Oti Na Nai
Seventeen
The one girl on the right is my 16-year-old sister.
On the 5th of July at Exarchia in Athens, there were riots as usual. It happened that my sister and I were hanging out at that spot and after getting separated for 10-20 minutes, tear gas was thrown by the cops inside the Exarchia square. I started running to avoid the gas, but stopped after hearing my sister’s voice, screaming terrified for help. I panicked, ran back to find her and through the smoke I saw the cops hitting her while she was down. I tried shouting her name but couldn’t because of the tear gas choking me, until I lost sight of her as I couldn’t see shit as the smoke spread around me. Afterwards, I went to the police station with my mother and I only learned she was safe and “unharmed” only 3 or 4 hours after the incident and was able to actually see her 11 hours later than that. They told us she got arrested (her and 3 others, including a 19-year-old friend of mine and a 33-year old man who was just a passer-by) and she was held in there for another three days.After leaving the police station, she told me that she was just getting out of a bar, she turned around and saw cops running towards her. She panicked, tried running away from them to avoid them, but failed. Two of the pigs caught her and hit her with clubs, then a third cop came and punched her in the face. When they let her go, we went to the hospital right away and got to learn that her back had been injured (apart from the multiple bruises on her body). Other than that she was “safe and unharmed”.
This is Greece ‘15. Arresting 16-year-olds for no apparent reason. Kudos to our government and its puppets.
Credits of the photo here.
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