“Burn, burn the brothel the Parliament, burn, burn the brothel the Parliament.”
With this song on their lips, thousands of protesters found themselves in the centre of Athens on that sunny morning of 5 May 2010, to protest against the passing and implementation of thefirst amnesty, with changes in society at that moment coming at a rapid pace.”
No one could have guessed that some of the assembled people intended to go from slogans to action.
Instead of the House, they had planned to fire a bankbranch and kill three people. Actually, four, as one woman was pregnant.
They did it in a professional, brutal way, as only murderers can do, with no regard for the consequences of their act. The bombing of Marfin, after all these years, I appreciate – as many others do – that it was a premeditated act.
A few minutes after the bombing targeting the Marfin bank branch in Stadiou, I, like hundreds of other people, passed by the site as a protester. All around me I saw faces in ecstasy, enjoying voraciously and I would say with glee and satisfaction, some of them, the image of a bank burning from end to end.
Some were shouting “go on, go on”, but few of us were those who, at least in the first instance, were aware of the tragedy that was to follow. I remember seeing the fire that had enveloped the ground floor of the bank and almost no one trying to help.
Also, I was unaware that there were workers inside the branch, as the management had decided not to participate in the national strike on May 5.
In retrospect, some people said that it was precisely because the branch did not participate in the strike that it was “targeted” by grocers. As if the employees were allowed to do anything other than work normally.
As if the employees were in charge of running the store, as if the employees were the bosses the killers wanted to kill that day.
On the streets of Athens that day, a heterogeneous “mosaic” of people of different social classes and ages participated in the general strike. A crowd of people that included pensioners, workers, parents with their children, all sorts of collectives and institutions.
It was really a large volume gathering,the participants in which would move towards the Parliament in order to protest. It was the first time that I decided to take to the streets that day.
Together with a journalistic group, some of whom subsequently quit their profession, others who rose to the top ranks of television, we found ourselves in Omonoia Square early in the morning.
This was the last march in which I participated in my life. For better or worse, some decisions in our lives are shaped according to our initial experience. And indeed that march, which according to estimates of the organizers reached one million citizens, remains to this day a traumatic experience.
Everyone who was in the center of Athens that day felt that they were participating in something that would potentially change the course of things.Wage cuts, cutbacks, job insecurity, closure of structures and hospitals.
As protesters we believed that with the massiveness of the rally, something could possibly change. Fruity hopes I think of today as I look back on what followed in the years that followed.
Thousands of marches took place in the years of memoranda, rallies, demonstrations, but nothing like that morning of 5 May 2010.
While standing outside the bank that was “firing” I was unaware of the people inside. Angeliki Papathanasopoulou, 32 years old, four months pregnant, Paraskevi Zoulia, 35 years old, and 36-year-old Epaminondas Tsakalis,came to the first floor of the building to save themselves.
But they did not calculate that because of the large crowd on Stadiou Street, the fire trucks would not be able to reach the burning bank. We continued our march towards the Parliament. I remember a large crowd scribbling towards the building, swearing and cursing.
From that mix of people came the well-known “Disgruntled“. They started banging empty pots in Syntagma Square and we got to what the country has experienced since 2015 under the Tsipras-Kamenos government.
Because of the crowds, the group and I decided to break it up and everyone went their separate ways. Smiling and making fun of what we saw unfolding we waved goodbye.
A little while later I arrived at the small two-room apartment I was staying in Neo Faliro at the time. By the time I had a good seat, since the strike mobilization was also attended by the Mass Media, I was informed of the fact of the murder of the four people at Marfin on Stadiou Street.
I immediately receive a call from the Skai reporting desk informing me that the strike was “broken” because of the tragedy. Within a short time I had gone to the Exarchia area where incidents were unfolding.
What “haunts me” after 16 long years, as today is the “black anniversary” of the murder of the bank workers, is the image of them pleading for help from the balcony of the building while the inside was on fire and no one was helping them.
Instead of someone lending a helping hand as they fought to catch their breath, the crowd chanted,“Burn, burn the brothel, burn the parliament.” With this intolerant slogan and the terror of the fire, the Marfin bank workers were taken from their lives.
For these people there were neither marches nor rallies. On at least two occasions, people who like to be called… people, broke the plaque from the memorial erected outside the building where the bank was housed.
A minor point, too, for all those who have served as ministers of protection from then to now is the fact that they have never been able to identify the perpetrators of the arson. The killers continue to walk among us and the relatives of the victims are calling for justice for the souls of their murdered loved ones.
