Austerity vote gets through but ordinary citizens despair
ATHENIANS spent yesterday inspecting the damage to their city after yet another night of social unrest left its mark on Greece’s capital.
City authorities said 150 shops were looted and 93 buildings were wrecked or seriously damaged.
Youth unemployment is running at 50 per cent and groups from the provinces have flocked to the capital to fight police. Rioting also spread to the second city of Thessaloniki, towns across the country and the islands of Crete and Corfu.
“I wouldn’t mind paying for the next two years if I knew austerity would take us somewhere but this crisis seems endless.” said Leto Papadopoulou, a civil servant.
The famous Attikon cinema, housed in a neo-classical building dating from 1870, was burnt to a shell while graffiti artists repainted the sign on the outside of the Bank of Greece to read “Bank of Berlin”.
“People sent a message yesterday: Enough is enough! They can’t take it any more,” said Ilias Iliopoulos, general secretary of public sector union ADEDY.
“The social explosion will come one way or another, there is nothing they can do about it any more.”