Clashes break out at anti-austerity demonstration

(18 Oct 2012) SHOTLIST
1. Clashes between riot police and masked youth at Syntagma square; flames, black smoke rising, masked youth throw rocks and molotov cocktails at police, pan right to tear gas and white smoke rising on the side of the protesters, who throw stones, pan left to riot police, pan right to protester throwing molotov cocktail towards police
2. Molotov cocktails burning in front of riot police at Syntagma square
3. Police retreat and kick away a small explosive device
4. Close up of explosive device
5. Top shot of explosive device exploding, riot police approach afterwards
6. Mid of riot police, UPSOUND: protesters chanting against the riot police
7. Top shot wide of the protest in front of the Greek parliament
STORYLINE
Hundreds of youths pelted riot police with petrol bombs, bottles and chunks of marble on Thursday as yet another Greek anti-austerity demonstration descended into violence.
Police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades in the Athens' Syntagma Square as protesters scattered during the clashes, which continued on and off for about an hour.
Four demonstrators were injured after being hit by police, volunteer paramedics said.
The Health Ministry said two of the protesters were treated in hospital and that their injuries were not
serious.
A 65-year-old protester was also reported to have suffered a fatal heart attack during the demonstration. The organisers of the protest march he participated in said the man had fallen ill before any rioting had broken out.
Authorities said around 70,000 protesters took to the street in two separate demonstrations on Thursday, during the country's second general strike in a month as workers across the country walked off the job to protest new austerity measures the government is negotiating with Greece's international creditors.
Hundreds of police had been deployed in the Greek capital ahead of the demonstration, as such protests often turn violent.
However, a protest march by about 17-thousand people in the northern city of Thessaloniki ended peacefully.
Thursday's strike was timed to coincide with a European Union summit in Brussels later in the day, at which Greece's economic fate will likely feature large.
The strike grounded flights, shut down public services, closed schools, hospitals and shops and hampered public transport in the capital. Taxi drivers joined in for nine hours, while a three-hour work stoppage by air traffic controllers led to flight cancellations. Islands were left cut off as ferries stayed in ports.
The measures for 2013-14, worth 13.5 (b) billion Euros (17.7 (b) billion US Dollars), aim to prevent the country from going bankrupt and potentially having to leave the 17-nation eurozone.
Athens has seen hundreds of anti-austerity protests over the past three years, since Greece revealed it had been misreporting its public finance figures. With confidence ravaged and austerity demanded, the country has sunk into a deep economic recession that has many of the same hallmarks of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Higher taxes expected to be levied in the new austerity program will destroy many of the struggling businesses that have managed to weather three years of the crisis so far, he said.
The country is surviving with the help of two massive international bailouts worth a total 240 (b) billion Euros (315 (b) billion US Dollars).
To secure them, it has committed to drastic spending cuts, tax hikes and reforms, all with the aim of getting the state coffers back under some sort of control.


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