Greek TragedyHow painful can a tragedy be? There are many parents out there loosing their children cause of drugs, abuse and myrders, but who would think that a polica man would shoot their child..?

When you hear “Greek Tragedy” your mind instantly goes to Ancient Greece and you feel like a very high-aesthetic play is going to take place in front of your eyes. Blue and white colors, beautiful, rich, black, wavy hair, white dresses and mustaches accompanied by classical music and warm weather. Well, as a Greek, I wish this was the first thing to come in my mind. My tragedy, Greece’s tragedy had the pickon 10th of December 2008 at 05.05 am.

Next days, on my way to work, I felt that the headlines of the newspapers were following me:

Greek Riot Police Fire Tear Gas at Protesters

Boy whose police killing sparked off five days of ri-oting in Greece ‘died from bullet’s ricochet’Riots, Looting as Athens Hit by New Protests

Militants firebomb Athens policeafter death vigilsand so many more...

Greece was falling apart, riots were everywhere smashing windows, ATMs, burning buildings, cars, police-men... The smell of the city was tear gas and the color was gray. One whole nation was mourning for the loss of Alexis Grigoropoulos. A 15 year old boy who was shot by a policeman at 5 am on 10th of December.

What followed made everyone even more mad. Corrupted politicians, lawyers and journalists is some-thing very common, I guess in every country. Only this time trying to convince the angry nation, this teenage boys’ friends who watched the bullet go through him and his parents that he died from “bullet’s ricochet” was a dash too much.

Personally, I am against violence. But I do believe that there is one point when you have to “speak” to the other side in their own language and then it becomes violence for violence. I am not proud for what followed the next days, but I was proud to be Greek; I was proud to be a part of a nation that when it sees something as unfair as that doesn’t go to sleep. You can accuse Greeks for many flaws, but we sureknow how to look for each other protest for our rights and justice.

It was about time to stop pretending everything is going well. 18% of unemployment, politicians steal-ing money from the poor and a debt to the European Union that kept growing... It was about time to change our smiley masks to the anti-teargas ones.

Rest in peace Alexis Grigoropoulos . We will make sure that you will always be alive in our memory and in our hearts.