first abused me in ‘perfect French’, then pointed me out to a policeman of his team. I understood something was going to happen. But the most I expected to get was a ‘welt’.
But no. Within a fraction of a second, the paunchy riot policeman threw a stun grenade in front of me.
Since the intended distance of explosion is 50 meters, you can imagine what happened to me when it exploded 50 centimeters away.
I felt my whole body shaking, I fell in the arcade and for a few seconds I thought I was dead.
A little bit later I felt hands lifting me and I vaguely tried to see them. But I couldn’t hear them.
It was Yorgos, Takis, Maria, Konstantina, Nikos and Prodromos, as I would find out later. I was dizzy and water was pouring over me, I was trying to recover.
‘You have to go to the hospital,’ they were telling me in sign language.
I realised that I should do so immediately.
I started walking up Filellinon Street with difficulty. To get to Zappeio and then to Evangelismos hospital, on foot.
All this together with tens of other simple citizens, some of whom were with their children, and who were trying to escape.
But that’s where a second big surprise was waiting for us.
A group of cowards (please allow this qualifier) of ‘Team Delta’ on motorbikes surrounded us, the way the Indians surrounded General Custer’s unit.
They started insulting us and beating us. I was trying to protect a young adolescent – he was no more than 15 years old – and took several hits to my waist and legs, while the motorbikes would rush towards us and their drivers would slam on the brakes a few meters away from us.
Plain thuggery and ‘legal’ violence.
I arrived in Evangelismos unable to hear, beaten up and writhing from pain. But they weren’t on duty on that day and I had to go to the Red Cross Hospital. In spite of the condition I was in, there wasn’t a single available ambulance to transfer me…
I arrived in the Red Cross with great difficulty. The doctors and staff of the ENT clinic and the GPs were – the least I can say – perfect.
I spent ten nightmarish days while the doctors tried to save my right ear, under the leadership of professor Vathylakis. Unfortunately, the damage was too severe.
Both of my ears have gone completely deaf. The main organ of hearing, the cochlea, is totally destroyed on both sides of my head.
I was deaf…
The riot policemen did their work well. They caused a citizen to become disabled. And that citizen was me.
The sensitive and democrat minister for Citizen Protection Mr. C. Papoutsis wasn’t even so kind as to present an apology. Neither of course did the head of the Greek Police, Mr. L. Ikonomou.
They must be thinking that I fall under ‘collateral damage.’ And in oligarchic regimes, there is no such thing as ‘sorry’, only: ‘you got what you deserved’.
However, I still believe that our political system can be called a democracy.
I must now learn how to live differently. A different life, without hearing, where my future and my dreams have been shattered by the manic violence of the riot police. God knows what instructions they were given.
At least before I fell I got the chance to hear: “Bread, education, freedom…”

Translated by: Theodora Oikonomides
source: http://www.exandasdocumentaries.com