AKEL honours the anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic popular uprising
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 16th November 2020, Nicosia
AKEL honours the anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic popular uprising against the American-engineered junta of the Colonels which oppressed Greece for 7 years and massacred Cyprus with the betrayal it committed against it. We pay tribute to the dead of the Polytechnic uprising and all the fighters of the Greek people’s anti-dictatorship struggle who were tested in the torture chambers, prisons, exile and the military courts.
The emblematic slogan “Bread-Education-Freedom” and the demands “USA out – NATO out” that were painted on the gates of the Polytechnic, united the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist content of the struggle against the April 1967 military dictatorship with the visions of social progress and justice. This is the thread of history that unites the Polytechnic with the current demands of the youth and working people, with today’s struggles for their just causes and rights.
The anniversary is a reminder of the Greek junta’s role in the NATO plans for the partition of Cyprus. With the organization of the coup d’état against President Makarios, the Greek junta of the ultra “national-minded” forces knowingly opened the gates for Turkey’s army of Attila to invade our island. The modern history of Cyprus and Greece reminds us that countless times traitors came disguised as super-patriots.
Today, democracy may have been restored, but the great and always timely demands of the Polytechnic remain unfulfilled. In fact, the dangerous American-NATO presence in our region is deepening again, while fascism in Greece and Cyprus has raised its head again. The memory and honor to the Polytechnic popular uprising demand the defence of History and Democracy from the fascist ultra-right. It demands resistance to the plans seeking to turn our island into a bridgehead of foreign forces and struggle so that the crime committed by the Greek junta against Cyprus will not be completed. It demands relentless struggle to stop the partition, struggle for the liberation and reunification of our homeland and people.
The Athens Polytechnic uprising occurred in November 1973 as a massive student demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. The uprising began on 14 November 1973, escalated to an open anti-junta revolt, and ended in bloodshed in the early morning of 17 November after a series of events starting with a tankcrashing through the gates of the Polytechnic.
17 November
In the early hours of November 17, 1973, the transitional government sent a tank crashing through the gates of the Athens Polytechnic. Soon after that, Spyros Markezinis himself had the task to request Papadopoulos to reimpose martial law. Prior to the crackdown, the city lights had been shut down, and the area was only lit by the campus lights, powered by the university generators. An AMX 30 Tank (still kept in a small armoured unit museum in a military camp in Avlonas, not open to the public) crashed the rail gate of the Athens Polytechnic at around 03:00 am. In unclear footage clandestinely filmed by a Dutch journalist, the tank is shown bringing down the main steel entrance to the campus, to which people were clinging. Documentary evidence also survives, in recordings of the “Athens Polytechnic” radio transmissions from the occupied premises. In these a young man’s voice is heard desperately asking the soldiers (whom he calls ‘brothers in arms’) surrounding the building complex to disobey the military orders and not to fight ‘brothers protesting’. The voice carries on to an emotional outbreak, reciting the lyrics of the Greek National Anthem, until the tank enters the yard, at which time transmission ceases.
Total recorded casualties amount to 24 civilians killed outside Athens Polytechnic campus. These include 19-year-old Michael Mirogiannis, reportedly shot to death by officer Nikolaos Dertilis, high-school students Diomedes Komnenos and Alexandros Spartidis of Lycee Leonin, and a five-year-old boy caught in the crossfire in the suburb of Zografou. The records of the trials held following the collapse of the Junta document the circumstances of the deaths of many civilians during the uprising, and although the number of dead has not been contested by historical research, it remains a subject of political controversy. In addition, hundreds of civilians were left injured during the events.
Ioannides’ involvement in inciting unit commanders of the security forces to commit criminal acts during the Athens Polytechnic uprising was noted in the indictment presented to the court by the prosecutor during the Greek junta trials and in his subsequent conviction in the Polytechneion trial where he was found to have been morally responsible for the events.
