GREECE: Students Rise Against Papadopoulos

• Share

For the first time since the April 21, 1967 military coup that brought George Papadopoulos and his army colleagues to power, tanks and armored vehicles rumbled through the streets of Athens last week. They were there to battle rioting students who, in an abortive one-day rebellion, had precipitated the most serious civil disturbance in Greece in years.

Shouting "Bread, education, freedom!" thousands of students, many of them carrying clubs, surged through downtown Athens, where they started fires and tied up traffic. Some used appropriated buses as barricades, from which they peppered police with fruit and stones. In Constitution Square, students were met by a massive force of truncheon-swinging riot police and clouds of tear gas. In scenes that to some observers seemed like a re-enactment of the Costa-Gavras film Z, some police kicked and bludgeoned the demonstrators, while others fired machine guns into the air to scatter the student mobs.

The troubles began two days earlier, when Athens students demonstrated against the convictions of five per sons who had attended a memorial service for the late Premier George Papandreou, who had headed a center-left government. Following that incident, several thousand students occupied the prestigious Polytechnic University. Barricaded inside, they chanted "Down with the junta," "Americans out," and "Death to Papadopoulos." They set up a radio transmitter. Despite government jamming efforts, they broadcast pleas to Athenians to launch a general strike and oust the government. One neophyte announcer, his voice shaking with emotion, shouted: "Tonight is our night! Don't be afraid of police! The junta collapses tonight!"

Ironic Speech. It did not quite turn out that way. At week's end the junta was still in power. Police, backed by army troops and tanks, smashed into the Polytechnic University and removed its occupants. Immediately after the rioting, downtown Athens looked like a battlefield. Debris was everywhere. Barricades of wood and garbage burned. Clouds of tear gas hung over the area.

In all, the revolt left hundreds of students injured and at least five dead. Underscoring the seriousness of Greece's violent weekend, the government imposed martial law across the entire country. Papadopoulos, in an unintentionally ironic speech, called the revolt "a conspiracy against democracy," even as troops and tanks patrolled the capital's streets and airplane traffic was banned from Athens airport.

Traditionally, Greek university students have been almost Gandhi-like in their nonviolent attitudes. Their infrequent protests were usually over relatively minor matters of university policy and were voiced in polite grumbles. Last winter, however, the students briefly occupied university buildings in Athens. But that minirevolt—which one government spokesman at the time quipped was "like a mosquito sitting on the horn of a bull"—quickly fizzled.