Representatives of Interventions – Movements – Rallying have condemned what they describe as an unprovoked police attack on parents, teachers and young children who were protesting outside the First Directorate of Primary Education of Athens in Metaxourgeio. The groups say the protest was held in response to cuts and vacancies in the primary-school system — specifically the planned reduction of 15 departments and 689 unfilled posts in the Athens first directorate. They accuse the education authority and the ministry of responding to the protest by deploying riot police and using tear gas and stun devices.
According to the statement, on 23 October police prevented parents and teachers from entering the directorate to meet the director of education. The groups say officers fired chemical agents while children were present. Twenty children were taken to the Alexandra Social Insurance Institution with breathing problems and others were referred to the Aglaia Kyriakou children’s hospital with respiratory, eye and allergy symptoms.
The statement accuses the director of the primary-education directorate of bearing ‘personal responsibility’ for allowing the use of chemicals outside her office. It holds the ministry and the government accountable for what it calls an ‘orgy of violence’ against those protesting understaffing, vacancies and the underfunding of public schools.
The protesters describe the scene in stark terms: teachers and parents hit with batons, a pregnant woman shoved by officers, and a large crowd driven back by riot units. They say the attack is part of a wider pattern of curtailing democratic freedoms and of criminalising protest.
Their demands include an immediate hiring of the staff needed to cover all vacancies, the withdrawal of language in official minutes that brands protests as ‘obstruction’, and accountability for the use of force against parents, teachers and children. The statement ends with a pledge of continued resistance: ‘We will not retreat a single step. Until victory.’
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