Greece: gatherings banned, officially to fight against Covid
According to the Greek authorities, the reason for limiting gatherings to a maximum of 100 people would be a matter of public health.
AP Photo / Yorgos Karahalis
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
In Greece, where a gradually lightened containment has been underway since November, the authorities have just decreed without notice the ban on gatherings of more than 100 people for the whole week.
Officially, it is a question of fighting against the spread of the coronavirus, but the measure seems above all to aim to contain any movement of social protest that is too important, in particular that of the students.
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With our correspondent in Athens,
Joël Bronner
According to the Greek authorities, the reason for limiting gatherings to a maximum of 100 people would be a matter of public health.
The opposition sees it as a maneuver, aimed in particular at limiting the impact of growing student discontent.
A demonstration was indeed precisely scheduled this Thursday, with the slogan of the reopening of universities and the refusal of a police presence inside.
“
With the help of a new law, the government intends to set up police forces inside universities,”
says Amalia Kosma, in her final year of sociology at Panteion University in Athens.
It is a project that will cost 30 million euros and that while the Greek universities are in bad shape, not only because of the current pandemic which destroys everything, but also because of structural problems.
So this sum is a lot of money for a simple police presence when this money could finance education and things that we need more.
"
The student believes that the restrictions on gathering will not prevent the student protest from continuing in Greece, although she is sorry that local televisions, influential in the public debate, are not following a movement more than she and her comrades consider essential.
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Greece
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