The whole (unpublished) interview of GHM’s Vassilis Tsarnas by Queralt Castillo Cerezuela for “Eldiario”
• How the assassination of Alexis Grigoropoulos and the December uprising marked a turning point for modern Greek history and new generations? Which were the effects off the massive protestes back in 2008 and how they shape Greek future/ Greek society as we know it today.
Well’ I’m sorry if will sound like a killjoy but these are my thoughts. At least, by now, I can’t see a good impact that has persisted. It did mark a turning point but not in a good way. Same impunity for police violence as before, more cynicism and conservatism is what, practically, followed. There was an important exception in this particular case, the case of Korkoneas, the police officer who murdered Alexis. He went to prison for about 11 years, in contradiction with all other police officers who had killed people while performing their duties before or did so later. Before that, even the torturers who worked for the military Junta hadn’t been imprisoned (2 of them were assassinated by terrorist groups). All these are telling, concerning what kind of country Greece is. It is as if the message from the authorities themselves is that violence is the only road to some kind of justice.
Practically, I think the reason that nothing positive remained, despite the fact there was a temporary enlargement of the “progressive” political scene, is that this did mean more and new, mainly radical, groups but not also more people who would do practical things to improve the society or having plans towards this direction. One of the 1968-like slogans of December was “End of Discipline, Magical life”. But, as empowering as it sounds, it has proved to be more of a literal manifestation of magical thinking. Finally, 2 years later came the Marfin arson, a case in which anti-austerity demonstrators, reportedly, burned a bank while people were working inside, during a strike, resulting in 3 deaths. The lack and/or the low effectiveness of self-criticism inside the radical movement that followed this crime was, somehow, the tombstone of the “spirit of December” in the rest of society.
• However, Epaminondas Korkoneas is already free. How Greek justice operate regarding police brutality? (Also, policemen who beat Zackie Oh were acquitted last year).
The fact that he is free, eleven years later, is not necessarily bad by itself but the comparison with other sentences, sometimes imposed for much less heinous crimes, certainly is. The judges in Greece are repeatedly proving that most of them see, even deadly, police violence as something always necessary. Even the fact that most police officers expectedly don’t have a criminal record is typically used for shorter and not executable sentences to be imposed, while the opposite should be highlighted. It is the police before anyone else that should be strictly bound by the law. Otherwise, the message is the law of the jungle. Zackie Oh’s murder was captured on video and police officers were seen by everyone kicking the victim. As you know, they were just acquitted as if this never happened… And the fact that the left was in power while this case was already used to showcase not a “clean-up” in the police but another cover-up, made everyone interested believe that we are in a dead end.
• In the last three years, the Greek police has murdered three Roma boys (Sampanis, Frangoulis and Michalopoulos, recently). It seems there is a kind of racist pattern here. How the government is working -or not- to change this situation? Are there any controls? In those deaths there are a lot of contradictions between reality and policemen versions, but it seems it does not matter to the judiciary system.
Yes, exactly, it is a racist pattern. The Roma community is the one most discriminated in Greece. The bias is so widespread, that even many people who are against most other forms of racism, reproduce it without second thoughts. I recall a man commenting on social media who said that all the Roma are criminals while having a cover photo seeking justice with George Floyd… When Nikos Sampanis was shot and killed in a car chase, the Minister of the Police stated how pleased he was that the independent judiciary released the police officers without any restrictions while it was he who had visited them while they were in custody to make sure the judiciary will decide so independently! I know that in most Western democracies the rule of law is backsliding, especially when it comes to structural racism. But in Greece the starting point was impunity and it seems that we are heading to more cynicism, with politicians openly advertising their racism against the most targeted communities because they mostly care about an audience of haters.
• And how the murder of those three Roma boy have not been a turning point for Greek Society as Grigoropoulos death did?
Well, it came as a big surprise that for the first time in its history, the Greek antiracist movement has openly supported the Roma community in similar cases, with demonstrations demanding justice. Of course, this wouldn’t be comparable with the 2008 uprising since most people still identify only with what “looks like us”. A few days before Alexis Grigoropoulos 2 Pakistani migrants Montaser Mohammed Asrhaf and Mazher Iqbal Mohammed Shapf, one of them also a teenager, were killed while the riot police were pushing a queue of desperate people waiting for hours and days to renew their papers outside the Petrou Ralli police station. There were zero demos. When Shehzad Luqman was killed by Nazis and many other, even unidentified, migrants before him, almost no one reacted. It had to be a Greek victim for everyone to demonstrate, leading the Nazi criminals of “Golden Dawn” to jail. This might be starting to change, even a little, and that could be a start.
{Original article in “Eldiario” in Spanish}
The article in English in Time News
15 years without Alexis Grigoropoulos, the young man murdered by a police officer who marked a generation in Greece: “He began an era”
2023-12-09
In 2008, Alexis Grigoropoulos was only 15 years old when police officer Epaminondas Korkoneas shot him to the heart. That sparked such massive protests throughout Greece that Kostas Karamanlis, the country’s prime minister at the time, took the Army to the streets. However, he was unable to appease the anger of a citizenry that was already beginning to suffer the ravages of an economic crisis that would put the country in the spotlight throughout Europe. That murder was one of the greatest upheavals ever experienced in Greece and, since then, every December 6 the date is remembered and commemorated.
Divisions deepen Syriza crisis after Tsipras’ departure
It is 6:30 p.m. and people begin to arrive at Panepistimio, the place from which the demonstration in memory of Grigoropoulos will start. Giorgia Pidakou was 13 years old when he was killed and he remembers those days perfectly. “He had never seen so much violence. I remember that classes were cancelled, we occupied them for several weeks. It was when I began to be aware of police violence. She was a teenager, but she could perfectly understand what was happening.” Giorgia assures that for her, “that was the beginning of everything”, her political awakening. “I saw myself in Grigoropoulos and it marked me,” she says. “The protests that came after the murder, and those of the economic crisis, made it very clear to us who the Government’s objectives were: a certain social sector with a certain ideology.”
Manolis is 22 years old and has little memory of those days, since he was seven years old, but also because he grew up on Naxos, one of the Greek islands. There the protests were not as intense as in the big cities and the murder of Grigoropoulos did not mark his life. However, as he grew older, he learned the meaning of it all. It is the first time that he has attended the December 6 demonstration.
The Grigoropoulos case had a full impact on Greek society: during the following days, the streets of the country’s main cities witnessed the largest and most massive citizen uprising since the establishment of democracy in 1974. “At that time we were not aware We didn’t analyze what all that meant. It was only later that we realized that this murder was the starting signal for all the protests that would come later. I was part of all that. Even non-politicized people and sectors of society that usually did not attend demonstrations took to the streets,” says Nikos, 47, also present at the demonstration.
2008, beginning of an era that would end in 2015
A lot has happened since 2008 and now, Greek society, after the crisis and everything it has meant for the Greek country, is different. That dynamited the streets, but over time, the impulse to want to change things faded. Vassilis Tsarnas, activist and member of the Greek Helsinki Monitor, an organization that monitors the violation of human rights in Greece, believes that, although the Grigoropoulos case was a wake-up call for the Greek Government of the time, “the impact has not persisted.” . He assures that “it marked a turning point, but not in a good way, since police violence continues to go unpunished and now there is more cynicism and more conservatism.” Tsarnas recognizes that there was a temporary expansion of the “progressive” political scene that resulted in the appearance of new radical groups and the involvement of more people in politics, “but it was not as empowering as it seems,” since at some moments “ self-criticism was lacking.”
Regarding the disappearance of the ideas that were born from that murder, Spiros Dapergolas, from the Rouvikonas anarchist movement, also agrees: “Grigoropoulos’ death came like a storm, we did not expect it. A few years earlier, the police had killed another boy, and there were some protests, but nothing comparable to what happened in 2008. We still don’t know what made so many people take to the streets. However, the 2008 era, which began with those revolts, ended in 2015.”
Dapergolas attributes this to different factors: “What began in 2008 came from the anarchist movement and the radical left, but when the revolts ended, there was no political power to reap what had been sown. Syriza benefited from that rebellion and this continued during the memorandum years, but the radical parties were unable to continue the movement. On the other hand, he considers that “exhaustive work has also been done by the right and conservative powers to destroy the memory of this uprising, a fact that has caused an important part of Greek society to consider the 2008 uprisings as something chaotic and bad.”
Other cases of recent police violence
The murder of young Alexis Grigoropoulos marked a before and after in Greece, but it was not the only case of police violence in the country’s recent history. Without going any further, on November 11, the Greek police also shot and killed Christos Michalopoulos, a 17-year-old Gypsy boy. It happened in Thebes, in the center of the country. The young man died after being shot by police following a chase. The case is reminiscent of that of Kostas Frangoulis, another 16-year-old Gypsy teenager shot by the police in Thessaloniki, a year ago, on December 5, 2022. Frangoulis had left a gas station without paying 20 euros for fuel. The boy would end up dying eight days later in the hospital.
Previously, on the night of October 22, 2021, Greek police killed Nikos Sampanis, also an 18-year-old Gypsy. It happened in Perama, on the outskirts of Athens, during a car chase. The police officers fired up to 36 times at the vehicle in which Sampanis was riding. The other occupants were seriously injured. In the case of Sampanis, the police stated in a statement that seven officers had been injured, a fact that was not true, and the vehicle in which the young gypsies were traveling was dismantled without the knowledge of the Prosecutor’s Office.
At street level, Nikos believes that the Greek police are “(…) fascist, racist and Nazi.” “Nazi because they have been shown the relationships he had with Golden Dawn. The police have not represented us for years, we have lost respect for them,” he explains. He is also critical of Greek society: “What we should ask ourselves is why we do not mobilize with the murdered gypsy boys as we did and do every year with Grigoropoulos.”
After the death of Kostas Frangoulis, in December 2022, an important part of Greek society did take to the streets. “It was a great surprise to see how, for the first time in history, the Greek anti-racist movement openly supported the Roma community and demanded justice. However, it was not comparable to the 2008 uprising, as most people still identify only with those ‘who look like us’. A few days before the murder of Grigoropoulos, two Pakistani immigrants, Montaser Mohammed Asrhaf and Mazher Iqbal Mohammed Shapf, one of them also a teenager, were murdered while riot police pushed away a group of people who had been queuing for days to renew their documentation in front of to a police station. There were no demonstrations,” says Vassilis Tsarnas.
Another murder related to police violence that shocked the country occurred on September 21, 2018. Zak Kostopoulos, also known as Zackie Oh, LGTBQ activist, died after a beating at the hands of two men in a jewelry store. When the police officers arrived, they continued kicking him to death. The forensic autopsy never left any room for doubt: the young man died as a result of the beating he received.
Impunity
Many Greek youth and adults perceive the police as violent and close to far-right movements. Added to this is the feeling of impunity. Epaminondas Korkoneas, the police officer who shot Grigoropoulos, was sentenced to life in prison in 2010 but in 2019 his sentence was reviewed and he is now free. The seven police officers involved in the death of Nikos Sampanis were also released, since the main evidence: the vehicle that was shot at was destroyed. The police officer who shot Kostas Frangoulis in December 2022 in Thessaloniki was immediately released, pending trial, with the only condition of not leaving the country. Regarding this murder, last October, the Prosecutor’s Office assured that the police officer should be tried for intentional homicide and for illicit use of his weapon, but there is still no judicial resolution. In the case of the recently deceased Christos Michalopoulos, the agent who shot him has also been released after an initial statement and has been temporarily suspended. The four police officers who were initially charged with fatal injuries to Zack Kostopoulos were acquitted of all charges in 2022.
The demonstration in memory of Grigoropoulos ends like every year: with police charges and violence in the heart of Exarchia, in the surrounding streets where the young man was murdered 15 years ago. Many of those who are now demonstrating and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police were teenagers when the country burned with protests. These are the young people who grew up witnessing police violence that is still very present in the Greek country and that could cause another uprising similar to that of 2008, according to Dapergolas.
“We are in a completely different moment than in 2008: people are poorer, the extreme right is stronger than 15 years ago, the radical left and anarchism are more weakened and now we have something that we did not have in 2008, the propaganda machine. from the right and the extreme right. I wouldn’t like to be cynical, but the way the Greek police have been acting for the last four years, there could be another Grigoropoulos. It’s a matter of time. I don’t know if the result will be the same, rebellion, but given the path the increasingly repressive police are taking, it is likely to happen. On top of that, sooner or later, society will take to the streets again. And not just because of police brutality. In Athens we have a huge problem with housing and we have to work twice as hard as we did three years ago to be able to live. “We are at a very critical moment,” concludes the activist.
Greek Helsinki Monitor - Ελληνικο Παρατηρητηριο των Συμφωνιων του Ελσινκι 