ATHENS, Greece — Inside the gates of Athens’ main university, bonfires rage and masked gangs stockpile gasoline bombs, broken paving stones and marble hacked from the neoclassical buildings. It’s their arsenal for more possible clashes with weary police.
But a week into Greece’s worst civil unrest in decades — sparked by the police shooting of a teenage boy and then fed by anger at the country’s economic unraveling — the rioters’ best weapon is arguably the law.
They have used, some say abused, a decades-old code that bars police from university campuses. The grounds of the Athens Polytechnic have become a combination of sanctuary and makeshift armory for the young men and women who have left parts of the capital ransacked and smoldering.
The self-proclaimed anarchists and revolutionaries based at the Polytechnic have become outnumbered on the streets by more typical demonstrators — such as labor unions and opposition parties — who have called for Greece’s increasingly unpopular conservative government to resign.
Yet it’s the rage and destruction of the masked youths that have become the symbols of the showdown.
Nearly every night in the past week, the streets around the Polytechnic became an urban battleground. Riot police emerge through clouds of tear gas and the smoke of flaming barricades. Black-clad youths — their faces covered by masks, scarves and motorbike helmets — hurl gasoline bombs over the hulks of torched cars.
Greece’s Retailers Association estimated 100 million euros ($135 million) in damage to stores, and predicted 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) in lost revenue during the peak holiday shopping period.
On Monday, about 2,000 youths confronted riot police outside Athens’ main police headquarters.
Students also gathered outside Athens’ main court complex, where four people arrested during last week’s riots were ordered to remain in custody. The policeman accused of killing the teenager, meanwhile, has been charged with murder and is being held pending trial.
Socialist opposition leader George Papan dreou renewed calls Monday for early elections.
“The government cannot deal with this crisis,” he said. “It cannot protect people — their rights or property — and it cannot identify with the anxiety felt by the younger generation.” Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose party has only a single-seat majority in Parliament, has rejected calls to resign, saying the country needs a steady hand in times of crisis.
