Post date: Apr 05, 2012 2:32:33 PM
A Greek pensioner's suicide outside parliament turns into a symbol of the pain of austerity.
The 77-year-old retired pharmacist, Dimitris Christoulas, shot himself in the head on Wednesday (April 04), leaving a suicide note saying he preferred to die than scavenge for food.
On Thursday (April 5) one of his neighbours, Ilias Sirakos, who said he new Christoulas for many years described him as a quiet and gentle person always ready to help the neighbours and deeply concerned about political issues facing Greece.
"Lately he had expressed concern about what was happening, the society's apathy and he was troubled. I think that this action of his was a symbolic action to everything that's happening," said Ilias Sirakos who runs a lottery shop in the neighbourhood.
He added that, several days ago, Dimitris Christoulas had told another neighbour about his plan to commit suicide to raise the awareness of the tragic situation developing in the society but that the neighbour didn't believe him and took it as a joke.
"He is a hero. If it's how it appears to be, then he is a hero. It's not easy to do something like this. Who can do it," Sirakos said.
The highly public - and symbolic - nature of the suicide prompted an outpouring of sympathy from Greeks, who set up an impromptu shrine where he killed himself with hand-written notes condemning the crisis. Some protested at night, clashing with riot police who sent them home in clouds of tear gas.
Dozens of Greeks gathered around the shrine on Thursday, leaving flowers and candles, and the "Indignant" protesters who held daily sit-ins for months last year said they would hold a second day of protests. A separate protest was planned in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
The conservative newspaper Eleftheros Typos called the victim a "martyr for Greece" and said his act was filled with "profound political symbolism" that could "shock Greek society and the political world and awaken their conscience" in the weeks before a parliamentary election that will determine Greece's future.
Anger was directed as much at politicians as it was at the austerity medicine prescribed by foreign lenders in return for aid to lift the country out of its worst economic crisis since World War Two.
Resentment is growing in Greece over repeated rounds of wage and pension cuts that have compounded the pain from a slump which has seen the economy shrink by a fifth since 2008.
Unemployment has surged to a record 21 percent - twice the euro zone average - with one out of two young people without a job.
The number of suicides has sharply increased and many Greeks feel ordinary people like the retired pharmacist are being forced to pay for a crisis that was not of their making.
ATHENS, GREECE (APRIL 05, 2012) (REUTERS) - A Greek pensioner's suicide outside parliament has quickly become a symbol of the pain of austerity and has been seized upon by opponents of the budget cuts imposed by Greece's international lenders.