It’s Friday, April 23, 2010, when every screen nationwide shows Prime Minister George Papandreou, with Kastellorizo in the background, announcing that Greece will enter the ‘support mechanism.’ The difficulties had been evident for months, and the Greek crisis, partly triggered by the 2008 global recession, loomed like a fate over our heads.”
Questions, reactions, insecurity, and fears about the first memorandum, set to be voted on in Parliament on May 6, lead hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets during the general strike on May 5. The demonstration and march is one of the largest ever recorded in the country’s history. It is a warm, sunny day in the center of Athens, the kind of day that, just a year ago, would have unknowingly taken us to the beaches for the season’s first dip, instead of a march down Stadiou Street.
The demonstration and march on that day was one of the largest ever recorded in the country’s history.
I can’t recall any friends or colleagues who weren’t there. We journalists were on strike too; we were both protesters and observers at the same time. By midday, the tension, both within and around us in various parts of central Athens, becomes palpable as news spreads through texts and phone calls that something is going terribly wrong. The black smoke blocks the sun.
A group of protesters, their faces covered, break the glass façade and throw Molotov cocktails and a bottle of flammable liquid into the Marfin bank branch on Stadiou Street, while employees are working inside despite the strike. According to eyewitnesses, the employees beg those outside not to start the fire. The neoclassical Marfin building—rather than the neighboring Attikon cinema, which was burned down during the protests against the second memorandum in February 2012—catches fire. People are choking on the smoke and trying to escape.
The facts are clear. After the arson at the branch on 23 Stadiou Street, Angeliki Papathanassopoulou, 32 years old (4 months pregnant), Epameinondas Tsakalis, 36 years old, and Paraskevi Zoulia, 35 years old, die from asphyxiation, while 21 others are injured.
What is certain is that the perpetrators—those who broke the window and set the bank on fire—have not been apprehended.
Time freezes, or no longer matters; I don’t know how long it took me to reach the Marfin branch from Mitropoleos. I arrive at the moment the bodies are transferred from the bank to the morgue. Those watching the scene lift their gazes to the sky, holding their heads in despair. A man, who seems to be one of their colleagues, though I don’t dare approach him to ask, kicks trash bins in anger. It is the moment when a large wound is opened. The journalists’ strike breaks.
I’ve been hearing various theories for 15 years, but I neither accept nor dismiss any of them, as they remain just theories without proof. What is certain is that the perpetrators—those who broke the window and set the bank on fire—have never been caught. As for the proven inadequate fire safety measures at the bank, which, if sufficient, might have allowed the victims to escape, there was an initial conviction. However, last year, the Supreme Court referred the case for a new trial, holding the bank responsible for failing to implement security measures that could have prevented the tragedy.
I’ve been hearing various theories for 15 years, but I neither accept nor dismiss any of them, as they remain just theories without proof. What is certain is that the perpetrators—those who broke the window and set the bank on fire—have never been caught. Regarding the proven inadequate fire safety measures at the bank, which, had they been sufficient, might have allowed the victims to escape, there was an initial conviction. However, last year, the Supreme Court sent the case back for a new trial, holding the bank responsible for failing to implement the necessary security measures that could have prevented the tragedy.
The wound opened by the crime on that day was never healed. It was only the beginning, as more heavy, fatal wounds followed. The harsh and punitive austerity measures introduced by the first memorandum, followed by the two subsequent ones, devastated us and unleashed violence in all its forms, both visible and hidden.
The 104 deaths in Mati in 2018 and the tragedy in Tempi with 57 fatalities made the grief we carry unbearable, fueling the anger that intensifies with every new trigger. Every time we feel that those responsible for a crime or tragedy are not held accountable, every time we feel unprotected, we grow sicker.
We’ve lost all trust we once had in institutions. We’ve lost, in every way possible.
