Police attack teachers demonstration in Athens

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) reports that on Saturday March 29, thousands of teachers from all over Greece demonstrated in the centre of Athens, demanding pay rises, money for education and not for NATO, safe schools and an end to the persecution of thousands of teachers by the Ministry of Education.

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, took part in the demonstration and made the following statement to the media:

“We support the struggle of the teachers and their efforts to educate our children under truly adverse conditions of underfunding and increased authoritarianism on behalf of the government, which is dragging more than 2,000 teachers to the Disciplinary Board just because they refuse the anti-pedagogical criteria of their performance appraisal. We express our solidarity with their struggle. We stand by their side to finally put an end to the government’s authoritarian slide and to meet all their just demands.”

The government not only did not respond to the teachers’ demands for a meeting, but also sent police forces who used tear gas to disperse their demonstration, which was condemned by the KKE.

The teachers renewed their militant commitment to the national general strike on 9 April.