Commenting on the announcement to transfer responsibility for the monument’s protection to the Defence Ministry, Konstantopoulou noted that the decision was flagged on the anniversary of Athens’s liberation from Nazi occupation. ‘The prime minister, in his lengthy post, forgot the anniversary. Instead, he is trying to “protect” the Monument to the Unknown Soldier from citizens, claiming he was upset by Panos Routsi’s 23-day protest and hunger strike, which did not harm the monument but moved and activated society in a peaceful, tender and determined mobilisation to demand justice and honour for his dead child,’ the Course of Freedom leader wrote on social media.
According to a party release, she added: ‘The defence of rights, of victims, of justice, is entirely compatible with the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. It is the defence of memory against oblivion, of justice and truth against cover-up. What happened for 23 days in front of the monument was a contemporary honour and redefinition of this space.’
She referred to the nightly commemorations since 28 February 2025 at the site, describing ‘a new, living, improvised and handmade monument’ with the names of the Tempe victims written on the pavement, surrounded by basil and flowers. Each night from 11.18pm to 11.21pm, she said, children from the group Until the End read the names and ages of the victims and sing songs by Manos Loizos and Pavlos Sidiropoulos. ‘Those who gave their lives for the homeland gave their lives for humanity, for peace, for justice. During these 23 days, memory was connected to life,’ she wrote. ‘Unlike the upset prime minister, I believe that in these 23 days the Monument to the Unknown Soldier was morally and historically connected to today’s struggles for a free, just, democratic homeland, for a Greece that does not kill its children but protects and honours them.’
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