Rouvikonas anarchists scale gates of Foreign Ministry
The anarchist group Rouvikonas struck again early on Tuesday when some of its members scaled the gates of the Foreign Ministry in central Athens and left a bag containing a Palestinian flag and photographs of people killed in recent clashes with the Israeli army.
There were no arrests but, according to police, two suspects – Greek men, aged 24 and 39 – who are believed to have participated in a paint attack on the same building by the group last month, have been identified.
A video of on Tuesday’s incident, posted on anti-authoritarian websites, shows a number of individuals climbing over a gate and leaving a bag on a path between two buildings.
In a statement accompanying the video, the group said the bag also contained “photographs of the dead from the last episode in the genocide of a people on the occasion of the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by another long-time strategic ally of the Greek state, the US.”
Describing the move as “symbolic,” the author of the statement, added, “I cannot neglect to stress, however, that if the bag had contained a bomb, it would have blown the building sky-high. So watch out.”
The main conservative opposition New Democracy commented that the “invasion” of the building showed that nothing was safe in SYRIZA-ruled Greece. “After the Defense Ministry and the embassies, now an invasion of the Foreign Ministry in the heart of Athens! Nothing works in the SYRIZA era. Nothing can be considered safe,” the party’s shadow foreign minister, Giorgos Koumoutsakos, wrote on his Twitter account.
Prominent ND cadre and ex-foreign minister Dora Bakoyanni accused the government of tolerating Rouvikonas, adding that the image of its members breaking into ministry premises “makes fools of us worldwide.”
Rouvikonas (Rubicon in Greek) has conducted dozens of attacks on politicians’ offices, foreign embassies, state agencies and other perceived targets, usually involving throwing paint or leaflets, sometimes smashing windows and vandalizing furniture.
