Letter from Thessaloniki
Although vehement demonstrations were expected to coincide with the city’s annual business fair, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis went ahead with his traditional keynote address, apparently unruffled, and delivered what was effectively a pre-election speech. On the occasion of the 72nd Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF), which opened its doors on Saturday, the main labor union GSEE and civil servants’ union ADEDY issued their usual list of complaints regarding the high cost of living and what they view as an unfair tax policy. Their protests were a call to action to all kinds of «progressives» seeking to build broad-based movements to promote economic, social and political justice, and oppose bigotry and corruption. Many of the 2,000 police officers assigned to patrol Thessaloniki over the weekend had cordoned off the traffic outside the convention center which has been the focus of protests for 20 years. This year, the anniversary protest felt more like a ritual of resistance rather than any attempt to change the status quo. Could it be that in a new age of conformity young people want security, not adventure? «We have seen it so many times!» said one policeman.« «But this time it was different.» This time there was a novel threat: Thessaloniki ‘s union of police staff warned it would videotape the protests outside the fair. And so the dispute between Thessaloniki cops and civil libertarians over political surveillance resumed. Anyone who has attended previous rallies knows only too well that the people hassled and manhandled in past years by thugs from the police department were demonstrators holding small, lightweight digital cameras. No cameras were seen in the hands of uniformed police officers over the weekend but who knows what may have happened? The menace was palpable all the same. But how do we know that there were no candid cameras? Earlier last week, the Communist Party (KKE) slammed the planned measure of videotaping protests as «an attempt to terrorize citizens and curb democratic and trade union freedoms.» With the invention, in the 1920s, of the Bell and Howell 6-pound, hand-held camera, it became possible in World War II for combat photographers to throw themselves into battle alongside infantrymen. In a city like Thessaloniki, where a major film festival takes place each year, an explosion of documentaries and non-fiction films is understandable. It appears that police could not resist dabbling in filmmaking themselves. «The heart of cinema verite – or film truth – was the existential self-creation of the filmmaker as he responded to life unfolding around him. Wasn’t it?» a police officer friend asked me. Strange for a policeman to talk that way but it does happen. It was during a retrospective program on the work of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini that I met this policeman some years ago at the Olympion, the main venue of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. «And you like Pasolini?» I was dumbfounded after he revealed his profession to me. «Sure. He liked policemen too.» And he elaborated: «Do you know that Pasolini sided with police when they clashed with students in the 60s. And do you know that he even wrote a poem about this? It goes more or less like this (he recited badly): ‘Yesterday in the Valle Giulia district when you clashed with the policemen, I was sympathizing with the policemen! Because the policemen are the sons of the poor, they come from the outskirts of cities and from the country. Therefore, yesterday, we had another phase of the struggle of class: And you, my friends (even if you are on the right side) were the rich ones, While the policemen (even if they were on the wrong side) were the poor ones.’ Those were his exact words, you know!» Yesterday my policeman friend reminded me of Pasolini’s poem – he still carries it in his pocket, not in the pocket where he keeps his gun, of course. «Policemen with guns, you know, are a threat not merely to the victims of misdirected shooting but to the peace of the community,» I countered. «You surely remember a police officer – Kyriakos Vantoulis was his name – who shot a young Serbian student here in Thessaloniki for no apparent reason. So should police officers bear arms?» I remarked. «We need guns because criminals have them,» my friend said. Indeed. What should I tell him? That a fair number of criminals carry guns because they are afraid that the police do too? The chicken can precede the egg.
