I've been living in Thessaloniki Greece since the summer of 2009. In the span of 2.5 years I have seen some pretty intense fights between cops and protesters here, some I was fortunate enough to be able to catch on film. The most recent was November 17th when riot police here were bombarded with molotovs from inside the University. The police later went inside the University, something which hasn't occurred since the fall of the military Junta in 1974. A few weeks before that was the 3rd anniversary of the murder by police of teenager Alexis Grigoropoulos, an event which had inspired me to move to Greece. The intensity was high in the morning as I reached the main (Aristotelous) square and was greeted by a burning garbage bin, matters escalated as we reached a police station a few blocks away. Later in the day, at the main protest (earlier was students) the police felt they were given the right to attack peaceful demonstrators because of the actions of a few earlier in the day.
Police in Greece are the most violent I have ever encountered. I've been to protests in Spain, France and my hometown of NYC, nothing compares to the brutality of MAT (Greek riot squad). I have been robbed and hit countless times by them ALL for just filming. A couple of incidents occurred at a National strike. Yes, they HATE to be filmed. Once in Athens I was stopped just for passing them twice while going and returning to the store. Another time in Thessaloniki, I was stopped (again for no reason) and when I took out my camera I was lied to by the police and told it was illegal, as they tried intimidating me to stop filming. This is worth viewing just to hear Greek police speaking English and referencing Al Capone.
The reason I started this blog was to have a place to vent over life in Greece, the crisis, the police state and how much it sucks to get tear gassed. In the future I will be looking to add a livestream from protests. WELCOME! If you have any suggestions or questions please add in the comments below.
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