There is no freedom with manacles: the Greek struggle continues

November 17 marked the third anniversary of the bloody suppression of the student revolt centered around the occupied Polytechnic Institute in Athens. The event was the culmination of a six-year struggle of the people of Greece against a military dictatorship. The anniversary of the uprising was observed with a massive demonstration in the streets of Athens last Tuesday.

Before 1967 a widespread popular movement had been taking shape in Greece, demanding basically the genuine implementation of the democratic principles that were embodied in a conservative constitution but blatantly frustrated by a set of unconstitutional laws which severely curtailed freedoms of organization, speech and political expression. A variety of extreme right-wing groups were allowed to conduct a systematic terror campaign against the Left and Center, which were opposing the emasculation of democratic institutions.

The elections of 1961 were rigged and in 1965 the king arbitrarily fired Prime Minister George Papandreou, who had just received 53 per cent of the popular vote in the election of 1964.

The political structure erected in Greece following the 1946-49 Civil War, under the direct supervision of the U.S. government through the Truman doctrine, could not tolerate such open, massive dissent. Its essence was precisely to establish a democratic facade for reasons of public relations and to make sure at the same time that the genuine will of the people would never be implemented.

Thus it became evident that the demand for a genuine democracy involved not merely a cosmetic reform of the system, but a deep qualitative change--the end of U.S. control in Greek politics and the smashing of the right-wing terrorist groups and their protectors within the armed forces and state bureaucracy. The elections scheduled for May 28, 1967, were certain to produce a left of center government, which under intense popular pressure would have to pursue that orientation. In these circumstances, the U.S. government gladly acquiesced in the colonels' coup, in the occupation of Athens by elite units incorporated under the NATO military command. And wholehearted U.S. support continued throughout the seven-year period of the fascist dictatorship, in a manner that constituted an outright provocation for the freedom-loving Greek people.

The junta, headed by Colonel George Papadopoulos, imposed martial law and abolished all political parties. It imposed severe censorship on newspapers, banned trade union activities, dissolved student organizations. Within the first week of its rule, about 10,000 people--leftists, centrists, student and trade union leaders--were arrested and exiled to remote island concentration camps.

From the very start and throughout the seven years of dictatorship, the huge majority of the Greek people remained decidedly opposed to the junta's terrorist policies. This was the single most important factor leading to its eventual downfall. All political parties, from the left to the parliamentary right, declared their unwillingness to cooperate, and some more, some less actively, opposed the fascist regime. Only a handful of financial and industrial oligarchs with close ties to international capital (e.g. industrialist Tom Pappas; shipping magnates) collaborated because they sensed their golden opportunity to rob the Greek people and state with impunity. They are now being investigated and prosecuted, along with the leaders of the junta, for their scandalous swindles during these years.

Thus resistance to the regime was a deep and all-pervasive mood from the beginning, even if it did not assume active and spectacular forms right away. The Patriotic Front, the first and largest of all resistance organizations, had already formed by May of 1967.

But by 1973, despite continuing political terror, arrests and torture--the latter well-documented by a special commission of the Council of Europe, whose investigation led to the expulsion of Greece from that organization in December, 1969--and aided by a severe economic crisis that produced the highest rate of inflation in Europe at 35 per cent, the resistance became open, massive, active and well-organized. The regime was facing its most severe public challenge to date. The movement was spearheaded by students and their struggle committees, set up to counter an un-precedented wave of repression focused on the universities, which were seething with anti-junta agitation and organization all through 1972.

In February of 1973 about 100 student leaders were drafted into the army. The answer was the occupation of the Athens University Law School, twice during February and March of 1973. The occupiers were brutally evicted by the police and thugs armed with lead pipes who cooperated with them. But for the first time on these occasions, the average citizen openly expressed his solidarity with the students.

In May of 1973, the Navy attempted to stage an anti-fascist coup that was nipped in the bud. The 240 officers and men on board the destroyer Velos sought political asylum in Italy and denounced the regime.

Papadopoulos realized that his power base in the armed forces themselves was being eroded. As a result, along with a new series of drafts and arrests of student leaders in the summer of 1973, he decided to proceed with a political maneuver that would buy him time. He abolished the monarchy, made himself president of a republic, and installed a civilian premier who promised elections in 1974. It was an attempt to impose a Brazilian or Turkish style solution to the crisis, with the fascist junta actually retaining full power behind a facade of fake democratic procedures. It was, of course, again vocally rejected by democratic public opinion and political leaders. The students were also promised elections for university students councils, but under the control of government-appointed committees. This too was repeatedly rejected by student general assemblies in all schools. Still the government refused to grant democratic student control over the university elections.

One such general assembly at the Polytechnic Institute on November 15, 1973, after receiving word of the final rejection of its demands by the Ministry of Education, was transformed into an occupation of the building. The students immediately set up an elaborate organizational structure in the school to direct the distribution of food provided in great quantity by the people of Athens, who showed up voluntarily for this purpose; to establish a small hospital in the school staffed by volunteer physicians and medical students, in case there was a violent junta attack to dislodge them; and to patrol the campus and prevent infiltration of student ranks by police agents. A homemade radio transmitter, heard throughout Athens, broadcast the following student demands: immediate surrender of power by the junta to a government composed of all anti-junta resistance groups and political parties, return to democratic rule, cessation of all U.S. interference in Greek affairs.

The response to this call of freedom was tremendous. There were about 5000-7000 students in the occupied building itself, but all around it there was a huge gathering of about 100,000 Athenians, demonstrating against the fascist regime in support of the student demands. Prominent among them were numerous workers, with construction workers at their head. Meanwhile in the outlying municipalities and working-class districts of Athens, church bells were ringing, calling on the people to join the students in their revolt. As the evening of the 16th of November wore on, there were already calls for a general strike in the air, and the following morning even greater crowds of workers and others were expected in the streets.

It was at this point that the junta decided to strike back violently, having so far kept a low profile. The occupation was already assuming the dimensions of a general popular uprising, which it could not tolerate. From midnight of the 16th to the night of the 17th, the rumble of tanks was heard as they descended on the Polytechnic from their camps in the north of Athens. At three o'clock in the morning of the 17th, a tank smashed the main gate of the school and special mountain warfare units of the army stormed the building. The students, their hands on their heads, emerged to face thousands of police, who proceeded to indulge in a sadistic orgy of shootings and beatings. When all was over, around 100 were left dead and 1500 wounded in the school and surrounding areas. The revolt was over.

The next morning martial law, which had been lifted with the promise of elections, was re-imposed. And thousands of students and young workers were arrested, dealing a tremendous blow to student anti-junta organizations. Within a week of the revolt, Papadopolous himself was overthrown by the most extreme, uncompromising faction of the fascist clique, headed by Brigadier General Dimitri Ioannides. The last and most repressive phase of the dictatorship began. The prisons and concentration camps were again full.

The Polytechnic uprising proved that the Greek people's rejection of the fascist regime and its methods was almost unanimous. It created the subjective preconditions for even higher levels of anti-fascist activity. It reaffirmed the belief of the Greeks that a new start had to be made in the political life of the country. Its foundation would have to be the overthrow of the junta and the eradication of all those political structures, inherited from the U.S.-dominated post-Civil War period in Greece, that made a mockery of democracy and that culminated in this terrorist regime. Above all it expressed the demand for an end to foreign tutelage in general and the establishment of effective Greek independence in foreign policy.

The junta's criminal activities against the Republic of Cyprus, providing a pretext for the Turkish generals to proceed with their occupation of northern Cyprus, speeded the disintegration of the junta's power base in the army. As the Pike report showed, these activities were closely monitored by Kissinger and the Pentagon, who failed to lift a finger to prevent them despite the regular contacts between Ioannides and the CIA in Athens. The innocent blood that flowed abundantly in Greece and Cyprus brought about the restoration of democracy to its birthplace. Cyprus is, of course, still bleeding, with no end to its martyrdom in sight.

The Cyprus crisis forced Brigadier General Ioannides to transfer his power to civilian politicians, who in turn called on former prime minister Constantine Karamanlis to end his self-imposed exile in Paris and form a new government. This change occurred against a background of general dissolution to all resistance organizations following the Polytechnic revolt. The Karamanlis regime adopted some minimal positive measures, such as the release of all political prisoners, legalization of all political parties and free elections. It also withdrew from the military branch of NATO, though more in words than in fact.

Nevertheless, it has refused to complete the process of dismantling the junta strongholds in the army and state bureaucracy, limiting itself to trials and, more often than not, ridiculously light sentences for the leaders of the fascist regime and assorted subordinates.

Some immediate aims, then, of the Polytechnic uprising were eventually realized. Democracy was re-established. Yet most of the long-term demands for a structurally new democratic order and a more balanced international orientation are still the rallying points of a continuing struggle.

On the occasion of the third anniversary of the Polytechnic revolt, we thought it useful to assess its significance for the benefit of our fellow students in the U.S. Their own courageous struggles of the '60s and early '70s were a factor in ending the criminal war against the people of Vietnam. As a new administration is preparing to take over in Washington next January, we hope that American students will continue their efforts to ensure that promises of non-intervention and respect for the rights of foreign peoples are kept.

The infliction of suffering and the extinction of freedom in the name of containment, balance of power and hypocritical support for some sort of unrecognizable democracy should no longer be tolerated by the American people.

[Mietiades A. and Electra K. are pseudonyms for Greek university students in the Boston area.]