Today my thoughts are with #AlexisGrigoropoulos and his mother and father and all mothers & fathers who have lost a child to police violence 1/ https://twitter.com/maria_louka/status/1335167460299972608?s=21
#AlexisGrigoropoulos was a 15-yr-old who on the night of Dec 6, 2008 was hanging out w his friends (as 15-yr-olds do) in the central Athens neighbourhood of #Exarcheia when he was murdered by a police officer becoming yet another victim of the Greek police brutality 2/
Story here, the photographer is of his friend Nikos Romanos https://thepressproject.gr/the-murder-of-alexandros-grigoropoulos/
#Exarcheia is variously described in the Greek & int’l press as the anarchist neighbourhood of Athens, a self-governing community, an area of urban resistance, bohemian, artistic etc... 3/
...it is also a neighbourhood in which families live & children play, where they shop (Sat street market on Kallidromiou St
), and a place where young & old go to socialise, this more mundane aspect of Exarcheia rarely makes the headlines, I lived there until the age of 9
4/


...and since 2005 refugee crisis it was home to a no. of self-org communities providing vital support to newly arrived refugees w change of gov last summer, these squats were raided by police, refugees, incl children attending local schools, were deracinated & sent to camps 5/
See for example https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-attack-on-exarchia-an-anarchist-refuge-in-athens
#Exarcheia is many things, it is both/and, and it will not be easily tamed, despite eg repeated threats of gentrification. It has a defiant character and as such, there is always police presence around the periphery of the neighbourhood especially when ‘events’ are anticipated 6/
On the night of Dec 6 2008 reports suggest that there was an exchange of words between Alexis, his friends and the two police officers (a mundane, ‘rite of passage’ type-event, if you like, not one to get executed for)... 7/
...the officers were instructed to leave the neighbourhood by their superiors, they disobeyed orders, went back, continued to exchange words w the youths, then one officer took out his gun, shot three times, one ricochet bullet hitting #AlexisGrigoropoulos in the chest/heart. 8/
Police brutality and violence in Greece are not isolated events, human rights violations by law enforcement officials in Greece are systematic even if the state does not recognise them as such... 9/
#StateSanctionedViolence
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/eur250112011en.pdf
#StateSanctionedViolence
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/28000/eur250112011en.pdf
“In the past 10 yrs, the Europ Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has found Greece in violation of Articles 2 (right to life) or 3 (prohibition of torture or other ill-treatment) in 11 cases concerning human rights violations by law enforcement officials.” 10/
https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4ff53e842.pdf
https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4ff53e842.pdf
See also the murder of queer performer and activist #ZakKostopoulos in Sept 2018 11/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/killing-of-zak-astonishing-violence-and-/
And for an older example, same area of Exarcheia, another 15 year old boy, #MichalisKaltezas was shot by the police 12/ https://www.koutipandoras.gr/article/dolofonoi-me-stoli-tyfloi-dikastes-nekroi-15hronoi-kai-o-manos-mas
i remember this one, I remember my grandfather hiding the front cover of his newspaper, #MichalisKaltezas murder & the events that followed in Athens in 1985 form some of my #earliestpoliticalmemories 13/
The @greekhelsinki has a further list of victims here, the ones who made it into the national press and public consciousness 14/ https://greekhelsinki.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/1-213/
The police officer who shot #AlexisGrigoropoulos was sentenced in October 2011 to life imprisonment, although his ‘life’ term was reduced to 13 years last July 2019 most of which was already served and the former officer is now released 14/ https://www.ekathimerini.com/243097/article/ekathimerini/news/reduction-of-korkoneas-life-sentence-made-on-basis-of-new-penal-code
The murders of #MichalisKaltezas and #AlexisGrigoropoulos *and* the primary and high school students’ responses to it who took to the streets in protest #StateSanctionedViolence were a major inspiration for the #ConnectorsStudy and thinking about @ChildhoodPublix ... 15/
... & children’s encounters and experiences of public life; children do collectively raise their voice to injustices, but before this becomes public and visible in what ways are the things that matter to them encountered and expressed? 16/
I and my colleagues wanted to locate these experiences in everyday life & family biographies, as well as cultural and institutional contexts that shape political biographies; 17/