As Athens burns

On Monday evening, exactly two days after a policeman shot 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the chest, killing him on the spot, the government of Greece realized things were spiraling out of control. Demonstrators had torched the huge Christmas tree in Athens' central Syntagma Square, at the foot of the Parliament building. In the blink of an eye, the clearest symbol of this peaceful holiday went up in flames, on live television.

It is hard to understand the chaos in Greece, which erupted in Athens and spread rapidly throughout the country. This is not the first time that police violence and official incompetence have exacted a price in blood - such things occurred at the end of the 1970s, in 1985 and in 1991, each time sparking two or three days of demonstrations. So what happened this time?

This time, citizens have slowly been growing angrier at the right-wing government. Greece, as commentators in all the major newspapers - from the radical left to the conservative right - have stated, suffers from from official incompetence, top-level corruption, large social gaps and an imploded social welfare state. The health system is sick, industry is lagging behind that of other Western nations, the economic crisis is exacerbating unemployment and poverty, and the education system is in abysmal state.

And indeed, the government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, which took on a country in decent shape five years ago (after the Olympic Games, which improved infrastructures, poured millions of dollars into the country and gave the Greeks back a considerable measure of national pride) has managed to fritter away achievements in every area. An European Union study found that Greek citizens are the least satisfied with the situation in their country out of all EU citizens. They are most worried about employment and education, especially at the universities, whose budgets are dwindling. A majority of respondents also said they would want the EU to intervene in their country's affairs, particularly regarding the war on crime.

For the Greeks, that sweet year of the Olympics was like a briefly opened window. Tourism flourished, the economy stabilized, unemployment shrank, a new airport was built, and wide, sophisticated roads crossed the country. U.S.-born Greeks began returning to their mother country, so their children would be educated in their mother tongue. But things also began to deteriorate.

Young people in Athens refer to themselves as the G700 generation, because 700 euros is the starting wage at nearly every job, even for college graduates. Rent in Athens, Salonika, Patras and other cities has soared, and young people are forced to live with their parents well into adulthood. Encounters with the establishment - medical, legal and educational, in fact any establishment, never mind the police - are frustrating and alienating.

The night after the Christmas tree burned, the revolt kicked up a notch. Before that point, it had seemed like an angry reaction to the teenager's killing. But then, teens sent each other text messages detailing the meeting places, and on Tuesday morning, before Grigoropoulos' funeral began, the entire education system went on strike nationwide. The government has lost all restraint, screamed the newspaper headlines. Prime Minister Karamanlis convened the cabinet and pleaded with the two largest unions to postpone their demonstrations - planned two months earlier - from Wednesday to some other day. The unions refused, and the demonstrations against the economic policy were transformed into another outburst of anger.

And as Athens burned, army units began to patrol several of the outlying islands, including Rhodes and Chios, where riots had broken out. "These pictures are scary," said a lecturer at Rhodes University this week. "Our DNA contains too much blood and revolts against the government, and what started like this ended once in a military government," she added.

In equally worried words this week, the newspaper Kathimerini called upon the government to resign in its editorial, to make way for someone who can extricate Greece from this dead end.