Police clash with protesters amid Greek austerity strike

AFP - A Greek ex-minister was hurt on Wednesday and riot police clashed with scores of protesters as violence broke out on the sidelines of an Athens demonstration against government new austerity measures.
              
As hooded youths torched garbage bins and threw broken masonry at police outside parliament and on central streets, a throng of protesters assaulted former conservative minister Costis Hatzidakis, AFP staff said.
              
Photo footage showed Hatzidakis bleeding from the top of his head and nose after being cornered outside a department store by around a dozen people, some of whom were punching him.
              
"I am fine," Hatzidakis told AFP shortly after the incident.
              
"The photos make it look more serious than it really was. I received a cut near my eye and my nose was bleeding," said the 45-year-old conservative lawmaker who insisted there was no need to go to hospital.
              
Some 20,000 people participated in the Athens protest under a general strike called by the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) and the main union of civil servants ADEDY, and supported by leftist parties and organisations.
              
A similar number joined another protest in the northern city of Thessaloniki earlier in the day that also resulted in violence when youths threw firebombs at a central government building and vandalised several banks and stores.
              
At least three people were hurt and around 20 were detained by police during the northern city demonstration that drew some 20,000 protesters.
              
In Athens, protesters also set cars on fire outside a trio of luxury hotels on central Syntagma Square and tried to block streets with garbage bins.
              
Red paint was splashed on the nearby entrance of the Bank of Greece and boarded-up shops on central Stadiou Street were covered in black graffiti.
              
"Let's not live as slaves," read one while another called for a "popular uprising."
              
The protest was held hours after parliament approved a bill slashing pay in the country's poorly managed public utilities, just months after civil servants in the broader public sector had also had their wages and pensions cut.
              
The austerity cuts are mandated by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund after they extended a 110-billion-euro loan in May that rescued Greece from bankruptcy.
              
Other protests against austerity measures were expected Wednesday in other European capitals.
              
The general strike was the seventh this year against the austerity drive.
              
"Work rights are being suppressed and I think the whole Greek people should rise up," said Ellada Christodoulou, a lawyer in her fifties as she marched in the protest with a sign that said "default on payments now".
              
"This is a fight not only in Greece but in the entire world," she said.
              
In addition to grounding planes and paralysing rail and ferries, the general strike shut down schools, courts, banks and pharmacies while hospitals ran on reduced staff.
              
Civil engineers, journalists and lawyers also joined the action.
              
The government secured parliamentary approval of salary cuts in the country's badly mismanaged public utilities but was forced to axe a dissenting lawmaker, reducing its majority in the chamber to six.
              
The new bill spelled salary cuts for staff at utilities, known as Deko's in Greece, who earn more than 1,800 euros (2,413 dollars) a month.
              
"We have tough decisions ahead of us, but it is only through bold strokes that we can overcome the difficulties," Papandreou told his ministers late on Tuesday ahead of the parliamentary vote.
              
The finance ministry had recently released figures showing that Deko staff were annually paid some 40,000 euros on average, far more than other public or private-sector employees.
              
This was despite the fact that most of the public utilities were deep in debt.
              
Greece is trapped under a debt mountain of more than 300 billion euros (402 billion dollars) and came near bankruptcy in May before it was rescued by a loan from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
              
The adoption of such reforms follows a first round of austerity measures aimed at reducing the Greek public deficit, which stood at over 15.4 percent of output last year, more than five times the EU ceiling.
              
The economy overhaul is a condition set by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund for the release of a 15-billion-euro installment from the 110-billion-euro EU-IMF rescue package granted Greece in May.
              
Athens is now hoping in exchange to get an extension to repaying this EU-IMF loan in order to avoid facing an impossible mission to settle it among other debts that expire in 2015.