{"id":4043,"date":"2026-05-05T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T08:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=4043"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:33:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T08:33:00","slug":"stage-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=4043","title":{"rendered":"Stage 23"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the sidewalk of 23 <b>Stadium<\/b>, a few yards from the <b>noise<\/b> of the city, there is a phrase carved into the marble.<\/p>\n<p>It is not just a memory. It is an accusation. <b>&#8220;Victims of the blind hatred that divisiveness breeds<\/b>&#8220;. And every May 5, that phrase gets heavier.<\/p>\n<p><b>Wednesday, May 5, 2010.<\/b> The attack on <b>Marfin <\/b>was not an &#8220;accident.&#8221; It was the culmination of an era that was <b>boiling<\/b>. On that day, a<b> nationwide general strike had been declared<b> by the GSEE and ADEDY, <\/b>in response to the new <b>economic measures<\/b> and the impending passage of the <b>First Memorandum in Parliament<\/b>, which was scheduled for the following day.<\/p>\n<p>The country was sinking into the <b>insecurity<\/b> of the first Memorandum. The streets were filled <b>with anger<\/b>. In the squares, up and down, disparate forces were coming together.<b>Anarchists, extreme leftists, neo-Nazis.<\/b> Different ideologies, common denominator: outright rejection, easy <b>violence<\/b>, the need for an enemy.<\/p>\n<p>That afternoon, the branch of <b>Marfin Egnatia Bank<\/b> became a <b>trap for death.<\/b> Inside, people just going about their business. Outside, a city on fire. The <b>monotopes<\/b> ripped the air. The <b>fire <\/b>wrapped the building. The smoke rose up chokingly. <b>Epaminondas Tsakalis, Paraskevi Zoulia and Angeliki Papathanasopoulou<\/b>, who was <b>pregnant<\/b> in her fourth month, did not have time to be rescued. They had nothing to do with the slogans. They were not part of any conflict. They were just <b>people<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, after the silence of the <b>serials<\/b>, the <b>cleansing<\/b> did not come. The <b>physical perpetrators were lost<\/b> in the crowd. Hate was not punished as it deserved. Instead, for years, society looked away. As if it didn&#8217;t want to look in the mirror.<\/p>\n<p>The <b>memorial<\/b> was erected 10 years later, on the <b>tenth anniversary of the tragedy<\/b>, at the initiative of Prime Minister <b>Kyriakos Mitsotakis<\/b> as a gesture of national reconciliation and paying <b>honour<\/b> to the victims. And <b>vandalized<\/b> again and again. Marble broken, words scribbled, symbols erased. Not by accident. By <b>&#8220;known unknowns<\/b>&#8221; with specific ideological roots. By those who even today cannot bear the truth that exposes them.<\/p>\n<p>Because the <b>truth<\/b> is simple and harsh. Division is not an abstract concept. It has faces, it has words, it has responsibilities. And some have consciously invested in it. They cultivated it, fanned it, turned it into a <b>political tool<\/b>. To get closer to power.<\/p>\n<p>Today, some of them are attempting to <b>rewrite history<\/b>. With books, with narratives, with selective memory. <b>Alexis Tsipras<\/b> may be writing his <b>Ithaca<\/b>. But the shadows of Stadiou cannot be <b>erased<\/b> with words. They cannot be washed away with pages.<\/p>\n<p>Because in the end, <b>the plaque does not forget<\/b> And every time one touches it, one feels the same question burning: how much <b>blood<\/b> does it still take to understand what <b>discussion<\/b> gives birth to<\/b>?<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the pavement of 23 Stadiou Street, a few metres from the noise of the city, there is a phrase engraved in marble. It is not just a memory. It is an accusation. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}