Hundreds of demonstrators stuffed the streets of Greece’s two largest cities on Nov. 17 to commemorate the forty ninth anniversary of the rebellion wherein two dozen college students had been killed by the navy junta at Polytechnic College in Athens. Heavy clashes went on via the evening of the memorial protests, with youth utilizing fireworks, selfmade bombs, rocks, and different projectiles towards riot police who shot a big water cannon and copious quantities of tear gasoline.
On the 2022 demo in Thessaloniki, Unicorn Riot heard from 89-year-old Theodoros Tellidis, who shared his recollections of being exiled by the U.S.-backed navy junta of 1967-1974.
After the demo, Unicorn Riot filmed the clashes which additionally featured a whole lot of scholars trapped within the college buildings and riot police throwing tear gasoline into the buildings.
[The Dictatorship of April 21 / The Regime of the Colonels / The Junta]
The Coup d’Etat of April 21, 1967
For over seven years, from April 21, 1967 to July 23, 1974, Greece was dominated by a navy dictatorship imposed by a navy coup on April 21, 1967, therefore the identify “Dictatorship of April 21.” In the course of the seven years of dictatorial rule, energy was exercised immediately or not directly by a small group of rulers principally made up of navy colonels behind the coup and largely supported by the USA authorities together with clandestine Western military items.
Whereas elections had been referred to as for Could 28, 1967, a gaggle of military officers led by Normal Stylianos Pattakos and the colonels Georgios Papadopoulos and Nikolaos Makarezos seized energy within the coup d’état on April 21.
Having secured about 100 armored automobiles within the capital space of Athens, the coup plotters moved within the early morning hours and initially seized the Ministry of Nationwide Protection. They then applied a NATO contingency plan, code-named “Plan Prometheus,” ensuing within the mobilization of all navy items within the Attica area (which accommodates Athens). The NATO plan was designed for a pressured takeover by the navy to be able to neutralize a communist rebellion within the occasion that Soviet Army forces invaded Greece.
The navy coup in ’67 was assisted by the extremely secretive CIA and NATO-trained Lochoi Oreinōn Katadromōn (LOK) Mountain Assault Brigade. LOK was a part of Operation Gladio, a community organized by the Central Intelligence Company (CIA) to arrange “keep behind” items after World Battle II. The CIA’s Gladio items had been handed over to NATO in 1959. Gladio’s existence was revealed by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in 1990; “Nato’s Secret Armies” by Daniele Ganser (PDF, 3MB) and a 1992 BBC documentary covers the notorious community intimately.
Background Historic Context
The Greek dictatorship of 1967-1974 is internationally thought to be one other episode of the Chilly Battle, within the confrontation between the East and West.
This wrestle usually resulted both within the domination of communist forces, as in Vietnam/Cambodia, or within the navy dictatorship of probably the most excessive pro-Western nationalists as in Chile and Argentina. A extra impartial third group, the Non-Aligned Motion, shaped in 1961 to collectively rebuff imperialism, U.S. and Soviet affect.
Within the case of Greece, as in Spain and Portugal, the navy undertook their actions to counter what they noticed as a communist hazard by limiting political freedoms and establishing dictatorships.
The Battle Towards Political Opponents
Instantly after the enforcement of the regime, hundreds of arrests had been made, often at evening and with out warrants. The vast majority of these arrested had been deported, others had been detained in detention facilities and a few had been taken to emergency navy tribunals.
The junta, all through its length, imposed relentless persecution towards its political opponents, particularly communists. They re-activated and prolonged your complete anti-communist legislative framework crafted years earlier than utilizing Emergency Legislation 509, which was often called Idionymon (or “particular unlawful act”) within the Nineteen Twenties and used to focus on rising communist and anarchist actions.
The principle strategies of torture utilized by the safety forces had been bodily abuse, beatings, phalanx (torture with steady foot racking), extreme isolation in squalid circumstances, electrical shocks, intimidation, humiliation, and mock executions. Medical personnel employed by the junta had been usually immediately concerned in torturing political dissidents.
Some had been deported others had been exiled. Such locations had been utilized in Greece for political repression and re-education torture camps. Many islands, particularly within the Aegean, as early as the start of the twentieth century had been locations of ektopismos (the exiling of people). Hundreds had been despatched to islands through the Metaxes dictatorship of the Thirties.
A bigger variety of political opponents (tens of hundreds) had been exiled through the civil warfare (1946-1949), when new and bigger torture camps had been created. The measure of deportation remained in power through the early years of the post-civil warfare interval. By 1967 it had change into dormant, however through the interval of the colonels’ dictatorship it was largely used once more. It was lastly abolished after the autumn of the dictatorship in 1974.
Associated (2017): Greece: Political Prisoners Pt. 2 – Concentrating on of Anarchists & Autonomous Teams
Gyaros, the ‘Island of the Satan’
Gyaros was one in every of these islands on which exile camps had been constructed. In 1947, the jail of Gyaros was additionally constructed. All of the work was executed by the exiled prisoners.
In the course of the dictatorship, hundreds of dissidents had been once more exiled to Gyaros. For the primary time, ladies, even pregnant ladies, had been amongst them.
Theodoros Tellidis, the elder Unicorn Riot spoke with on Nov. 17, 2022, was exiled by the junta to the Greek island of Gyaros.
In 1967, shortly after the institution of the dictatorship, reporters from the German journal Stern flew over Gyaros, took images and distributed them internationally. The proof from Gyaros contributed to the following exclusion of dictatorial Greece from the Council of Europe for human rights abuses.
The Fall of the Dictatorship
The Occasions on the Polytechnic College
Ιn early 1973, after over six years of dictatorial rule, battle between the state and college students in Athens started to escalate. In an try to suppress a rising pupil motion the navy junta applied Decree 1347, reducing off the deferment of navy service for college kids who had been thought of a risk to the regime. It achieved the precise reverse of its supposed impact, strengthening mass pupil mobilizations.
Pupil anger started to develop, ensuing within the first occupation of the Legislation Faculty in February 1973, adopted by a second occupation on March 14. Pupil protests towards the brand new measure continued within the following months. On Tuesday, November 14, 1973, a whole lot of scholars had gathered within the morning on the Legislation Faculty constructing and held an meeting and a march within the surrounding space. Within the afternoon and whereas the scholars had remained on the grounds of the college, the police director and the prosecutor ordered the scholars to disperse. A coordinating committee was shaped and determined at 8:30 p.m. to occupy the college.
From the early hours of the following morning, the assist of Athenian society for the scholars was evident, with meals, stationery and medication being supplied to the scholars. On Thursday, November 16, individuals remained on the facet of the scholars whereas barricades started to be arrange within the streets. The primary clashes with the police weren’t lengthy in coming and at 7 p.m. the primary fatality of the clashes was introduced.
At midnight the primary tanks appeared and by 1:30 a.m. the top of the military battalion gave the order to depart the constructing. The scholars refused and remained, chanting slogans akin to “Down with the Junta and the People.” At 2:50 a.m. the commander in chief ordered the tank to tear down the gate of the Polytechnic. The navy intervention in and across the Polytechnic that continued into the following day injured hundreds and killed no less than 24 individuals.
The Ioannidis Coup d’état
The Polytechnic rebellion occurred at a time when Colonel Papadopoulos was propagating a superficial liberalization of the regime. It triggered a sequence of occasions that put an abrupt finish to those plans. Brigadier Normal Dimitrios Ioannidis used the rebellion as a pretext to revive public order, and arranged a coup d’état which overthrew Papadopoulos every week afterward November 25, 1973. Ioannidis’ forces shocked Papadopoulos, who was positioned beneath home arrest.
On the day of the brand new coup, armored automobiles had been deployed within the heart of the cities. A curfew was introduced by radio and acknowledged the military was taking again the reins of energy to be able to ‘save the ideas of the April 21 Revolution.’
Ioannides imposed a harsher dictatorship than that of Papadopoulos. He most popular to work behind the scenes and by no means held any official place within the junta.
Associated (2018): Greek Police Assault Anarchists After Demo for Victims of 1973 Pupil Rebellion
The Coup of July 15 and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus
The following yr on July 15, 1974, on the island of Cyprus, a coup was carried out by the Nationwide Guard of Cyprus, the Greek Cyprus Pressure (ELDYK) and the far proper group EOKA B, on the behest of the Greek Junta. The goal was to overthrow the elected President of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, and impose unification with Greece. Cyprus gained independence from the UK in 1960.
The coup triggered a Turkish navy invasion 5 days after the coup. Turkey claimed that the invasion was a peacekeeping intervention legitimized by Article 4 of the Treaty of Assure (Zurich-London Agreements). Inside three days, Turkish forces occupied about 3% of the northern a part of the island in Operation Attila 1, particularly the city of Kyrenia and the encircling space.
On July 23 a ceasefire was declared and each the Athenian dictatorship and the coup authorities in Cyprus collapsed.
Two rounds of consultations adopted in Geneva between Greece and Turkey. On August 14, the Geneva talks collapsed and Turkey launched a second operation, dubbed Attila II, throughout which it occupied 36.2% of the island and displaced 120,000 Cypriots, whereas a complete of about 3,000 Greek Cypriots had been killed.
The Finish of the Junta
The interval of the navy junta ended when the Ioannidis Junta collapsed on July 24, 1974 beneath the load of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
Proper wing politician Constantinos Karamanlis arrived in Athens on July 24 on the invitation of Phaedon Gizikis, the President of the Republic of the Junta, and was sworn in as Prime Minister. Karamanlis shaped a Authorities of Nationwide Unity to revive parliamentary democracy.
On July 28, 1975, the so-called Trial of the Junta, i.e. the trial of the three coup plotters Stylianos Pattakos, Georgios Papadopoulos and Nikolaos Makarezos and their accomplices, started. They had been charged with varied crimes through the dictatorship, the violent destruction of democracy and their actions through the Polytechnic rebellion. The trial lasted a couple of month, till Aug. 29 when the coup plotters had been all convicted. The three perpetrators had been sentenced to loss of life, whereas all of the troopers had been deposed and dismissed from the military with the rank of soldier. Nonetheless, by a choice of the Prime Minister, the loss of life sentences had been commuted to life imprisonment.
To at the present time Cyprus stays divided. A northern territory is managed by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is barely acknowledged by Turkey, whereas the southern territory is managed by the Greek Cypriot authorities, the Republic of Cyprus. The United Nations controls about 4% of the island in between, and British navy bases management one other 2.8% of the island.
In 1999, then-United States President Invoice Clinton visited Greece and apologized for the position that the U.S. authorities performed in supporting the navy junta.
Yearly demonstrations are held in Greece on Nov. 17 that begin within the morning with survivors of the junta, members of the family of these killed and group members laying flowers at Polytechnic College to commemorate the victims of the Regime of the Colonels. Heavy clashes are frequent within the evening after massive demonstrations through the night. This yr in Thessaloniki, there have been no reported accidents from the clashes though demonstrators trapped in college buildings had been tear gassed and suffered from respiration issues. Company information reported 5 arrests.
Over the past couple of years, college students at Thessaloniki College had been constructing a motion to fight the brand new far-right authorities’s training invoice that enables police to be put in on faculty campuses. Universities in Greece had been an asylum with out police for the reason that junta misplaced energy however are actually again to policing faculties. In Could, riot police shot a pupil within the face with a projectile at point-blank vary throughout a protest on campus. Whereas the campus cops are the present actuality, some are hoping the following authorities will strike down the legal guidelines that introduced them again to the schools.
Niko Georgiades of Unicorn Riot contributed to this report.
For extra media from Greece, see our Greece archive web page.
Comply with us on Twitter, Fb, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Mastodon and Patreon.
Please take into account a tax-deductible donation to assist maintain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media group:
