ARRESTS OF TRADE-UNLON LEADERS BEGIN IN GREECE
The failure of the leadership of the Greek working class to mobilize last summer's popular upsurge into a direct challenge to the monarchy and its “liberal” front headed by Papandreou has had its inevitable consequences. The reaction is now attempting to mount a witch-hunt in evident hope of again succeeding in putting the masses in a totalitarian strait jacket.
The Athens police announced that on October 19, between one o'clock and nine o'clock in the morning, fourteen trade-union leaders and members of the EDA [United Democratic Left] had been arrested, They were accused of having participated in a public meeting the evening before at the Academos theater where illegal words were voiced.
= Geo
The police did not tell the full truth. According to Marc Marceau, special correspondent of the Paris daily Le Monde, the number arrested in the predawn raids, was forty. [Le Monde October 22.]
Six of them were held in prison, twenty-eight were brought into court and charged with violating Law No, 4234-62 which bars any kind of demonstration that refers to the banned Greek Communist party, or the anti-Nazi resistance organizations of World War II. The fate of the other six was not reported,
The specific charge was shouting, "Long live the resistance"; "Recognize the resistance movement"; and "Elections!"
The trade unionists denied the charges and accused the police of giving false testimony. Four of the victims said they could prove that not only were they absent at the time, they were not even in Athens at the time of the alleged crime,
The right-wing press approved the arrests, finding them "natural" and "justified."
The liberal newspaper Vima, however, stated flatly that the arrests were intended to "create a climate of fear in the country," in order to "muzzle the democratic masses." —
Eliei Iliou, an EDA member of parliament, said in denouncing the arrests that they were evidence of the "fascist outlook of the authorities," .
On October 21, eight more members of the EDA were arrested in Athens. They were accused of singing the hymm of the ELAS in the streets. The ELAS was the militant resistance movement that fought the Nazis during the German occupation of Greece. The hymn contains the phrase, "To arms, citizens!{" taken from the national anthem of