Athens Riots February 12th

The video was shot at about 21:00 (local time) outside the main cathedral of Athens.

At that particular time thousands of people, after the initial brutal and unprovoked attacks by the riot police in the Constitution Sq. (Syntagma Sq.) a little bit afte 18:00, they simply refused to evacuate the city centre by force and flooded all the main and smaller streets around the Square (streets like of Ermou, K. Serbia, Mitropoleos and the nearby squares of Monastiraki and Mitropoli).

Each time this "river" of people attempted to approach the Syntagma Sq. in front of the parliament they suffered successive attacks by the riot police with asphyxiating gas and flash-noise grenades.

It was amazing that the people stood their ground and refused to leave, while for at least 2 hours they were regrouping and attempting to approach the parliament again and again and again.

At the same time people with smartphones or radios were informing the crowd that the greek mass media were falsely reporting that the demonstrators were just a handfull and even the last few were leaving the area. Some people laughed, some others got frustrated and angry by that fact, while realizing that the Police purpose was not to let people gather outside te parliament, because that was where all the TVcameras were positioned. It was to deter others to come and join the protesters.

Suddenly and while nothing was happening at the spot, as you may see in the video, from the rear, we heard sirens and people initially stood aside thinking that it was an ambulance that was trying to make its way. The rest is clearly depicted in the video.


via
http://amata.anaroque.com/