http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/are-the-greek-riots-a-taste-of-things-to-come-1064479.html
December 13, 2008
Are the Greek riots a taste of things to come?
Greece's riots are a sign of the economic times. Other countries
should beware, says Peter Popham in Athens
After firing 4,600 tear-gas canisters in the past week, the Greek
police have nearly exhausted their stock. As they seek emergency
supplies from Israel and Germany, still the petrol bombs and stones
of the protesters rain down, with clashes again outside parliament yesterday.
Bringing together youths in their early twenties struggling to
survive amid mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren swotting for
highly competitive university exams that may not ultimately help them
in a treacherous jobs market, the events of the past week could be
called the first credit-crunch riots. There have been smaller-scale
sympathy attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists say
countries with similarly high youth unemployment problems such as
Spain and Italy should prepare for unrest.
Ostensibly, the trigger for the Greek violence was the police
shooting of a 15-year-old boy, Alexis Grigoropoulos. A forensic
report leaked to Greek newspapers indicated he was killed by a direct
shot, not a ricochet as the policeman's lawyer had claimed. The first
protesters were on the streets of Athens within 90 minutes of
Alexis's death, the start of the most traumatic week Greece has
endured for decades. The destructiveness of the daily protests, which
left many stores in Athens's smartest shopping area in ruins and
caused an estimated 2bn (£1.79bn) in damage, has stunned Greece and
baffled the world. And there was no let-up yesterday, as angry youths
shrugged off torrential rain to pelt police with firebombs and
stones, block major roads and occupy a private radio station.
Their parents grope for explanations. Tonia Katerini, whose
17-year-old son Michalis was out on the streets the day after the
killing, emphasised the normality of the protesters. "It's not just
20 or 30 people, we're talking about 1,000 young people. These are
not people who live in the dark, they are the sort you see in the
cafes. The criminals and drug addicts turned up later, to loot the
stores. The children were very angry that one of them had been
killed; and they wanted the whole society not to sleep quietly about
this, they wanted everyone to feel the same fear they felt. And they
were also expressing anger towards society, towards the religion of
consumerism, the polarisation of society between the few haves and
the many have-nots."
Protest has long been a rite of passage for urban Greek youth. The
downfall of the military dictatorship in 1974 is popularly ascribed
to a student uprising; the truth was more complicated, but that is
the version that has entered student mythology, giving them an
enduring sense of their potential. So no one was surprised that
Alexis's death a week ago today brought his fellow teenagers on to
the streets. But why were the protests so impassioned and
long-lasting? "The death of this young boy was a catalyst that
brought out all the problems of society and of youth that have been
piling up all these years and left to one side with no solutions,"
said Nikos Mouzelis, emeritus professor of sociology at LSE. "Every
day, the youth of this country experiences further marginalisation."
Although Greece's headline unemployment of 7.4 per cent is just below
the eurozone average, the OECD estimates that unemployment among
those aged 15 to 24 is 22 per cent, although some economists put the
real figure at more like 30 per cent.
"Because of unemployment, a quarter of those under 25 are below the
poverty line," said Petros Rylmon, an economist at Linardos, the
Labour Institute of the Greek trade unions. "That percentage has been
increasing for the past 10 years. There is a diffused, widespread
feeling that there are no prospects. This is a period when everyone
is afraid of the future because of the economic crisis. There is a
general feeling that things are going to get worse. And there is no
real initiative from the government."
For Greek youngsters such as Michalis Katerini, job prospects are not
rosy, but without a university degree they would be far worse, so he
and his mother are making serious sacrifices to get him into further
education. So inadequate is the teaching in his state high school
that he, like tens of thousands of others across the country, must
study three hours per night, five nights a week at cramming school
after regular school, to have a hope of attaining the high grades
required to get the university course of his choice. His mother,
whose work as an architect is down 20 per cent on last year, must pay
800 a month to the crammer for the last, crucial year of high school.
She believes the government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis faces
more turbulence if it fails to grasp the reality of the past week,
and pass it off as a spontaneous over-reaction. "The government has
tried hard not to connect what is happening with the problems of
young people. The government says one boy died, his friends are
angry, they over-reacted then anarchists came to join in the game.
But this is not the reality."
Vicky Stamatiadou, a kindergarten teacher in the rich northern
suburbs with two teenage sons, agrees. "Until now, our society was
full of dirty but calm water; nothing was moving, nothing improving,
all the problems of our society remained unsolved for years. People
pretended that everything was going well. But now this false picture
has been broken and we are facing reality."
Greece's official youth unemployment statistics are not far removed
from the rates in other European countries with a history of mass
protest, such as France, Italy and Spain. With the graffiti "The
Coming Insurrection" plastered near the Greek consulate in Bordeaux
this week, the warning signs to the rest of the continent's leaders are clear.
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