Violence broke out in central Athens for a second straight day on Thursday as thousands of Greeks protested against government austerity measures, hours before parliament was to vote on a key bill. Scores of demonstrators wearing motorcycle helmets and wielding batons attacked each other in central Syntagma Square near parliament, where police said at least 35,000 people had gathered. Masked youths lobbed firebombs at hundreds of Communist unionists tasked with maintaining order during the demonstration which capped a 48-hour general strike called by unions against the government’s economic policies.
The Communists counter-charged and pushed the attackers back, and the two sides began throwing stones at each other with the police initially keeping back. It marked the second day of violence in a country trapped in a deepening recession, where the austerity measures demanded by creditors to stave off default have inflamed passions. “I am a pensioner and they are reducing the already reduced pensions,” Georgia Tardeli said. “The worst is the prospects this country has with the youth. The unemployment, the lack of goals. The lack of prospects and hope.”
On Wednesday the streets around parliament resembled a battle zone after clashes erupted between masked protesters and riot police, leaving at least 45 people injured and seeing widespread vandalism on stores, banks and hotels in central Athens.
A leading Greek government official on Thursday warned that other countries were likely to face the same unrest, unless EU policymakers came to a “conclusive” solution at upcoming high-level talks beginning Friday on the sovereign debt crisis whose epicentre is Greece.
“I call on the Europeans to see what happened yesterday because this cannot go on. Public anger will expand everywhere. They must stop fooling around … conclusive solutions are needed,” the ruling party’s chief whip Christos Protopappas told Flash Radio.
“The crisis has already hit Portugal and Italy, it will spread to France and Belgium next,” Protopappas added.
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has also called for a “vigorous” response, not least to protect Spain which was hit with a rating downgrade earlier in the week. Sunday’s summit must deliver “a vigorous response to give guarantees to all countries, notably Spain,” Barroso said.
The Greek public sector was expected to be crippled again on Thursday, the second day of a general strike. Trains and ferries, taxi owners, municipal workers, lawyers, tax collectors, customs inspectors, state-employed journalists and engineers and many doctors also joining the action.
Parliament late on Wednesday adopted in first reading the new bill which amends collective wage agreements, cuts major tax breaks, introduces a new civil service salary system, and will temporary lay off thousands of public sector staff. But a number of government deputies have threatened to reject an article on wage amendments in Thursday’s follow-up vote.
The government has repeatedly warned that failure to pass the legislation ahead of the EU crisis summit would prompt Greece’s peers to block the release of loans and cause a payments freeze. But for people on the streets, the measures meant they would have even less of a chance to eke out a living.
“We studied for years and now we can’t find jobs,” said Sofia, an umemployed physicist. “The wages have fallen to very low levels, to a point where we are facing difficulties to live.”
