Conscription and Suicide in the Land of
European Citizens
Suicide in the cradle of democracy
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| Suicide memorial photo, April 2012, Syntagma Square (Athens): the bottom poster reads “THE LAMB THEY’RE ROASTING THIS EASTER IS US! WAKE UP! DON’T BE A SHEEP!” |
On the
morning of 4 April 2012 a shot rings out in the Athens sky: Dimitris
Christoulas, a 77-year-old pensioner, put an end to his life with a bullet to
his head in the middle of Syntagma (“Constitution”) Square. The note he left
compared the then Lucas Papadimos government to the “Tsolakoglou” government
that collaborated with the Germans in occupation of Greece during WWII. The
suicide was the only such tragic death to make headlines in Greece and all over
the world, merely because it occurred in such a central location in broad
daylight: many more preceded and followed. Carefully concealed by the government
and their media puppets, the suicide rate has risen threefold since 23 April
2010, when the then Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou made a public address to
the people of Greece from the isolated island of Kastelorizo in the Aegean Sea.
Three years later, the “support mechanism” and its string of memoranda has
pulled the citizens of Greece into dark despair. Many have cracked under the
pressure to their dignity: no longer capable of supporting themselves and their
families, numerous Greeks have performed the modern-day “Zaloggos dance”, reminding
us of the incident in the Greek Revolution when the women of Zaloggo preferred
to fall from the cliff rather than become the subjects of Turkish occupation.
The statistics and the politicians
Pensioners,
journalists, mothers, fathers, workers, businessmen, University professors… the
list is endless. People who left notes
behind to their loved ones and took their own lives, people who could no longer
withstand the humiliation and torment to which their own state had led them.
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| Partial screenshot of suicide list compiled by tweeter @VaskoDeGamata |
But what
about the politicians’ reaction to such tragic statistics? Needless to say,
Greek politicians from left to right deemed it their duty to express remorse at
Christoulas’s tragic death. With no haste, they put on their sad faces, grabbed
the microphones and spoke meaningless nonsense: none of their words or supposed
actions has managed to curtail the constantly rising suicide rate.
Some went
even further: Adonis Georgiadis’s
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| “Tweetshot” of Adonis Georgiadis’s callous tweet |
(MP with the “New Democracy” party) sarcastic
remark on Twitter is a characteristic example. The “prolific” tweeter – many
wonder if he actually does anything else other than tweet and appear on TV and
radio shows – tweeted about suicide on 28 July 2012. In reply to a tweet by @tvxs
(“TV Without Frontiers”, a news portal run by reporter Stelios Kouloglou) that
reported a new suicide in Israel accounted to the financial crisis, @AdonisGeorgiadi
wrote: “A suicide due to the crisis
without a Memorandum? But I thought life without a Memorandum was heavenly…”
The tweet was received with resent by the Greek people who have been led to
despair and even starvation from the ruthless austerity measures attached to
the three Memoranda of Understanding that have been signed between the Troika
and the Greek government to this date. But then again, civilians have grown
accustomed to the state of fear the coalition government of New Democracy, PASOK
and Democratic Left is trying to impose on the Greek people, unfortunately with
ever-growing success.
Civil mobilisation order for a hopeless future
How ironic,
that the totalitarian predictions of Christoulas would surface one by one less
than a year after his death; how ironic also that his death place is also the
headquarters of those imposing anti-constitutional measures one by one, in the
Greek Parliament building on… Constitution Square.
The last
straw was the civil mobilisation order issued by virtue of a Prime Minister
decision and followed-up by a decision
of the Minister of Education and Religious Affairs, Culture and Sport on
Saturday 11th May.
Secondary
Education teachers throughout the country are being threatened with relocation
or even suspension if they fail to cover the newly-augmented working hours prescribed
in a law bill that was recently passed. Practically, this means that on top of
the drastic cutbacks to their wages over the past three years - averaging at
around 40% of their annual income – teachers now face the possibility of having
their lives and families torn apart either from being fired or relocated to
anywhere in Greece.
In view of
the grim prospect, union meetings were held all over the country and the consensus
was to go on strike starting the first day of the National University Entry
Exams. The government’s reaction? Starting Monday 13th May all
secondary education teachers – some 88,000 – are being served a civil
mobilisation order by their local police forces. The media did its part in
shaping the public’s negative sentiments by interviewing stressed students and
distressed parents, whose “dreams of a University education were being held
hostage by the insensitive and selfish” teachers. Not a word was uttered of the
reality the teachers are experiencing, or of the fact that a University
education is far from a passport to a promising future in the country of
soaring unemployment.
The
government’s decision was without precedent in all the history of Greece: never
before had conscription been ordered before
a strike had even started. Imagine the humiliation experienced by teachers who
were summoned to sign and accept the paper, without having done anything wrong.
Many Greek teachers’ service is kilometers away from their hometown; imagine
the agony of unaware parents when the doorbell rings and a policeman appears to
inform them that their son/daughter has been conscripted. Anti-constitutional?
You bet… but the government found a way around this “hitch”. With the help of
the media of course, they elevated the Exams to an issue of vital national
importance; according to Article 23 of the Constitution “The right to strike shall
be subject to the specific limitations of the law regulating this right in the
case of public servants and employees of local government agencies… the
operation of which is of vital importance in serving the basic needs of the
society as a whole.”
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| The conscription order (all names have been blacked out for obvious reasons) |
Conscription notes are currently being
served to all secondary education teachers in the country. The civil
mobilisation order reads:”… starting 12
noon on Wednesday 15 May 2013 [personal details of recipient] is hereby conscripted
to offer his/her personal services as a secondary education teacher at his/her
place of employment, in accordance with the working hours pertaining to his/her
appointed duties. Refusal to accept or
omission to fulfil the said obligations shall be punished with at least three
(3) months imprisonment.
Afterword
The Orwellian tactics being employed by the
Greek government are no less than penalising the act of THINKING. If you think such insensitive, arrogant and
totalitarian practices are far from your own sphere of life, think again: it’s
happening right now in the cradle of democracy. Coming soon to a “democracy”
near you.
Extra reading:
A letter in
support of the strike depicts the truth that Greek citizens are experiencing
and has circulated widely on social media networks. It was written by a student
from a working-class neighbourhood, who posted his school report with excellent
grades to prove that he was not looking for an excuse to “slack”. Read the
shocking truth about the crisis here (use automatic tools for a rough
translation; I would be happy to provide an “on-demand” translation if
requested)
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