Greek pensioner kills himself before parliament

[Rainsborough]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/greek-pensioner-kills-himself-parliament-134353929.html


ATHENS (Reuters) - A cash-strapped Greek pensioner shot and killed himself outside parliament in Athens on Wednesday saying he refused to scrounge for food in the rubbish, touching a nerve among ordinary Greeks feeling the brunt of the country's economic crisis.
The public suicide by the 77-year-old retired pharmacist quickly triggered an outpouring of sympathy in a country where one in five is jobless and a sense of national humiliation has accompanied successive rounds of salary and pension cuts.
Just hours after the death, an impromptu shrine with candles, flowers and hand-written notes protesting the crisis sprung up in the central Syntagma square where the suicide occurred. Dozens of bystanders gathered to pay their respects.
One note nailed to a tree said "Enough is enough", while another asked "Who will be the next victim?".


Well, who and how many?

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

The communists should have just taken over the nation right after WWII. If ELAS and the proletariat did take over, none of this would have happened. So looking back, all this is really Britain's and the US' fault for killing the proletariat movement.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

But looking to the future, the only solution is socialist revolution.

[Sasha]

This is (unsourced for now) his farwell letter:

https://www.indymedia.nl/indyfiles/imagecache/cropstrip/raw/560333_301594376580890_149217018485294_746057_1491 739246_n.jpg


The Tsolakoglou-government (cc. Tsolakoglou was the Greek Quisling during the Nazi occupation in the 1940’s. The man refers here to the Papademos-government) deprived me from any chance of survival. My survival was supported on a decent pension for which I contributed (without any support from the state) for 35 years.
As I am in an age that does not allow for individual active resistance (without excluding the fact that if one Greek was found to take the Kalashnikov, the second would be me), I do not find any other solution that to give a decent end to my life before starting to search in the garbage to find food.
I believe that, some day, the young people without future will take the arms and will hang upside down the national trators in the Syntagma Square as the Italians did in 1945 to Mussolini (Piatsa Loreto in Milan).


if this really his letter it would not surprise me if this will be the sprak for a serious escalation of both the popular street struggle and the urban guerilla violence.

[Sasha]

From occupiedlondon:


Suicide rates have doubled in Greece since the government signed the loan agreement with IMF/EU/ECB. This morning (Apr 4), a 77-year old retired pharmacist shot himself dead at Syntagma, Athens’ central Square (his suicide note is translated above).
Yesterday evening, a 38-year old father of two and long-term unemployed, jumped off the roof of his housing block in the town of Ierapetra, Crete.
There are calls circulating for a rally tonight on Syntagma Square at 18:00. One of the calls is accompanied by this flyer.

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/530961_3244665549513_1053100507_5039293_608139260_ n.jpg

‘Scumbags, one suicide per day because of you, but the day is coming when the desperate ones will choose to take the law into their own hands: you shall pay’

[The Douche]

I thought firearms were really restricted in Greece, is that not true? If it is, where did the dude get the gun?

[Sasha]

Hunting rifles are legal I believe, older people often still have antique weapons from the civilwar, and with the balkan and turkey next door with their well established smuggling routes there is a thriving black market.

[The Douche]

I was just wondering cause I remember one of the urban guerilla groups has been using the same .45 pistol since like, the 70s or something.

[IrishWorker]

This could be the catalyst.

[Sasha]

Not "the", but certainly "a"... one of many already been, and sadly many more to come...

[Ravachol]

Hunting rifles are legal I believe, older people often still have antique weapons from the civilwar, and with the balkan and turkey next door with their well established smuggling routes there is a thriving black market.

That and in some places, like Crete, there is a traditional (semi-legal) gun culture with people owning automatic firearms as well.

http://www.gun-politics.org/showthread.php?t=32

vFUSZRwCfd0

I always find people yelling in foreign languages over folk guitar music whilst shooting guns in the air at some family barbeque to have a great appeal :D

[Krano]

I believe that, some day, the young people without future will take the arms and will hang upside down the national trators in the Syntagma Square as the Italians did in 1945 to Mussolini (Piatsa Loreto in Milan). First i soo this quote then i clicked the link and soo that one of the top rated comments was blaming multiculturalism for this mans situation. People don't learn from history do they?

[Veovis]

The communists should have just taken over the nation right after WWII. If ELAS and the proletariat did take over, none of this would have happened. So looking back, all this is really Britain's and the US' fault for killing the proletariat movement.

If this had happened, Greece would have formed part of the Soviet Bloc, and simply would have gone back to market capitalism in 1989 with the rest of Eastern Europe. It wouldn't have changed anything in the long run.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I thought firearms were really restricted in Greece, is that not true? If it is, where did the dude get the gun?

LOL, my grandparents lived on Crete for years and they said every farmer had one. But i believe they are expensive, but I have the opinion that many Greeks have arms.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I was just wondering cause I remember one of the urban guerilla groups has been using the same .45 pistol since like, the 70s or something.

I don't know, Revolutionary Struggle got ahold of an RPG, AK47's and MP5's. A lot of it comes from the Balkans, I think.

[Left Leanings]

This is a very public example of the harsh reality and distress caused by the bosses system. People so desparate, they feel they have no choice but to take their own lives.

I remember the advent of the Thatcher Governments in 1979. A man was so distressed at being unemployed, he set himself and his car alight, and drove it within 120 metres of Tory Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. It was widely reported on. He too left a suicide note. Here is a link to the story:

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/17/world/downing-st-car-fire-death-called-suicide.html

But for all these public, almost sacrificial suicides, it must be remembered they are but the tip of the iceberg. So many others quietly take their own lives everyday, right round the world, due to the iniquities of capital.

[ВАЛТЕР]

This man is a martyr in my eyes. I think his action will be viewed as a heroic one in the future.

as for weapons. Greece is in the Balkans, guns are very common here. With the former Yugoslavia being just north of them, I'm sure it is no problem for them to arm themselves if they want to.

[Sasha]

I was just wondering cause I remember one of the urban guerilla groups has been using the same .45 pistol since like, the 70s or something.


think some groups do that intentionally, as a signature. maybe also so you dont have to do the risky "claim" thing that makes it easier to trace you. on the other hand, if they ever catch you with that gun you are truly fucked. but again that might be intentional, the person arrested with it will go down for all the hits as they will assume that person was the perp in all actions leaving others to remain active...
dont know

[seventeethdecember2016]

I'm sure this guy will turn in the Greek version of Mohamed Bouazizi.

[Sasha]

Calls for rally at Syntagma Square again tonight at 18:00 (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2012/04/05/calls-for-rally-at-syntagma-square-again-tonight-at-1800/)

Thursday, April 5, 2012
New calls for rally again tonight on Syntagma Square at 18:00. Police already closed Syntagma Metro station and metal barricades are erected for security purposes in front of the parliament.

gvPGI83PW10

This is a video from yesterday’s rally, most of it shows clashes after the initial attack by the police against the protesters. People gathered there to protest after the retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas committed suicide on Syntagma Square.
Mr Christoulas ended his suicide note: “One day, I believe, the youth with no future will take up arms and hang the national traitors at syntagma square, just like the Italians did with Mussolini in 1945 (at Milan’s Piazzale Loreto)”. At least two government ministers (P. Beglitis and P. Koukoulopoulos) tried to underestimate live on TV Mr Christoulias death, the first suggested that perhaps the pensioner or his children have been benefited unfairly by public money in the past (!) and another one said that no retired pharmacists would have to search in the garbage for their food, being explicitly dismissive about a phrase from D. Christoulas note.

While corporate media play their role in depoliticizing Dimitris Christoulas action.
The Anarcho-Syndicalist Union in the Netherlands published the article: (http://anarcho-syndicalisme.nl/wp/?p=1568)
‘Shameless: how the media de-politicize the suicide on Syntagma (http://anarcho-syndicalisme.nl/wp/?p=1568).

The English translation is this:

Shameless: how the media de-politicize the suicide on Syntagma
By: Jelle Bruinsma

Yesterday morning the 77-year old Dimitris Christoulas committed suicide on Syntagma square in Athens, in front of the parliament. In his suicide note he is perfectly clear about the reasons for his act of despair. The government, he wrote, has “literally nullified my ability to survive on a decent pension, for which I had already paid (without government aid) for 35 years.” The website of the prominent Dutch newspaper NRC, however, chose (http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2012/04/04/onrust-in-athene-na-publieke-zelfmoord-wanhopige-griek/) to portray the reasons for his suicide rather differently than he himself did. In a way that was a bit more comfortable for an audience that has been bombarded with the necessity and inevitability of ‘austerity measures’ in Greece.
According to Hans Klis, author of the article on the NRC site, “the 77-year old man wrote that [I]the financial problems in the country were the motive for this act.” That is a lie, or at the very least a serious distortion of the last words of Christoulas. The text of his suicide note can be easily found online, and we may assume that a journalist from a well-respected newspaper has read the note before he wrote about the events. So why this choice?
Christoulas describes (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2012/04/05/2012/04/04/little-stories-from-imf-run-greece-pensioner-commits-suicide-on-syntagma-square-the-2nd-person-committing-suicide-within-14-hours/) a clear choice of policy by the government, which chose to radically cut pensions. In that same sentence he calls the government the “Tsolakoglou occupation government.” Tsolakoglou was the first prime minister of the collaborating government during the Nazi-occupation. For anyone who knows the current mood in Greece, that is a clear reference to the current government that collaborates with the “Troika” (the IMF, the EU and the ECB) in the interest of the international financial powers, and follows its commands.
He continues his letter by implying that the “decent individual response” would be the taking up of arms against the government! Since he is at an age at which he does not feel capable to be the first to take up arms he saw “no solution other than a dignified end, before resorting to going through garbage in order to cover my nutritional needs.”
Not a word about this in the reputable Dutch newspaper. According to Hans Klis the reasons for his suicide were the apparently objective, technocratic and abstract ‘financial problems in the country.’ This implies what he later makes more explicit (“the severe austerity measures that are necessary to get the country back on track economically”): the austerity measures – the demolition of social benefits, the extreme cuts in wages and pensions, and much more – are the inevitable consequences of “the financial problems in the country”, the only possible option to solve the financial problems. Other options are not even thinkable in the intellectual world of journalists such as this one. Further taxing the rich, getting out of the Eurozone or giving the finger to the banks that demand money from Greece are unmentionable options, and shall remain covered in silence.
At this point I should discuss the other options, refer to the many economists who say that the austerity measures that are being forced on Greece by the Troika will only worsen the crisis, and mention who caused the crisis and who is profiting from the ‘austerity measures.’ The political context, in other words, which was kept out of the article mentioned above (and many others internationally). By leaving that out they are justifying (while trampling over a dead man’s grave!) the destruction of Greek society, are playing the intellectual watchdog of the financial elite, and refuse to make clear how this act of despair (and many other comparable acts of despair; see for instance here (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2012/04/05/2012/03/21/little-stories-from-imf-run-greece-81-year-old-woman-sets-herself-alight-man-drowns-in-the-port-of-piraeus-after-driving-his-car-into-the-sea-70-year-old-man-storms-tax-office-with-a-shotgun/), here (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2012/04/05/2012/01/10/little-stories-from-imf-run-greece-78-year-old-man-sets-himself-alight-and-dies-from-his-wounds-in-the-island-of-lefkada/) and here (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2012/04/05/2012/03/01/little-stories-from-imf-run-greece-an-armed-man-holds-hostages-in-the-factory-where-he-used-to-work-until-he-was-made-redundant-a-few-months-ago/)) is a direct consequence of political decisions.
But in all honesty: I can’t. I am boiling with rage about the lack of respect by the journalistic elites for the last breath of a man driven to despair. At the moment I do not care whether they do it on purpose or because they are caught in their own elitist world. But I realize that this attitude is representative for the elite. Defending their own interests in an arrogant manner over the backs of the population (with regard to the intellectual class, in contrast to the economic ruling class, we can discuss whether these are their real or perceived interests, but that is not relevant here).
Below the surface, though, anger is growing. From Athens to New York, from Barcelona to Santiago, and yes, also in the Netherlands, people are fed up. Often out of sight from or ignored by the writing elites, germs of resistance are popping up everywhere. Neighborhood assemblies, small demonstrations, mass demonstrations, meetings, blockades and mass strikes. The elite will, in an attempt to dismantle the picks with which we slowly but surely pick away at their sources of power, do everything to ridicule or criminalize every form of resistance. Know that we are building for a radically different future. Even if it will take our entire lives, we will continue to pound on the rocks underneath your statues until you are at the same level as the rest of us.
That you are lying about the last words of a victim of the policies that you make and implement (the economic and political ruling class) or defend (the intellectuals) feeds our anger. It is an anger that knows no national borders. Sitting behind my laptop in Amsterdam I feel in my heart the pain of the people in Greece who are driven to such acts. But I also realize that Greece is just the most radical example, and that around me I see more and more despair in people’s lives, which are filled with increasing insecurity and uncertainty, living in this ‘modern flexibilized economy.’ In the end, the elite that we are facing as a people is one and the same, and is ingrained in the structures of a capitalist society.
You might think that we are an individualized generation (and population), but more and more people are realizing the importance of collective resistance. From the striking cleaners in the Netherlands to the revolutionaries in Egypt, from the Indignados in Spain to Occupy WallStreet. We as a people will have to continue building forms of collective resistance, so that other people driven to despair do not await the same tragic faith of mr. Christoulas, but can feel hope again that we together can overthrow these cruel elites in the near future.
The last words, which have a broader applicability, are for Dimitris Christoulas. “One day, I believe, the youth with no future will take up arms and hang the national traitors at syntagma square, just like the Italians did with Mussolini in 1945 (at Milan’s Piazzale Loreto).”

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

This could be the catalyst.

Interesting argument to the contrary. Time will tell who is right, but Greece is certainly unstable right now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/05/dimitris-christoulas-legacy-suicide-greece


Dimitris Christoulas and the legacy of his suicide for Greece

It's hard to see a new movement emerging out of this awful death, but it serves to bring home the human cost of austerity




http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/11/8/1320771034540/Maria_Marigonis.jpg (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/maria-margaronis) Maria Margaronis (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/maria-margaronis)
guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/), Thursday 5 April 2012 07.31 EDT

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/4/5/1333616946829/Syntagma-square-004.jpg People gather at the site where Dimitris Christoulas fatally shot himself in Syntagma square Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

Early in February I tried to take the Athens metro and found it closed because of a suicide on the line. The cabbie who picked me up thought the deceased was an idiot: "What was the point of killing himself like that? He should have blown himself up in parliament and taken four or five of those crooks down with him."
The 77-year-old retired pharmacist who shot himself in Athens on Wednesday didn't do it in parliament but in Syntagma Square; still, his death (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/04/greek-man-shoots-himself-debts) has sparked a small political explosion. He's neither the first nor (almost certainly) the last in Greece to take his life because the crisis has destroyed his livelihood and his dignity. Greece used to have the lowest suicide rate in Europe; the official number has doubled since the crisis began. This death, though, was public: it has made headlines, called protesters out on to the streets and forced politicians to shame themselves by saying something in response.
Dimitris Christoulas has already vanished under a swarm of platitudes and slogans, another martyr in a country that already has too many. But he must have intended that. The suicide note (http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/54580) reportedly found on him ends with a call to arms. It refers to the government as "the occupation government of Tsolakoglou" (Georgios Tsolakoglou was the Quisling prime minister under the axis in 1941) and predicts that the futureless young will one day hang the traitors upside down in Syntagma, as the Italians hanged the dictator Mussolini. Suicides are always violent, it's difficult to imagine an angrier one than this. It's left an unanswerable accusation in the air, taking away any possibility of redress. Whatever happens next, Christoulas will still be dead, a symbol of all those who have lost their lives to the crisis.
The politicians, eyes on forthcoming elections, have struggled to find usable capital in the moment. Those in power have tried to drain it of political meaning, mumbling about solidarity in these difficult times, criticising the bad taste of those who would exploit a tragic death. Those seeking power have, of course, tried to exploit it while affecting not to. George Karatzaferis of the far-right Laos party (in the coalition government until its popularity plummeted) said that the bullet in Syntagma should strike the conscience of the whole political class. The Communist party blamed the capitalist system and its lackeys. The parties of the non-communist left, whose stars have risen as the crisis deepens, spoke of the misery to which the Greeks have been reduced by the politics of austerity. Christoulas will be, above all, their martyr, and the martyr of all those opposed to the savage cuts that have fallen on the most vulnerable.
But martyrs are a mixed blessing at best. They block conversation rather than opening it – because of that, they can end up being used against those who embrace them. Will this be the start of a bigger uprising, the "Greek spring" some observers have been waiting for? Some are saying Europe now has its Mohammed Bouazizi (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/20/tunisian-fruit-seller-mohammed-bouazizi), the man whose suicide sparked the uprising in Tunisia. The hashtag #DimitrisChristoulas (https://twitter.com/#%21/search?q=%23DimitrisChristoulas) is trending on Twitter in Spain. Meanwhile, in Syntagma, the usual depressing scenes are unfolding as I write: a peaceful demonstration disrupted by battles between stone-throwing youths and helmeted police; industrial quantities of teargas. A woman journalist appears to be savagely beaten (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BRCsP8Tffw&feature=youtu.be) by riot police.
Only fools make predictions, but I don't see a new movement emerging out of this. The Greek government has made it clear that large-scale protests won't be tolerated (one Greek tweet on Wednesday read: "Don't kill yourself in Syntagma. You'll scare away the tourists."). Many Athenians were chilled by the violence of 12 February (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/12/greece-eurozone-bailout-deal), when the centre went up in flames. The enthusiasm of the summer of 2011, when Syntagma Square looked like the centre of a direct democracy movement, fragmented long ago.
And there's a deeper problem: a lack of political vision and political agency. Though Greeks almost unanimously hate the situation they're in, there's sharp disagreement about what has brought them to it. Some people criticise domestic corruption and stalled reform while minimising the part played by the international crisis; others blame the foreigners while playing down Greece's own role. Like the optical illusion of the Rubin vase and faces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase), it's very difficult to see the whole picture at once. Meanwhile, Greek sovereignty has been dramatically curtailed by successive loan agreements with the EU and International Monetary Fund. A real Greek spring would have to be both European and homegrown: an international movement to take democracy back from the banks, working hand in hand with a local one for transparency and fairness.
That's a lot to ask of one desperate old man. If anything good comes of Christoulas's awful death, it will be something quieter that takes place in hearts and minds, not on the streets of Athens: a recognition of the real, human cost of austerity, an absolute determination not to let this happen again.

[Sasha]

Note from the daughter of Dimitris Christoulas

My father’s handwritten note left no room for misinterpretation. He has been a leftist activist throughout his life, a selfless visionary.
This specific act of his ending is a conscious political act, entirely consistent with his beliefs and actions during his lifetime. In our country, Greece, they are killing the self-evident.
For some, for “the stubborn children of the chimera”, in such a situation, suicide seems to be the obvious act, not as a getaway, but as an awakening scream.
For this reason, it (the suicide) takes on another meaning, the meaning of that song we first sang together, at the concert of our beloved Mikis (Theodorakis), in 1975, the song we always sang at our own celebrations and for our own dead… Go to sleep father and I am heading to my brothers and sisters with your voice.
This is the only thing you were dreaming for the youth and I think you’ve accomplished it. At the site where you left, there is a note of a youth: “The name of the dead today is Democracy… But it’s 11 million of us that are still alive and our name is Resistance”.

[Os Cangaceiros]

The Greek government has made it clear that large-scale protests won't be tolerated

:confused: Don't large scale protests happen fairly regularly there?

[marl]

Greek demos can easily pull off somewhere in the thousands, but big, well organized demos, pull of hundreds of thousands.

Anyway, this is a fucking tragedy. Chalk one up for the capitalists, folks!

[Os Cangaceiros]

Greek demos can easily pull off somewhere in the thousands, but big, well organized demos, pull of hundreds of thousands.

Like the February 12th debacle, which was less than two months ago? That easily pulled hundreds of thousands.

I just don't get how the Greek government "wouldn't tolerate" large protests. What are they going to do? Mow protesters down in the streets with machine guns? Send out the attack helicopters and tanks? In a country like Syria or Bahrain you can do those sorts of things, but governments like Greece are constrained by ideology/the ostensible responsibilities of a democratic state and cannot. Unless they want to go back to the "good ol' days", they're just going to have to deal with protests. I'm sure that the large left-wing groups will marshal them into "acceptable" forms of struggle, anyway, so they have little to worry about.

[Sasha]

People attack policeman in Syntagma Athens, remove his clothes and place them at the point of the death of Dimitris Christoulas (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2012/04/07/people-attack-policeman-in-syntagma-athens-remove-his-clothes-and-place-them-at-the-point-of-the-death-of-dimitris-christoulas/)

Saturday, April 7, 2012
On the day of the funeral of Dimitris Christoulas (http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2012/04/04/little-stories-from-imf-run-greece-pensioner-commits-suicide-on-syntagma-square-the-2nd-person-committing-suicide-within-14-hours/), the 77-year old pensioner who killed himself on Syntagma square, people attacked a special forces policeman nearby; they removed his clothes (but not his weapon) and the hanged them by the tree next to which Christoulas committed suicide on Wednesday.
http://athens.indymedia.org/local/webcast/uploads/__________tkrgmg.jpg

[Sasha]

Words acquire meaning through the tangible and the concrete but at the same time, they can give new meaning and change what we thought to be concrete in return.
For many of us, Syntagma (‘Constitution’) Square is no longer. As anarchists, anti-authoritarians, members of the broader antagonist movement, we could have never found any meaning in the naming of a square after a piece of legislation — how can one name an open, lively space of interaction and intermingling after words in a piece of paper, an abstraction meant to divide and to rule?
The death of Dimitris Christoulas was not just another near-unnoticeable rise in the gruesome statistics of death. With every suicide, every police murder, every horrible death that we have reported in ‘Little Stories from IMF-run Greece’, we made a conscious effort to provide as much information as possible for the deceased. To give them a name, a face and a story; to show that beneath the uniformity of technocratic world of statistics there are once tangible, real lives transformed, crushed, ended.
Dimitris’ death was yet another financial murder. As the old world sets, it unleashes a carnage against those wishing to see its demise and, by now, everyone who perhaps thought they would live through it. Who knows? Perhaps in the world shyly rising, the land plot opposite what will have once been the parliament of the previous regime (at that time known as Syntagma Square) will be named after Dimitris. Piazza Dimitri Christoula. A piazza, not a ‘square’, because public spaces must be open and fluid to be truly public. And it will be named after him, the first entirely public martyr of our struggle, adding to more than 2,000 people that have already committed suicide in this time, the time of the vultures. Undeclared murders, shoved into the oblivion of the private, casualties of the undeclared war authority has waged against the people.
We don’t need to wait for a new world to start declaring, to start using words to change around the concrete. In the time of the vultures, ‘suicides’ are financial murders. Those who die are martyrs of the war unleashed by power against the people. And for us, the spaces of our meeting, our struggle and the death of our own are already ours. Syntagma is dead — long live Piazza Dimitri Christoula.

- occupiedlondon

[marl]

I like it. Reminds me of 'Oscar Grant Plaza'.