Greek police fired teargas and stun grenades at protesters in central Athens yesterday when they tried to break through a barrier and reach visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators defied a ban on protests, gathering in Syntagma square to voice their displeasure with the German leader, who many blame for forcing painful cuts on Greece in exchange for two EU-IMF bailout packages worth over 200bn euros.
Some pelted police with rocks, bottles and sticks, and tried to bust through a barricade set up to protect Merkel and her delegation, who were meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at his office several hundred metres away.
Police detained dozens of protesters in what they said was one of the biggest demonstrations in months.
Merkel is visiting Greece for the first time since Europe’s debt crisis erupted here three years ago to deliver a message of support, but no new money, to a nation hammered by recession and fighting to stay in the euro.
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Merkel has become a public hate figure in Greece
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Samaras greeted her with a handshake as she exited the German air force jet and a band played the German and Greek national anthems.
In the centre of Athens, the reception was less warm.
On the central square next to parliament, four people dressed in German military uniforms and riding on a small jeep, waved black-white-and-red swastika flags and stuck their hands out in the Nazi salute.
Banners read “Merkel out, Greece is not your colony” and “This is not a European Union, it’s slavery”.
There were Communists, members of the far-right nationalist party but also ordinary non-political workers gathered in a departure from the ancient Greek tradition of welcome to strangers.
As television pictures showed a smiling Merkel being greeted by Samaras, a large ministerial delegation and an honour guard of Greek commandos at the start of her fleeting visit the mood on the street was one of fury.
“Merkel thinks she is going to buy Greece,” said one demonstrator.
Banners rammed home the point.”You are not welcome, Imperialisten Raus” (Imperialists out)” or “No to the Fourth Reich”. Some were even marked with the Nazi swastika.
Protesters burned a Nazi flag in front of a steel fence erected in front of parliament.
Thousands of police had fanned out across the capital, attempting to impose a ban on all gatherings and protests in key parts of the centre.
A group of young people hurled rocks and chunks of stone at police to cries of “war against the imperialist’s wars.
The stench of tear gas drifted over the Greek capital.
“The middle class and the newly-impoverished are paying the country’s debt,” said Athina Kefala, a 57-year-old unemployed actress. “We are living an economic illusion with virtual money, and as a result we have nothing.”
Main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, head of the radical leftist Syriza party was there.
“The Europe of peoples will beat the Europe of (debt deals) and barbarity ... the tradition of European democracy will not permit turning a European people into a crisis guinea pig, and to turn Greece into an endless social graveyard,” he said.
At a separate protest by her party, Communist leader Aleka Papariga declared: “Those peoples who do not hesitate to break their class chains will win. This for us is the point of today’s gatherings.”
Police have deployed 6,000 officers, including anti-terrorist units and rooftop snipers, to provide security during the six-hour visit. German sites in the Greek capital, including the embassy and Goethe Institute, are under special protection.
After steering clear of Greece for the past five years, Merkel decided to visit now for several reasons.
She wants to show support for Samaras, a fellow conservative, as he struggles to impose more cuts on a society fraying at the edges after five years of recession.
At a joint appearance before the press, she is expected to confirm her desire to keep Greece in the eurozone, after members of her government flirted with the idea of an exit earlier this year.
With a year to go until Germany holds an election, Merkel also hopes to neutralise opposition criticism that she has neglected Greece and contributed to its woes by insisting on crushing budget cuts.
Greece is in talks with its “troika” of lenders – the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – on the next tranche of a 130bn-euro ($170bn) loan package, its second bailout since 2010.
Without the 31.5bn-euro tranche, Greece says it will run out of money by the end of November.
Many Greeks say they cannot take more of the wage cuts and tax hikes that have left a quarter of the workforce jobless and slashed the country’s economic output by a fifth.
Ties between Germany and Greece run deep. Thousands of Greeks came to Germany after World War II as “guest workers” to help rebuild the shattered country and more than 300,000 Greeks currently reside there.
But the relationship is clouded by the atrocities Greeks suffered at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.
Samaras’ own great grandmother committed suicide when she saw Nazi tanks rolling down the streets of Athens after Germany occupied Greece, flying the swastika flag from the Acropolis.
Greek President Karolos Papoulias, whom Merkel also met yesterday, fought against the German Wehrmacht as a teenager, before fleeing to Cologne to escape persecution by the Greek military dictatorship.
The crisis has revived long-dormant animosities, with Greek protesters burning effigies of Merkel in Nazi gear and German media playing up images of lazy Greeks keen for German cash.
Relations hit a post-war low early this year when Merkel’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, likened Athens to a “bottomless pit” and proposed imposing a European “Sparkommissar” on Greece to control its finances.
“The average German voter is irritated at the thought of dispatching more taxes or savings to feckless southerners, yet is desperate for the respect and goodwill to Germany that comes from public displays of magnanimity,” said David Marsh, chairman of think-tank OMFIF. “When Merkel flies to Athens, she’s showing she’s in charge, and she cares.”
