Sparagmos – The Greek Crisis
Sparagmos*-The Greek Crisis
by Maro Kouri
September 3, 2012:
The 24th International Festival of Photojournalism Visa pour l’Image, opens the evening – screening shows with the photographic document “Greek Sparagmos” of the photojournalist Maro Kouri concerning Greece that is in the midst of violent economic turmoil.
September 2012 :
For the last two years Greece has been gripped by nationwide general labor strikes called by the country’s largest umbrella labor federations, representing the private and public sectors respectively. Violence erupts during the rallies between thousands of angry workers and students and the police in front of the Greek parliament in Athens. In the same Parliament Square named “Syntagma”, the Greek ‘Indignant Citizens’ movement was born in June 2011. They object to the government’s far-reaching budget cuts. Riot police fire tear gas, cluster flash-bangs and asphyxiating agents at the demonstrators, some of whom are throwing molotov cocktail bomb and stones of broken marble.
In Greece, the percentage of the population at risk of poverty is 20% with EU funding, rising to 23% without it. 33% of poor people in Greece are over 65, as pensioners are one of the social groups (along with single-parent families, the unemployed, immigrants and young people), which suffer most from low income and the high cost of living. Another movement named “Won’t Pay, Can’t Pay” fights against the high prices and the extra taxes that the Greek government levies on primary necessities such as electricity, public transport and tolls in order to earn support and loans from the IMF. Extremely violent clashes are now a daily issue in the centre of Athens, meanwhile parliament approves the austerity measures for Greece to receive its next installment of billion-euro bailout funds by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank
*Sparagmos: lit. “Tearing, rending.”
*https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sparagmos
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparagmos
Song “There’s nowhere you can fit in”
Lyrics – Voice: Yannis Aggelakas
Music: The band Tripes, Album: ”Nine paid songs” (1993)
Lyrics:
If you can’t fit in a messy homeland
if a blind hope is not enough for you
If you can’t fit in a dream-trap
If you can’t fold in arms that shut you in
Then what a shame, what a shame, what a shame
You are everywhere a left-over, you’re everywhere dying
Then what a shame, what a shame, what a shame
There’s nowhere you can fit, there’s nowhere you can fit in
If you can’t fit in a bad joke
If a tough prayer is not enough for you
If you can’t fit in a soul-brothel
If you can’t fit in a broken body
Then what a shame, what a shame, what a shame
You are everywhere a left-over, you’re everywhere dying
Then what a shame, what a shame, what a shame
There’s nowhere you can fit, there’s nowhere you can fit in
