2008 Greek riots

The 2008 Greek riots started on 6 December 2008, when Alexandros Grigoropoulos (Greek: Αλέξανδρος Γρηγορόπουλος), a 15-year-old Greek student, was killed by two policemen in Exarcheia district of central Athens. The murder of a young student by police resulted in large protests and demonstrations, which escalated to widespread rioting, with numerous rioters damaging property and engaging riot police with Molotov cocktails, stones and other objects. Demonstrations and rioting soon spread to several other cities, including Thessaloniki, the country's second-largest city. Outside Greece, solidarity demonstrations, riots and, in some cases, clashes with local police also took place in more than 70 cities around the world, including London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, The Hague, Copenhagen, Bordeaux, Cologne, Seville as well as Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, and the western Cypriot city of Paphos. In cities far away from Athens, solidarity often was expressed as a peaceful informational protest, for example Sao Paulo, it proved that people could spread the news around the globe, from San Francisco to Wellington and Buenos Aires to Siberia. Newspaper Kathimerini called the rioting "the worst Greece has seen since the restoration of democracy in 1974".

Anti-austerity movement in Greece

The anti-austerity movement in Greece involves a series of demonstrations and general strikes taking place across the country. The events, which began on 5 May 2010, were provoked by plans to cut public spending and raise taxes as austerity measures in exchange for a €110 billion bail-out, aimed at solving the Greek government-debt crisis. Three people were killed on 5 May in one of the largest demonstrations in Greece since 1973.

On 25 May 2011 (2011-05-25), anti-austerity activists organised by the Direct Democracy Now! movement, known as the Indignant Citizens Movement (Greek: Κίνημα Αγανακτισμένων Πολιτών, Kínima Aganaktisménon-Politón), started demonstrating in major cities across Greece. This second wave of demonstrations proved different from the years before in that they are not partisan and began through peaceful means. Some of the events later turned violent, particularly in the capital city of Athens. Inspired by the anti-austerity protests in Spain, these demonstrations were organised entirely using social networking sites, which earned it the nickname "May of Facebook". The demonstrations and square sit-ins were officially ended when municipal police removed demonstrators from Thessaloniki's White Tower square on 7 August 2011.