Municipality cops and riot police evacuated by force the protesters camp at Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece after 60 days.

Posted by: disorderisti Posted date: July 30, 2011 In: Movement, News | comment : 0

At 04:20, 4 Riot team squads circling each side entered the revolutionary camp. A small team of police officers with a D.I. entered from the lower side. The Riot guards surrounded the protesters while the D.I. stated that the protest and the camp were declared illegal, due to a Greek law about camping on public urban spaces.
The Municipality cops and state police entered the square shortly afterwards covered by the Riot police and began to destroy the camp at Syntagma Square together with the banners and made some arrests. This is very provoking since the square had already announced that they will remove the tents in a few days when the parliament will close for August holidays. They could not wait for a couple more days they had to show their force probably in an attempt to provoke violence once again. Any attempt of reasoning or peaceful resistance was answered with soft to mild force by the police.

The Riot squads forced the majority of the protesters out of the square. 8 arrests were made during this process. After forced out of the square, any attempt even to cross the road was answered with mild force and mild violence.
Our attempts to persuade the D.I. about the questionable legality of the decision were futile. Any equipment that was not salvaged fast enough including the medical equipment was destroyed.

3 hours after the initial action from the police and while the salvaged food and equipment were being loaded into cars, police arrested one of the campers with the charges of “assaulting a police officer”.
The story begins with the statements by the mayor of Athens saying that the tents and the other facilities are a bad image for tourism. At the same time the central square of Athens, Omonoia is still inaccessible because tons of garbage is everywhere. It seems that the mayor and the authorities are in particular concern only for the places that people are resisting. This action came only a few hours after another squat eviction which took place earlier last night.