Police were deployed across the Greek city of Athens on Thursday as thousands attended marches to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Polytechnic Uprising that was brutally crushed by the military junta then ruling Greece.
The anniversary is marked each year by marches to the US Embassy in Athens, and the demonstrations have often, but not always, turned violent.
Around 5,000 police were deployed in Athens, where major streets were closed to traffic, and three subway stations along the demonstration route shut down.
A helicopter and drones hovered over the central Syntagma Square and neighbouring districts through the day.
This year, the commemoration events began with a wreath laying ceremony at the Athens Polytechnic university, the site of a bloody clamp-down on November 17, 1973 when tanks smashed through the gates to crush the student revolt that heralded the end of the junta.
Greece’s President Katerina Sakellaropoulou laid a wreath at the memorial and said the Polytechnic Uprising anniversary serves as a “reminder that the struggle for democracy is constant and taxing.”
“By honouring the memory of the victims – the Polytechnic students and activists – we acknowledge our debt to safeguard the quality of our institutions and our society’s openness,” Sakellaropoulou said.
The march that followed was led by a group of demonstrators carrying a blood-stained Greek flag from the 1973 uprising to the embassy. People march to the US Embassy to protest Washington’s support of the dictatorship in Greece at the time.
Demonstrators held banners reading “US and NATO get out, disengagement from war” and a few protesters wore T-shirts that read “Fight for peace and disarmament.”
Brief tension broke out between police and protesters before the march reached the heavily guarded parliament on Syntagma square.
Police said it detained 17 people in Athens’ Exarcheia district for checks ahead of the scheduled marches.
Source: Ekathimerini, AP News.
