They started again to cut down trees in Exarchion square

Use of chemicals against protesting citizens • Emergency press conference on the issue, in the garden of Tsamadou street

Work on the subway and tree cutting has resumed in Exarchion square, after in the morning the police proceeded to arrest four citizens who spent the night outside the construction site “obstructing” according to the authorities access to the construction site.

Those arrested were released while the police “guarding” the work of cutting down the trees in the square claim that there is a newer prosecutor’s order allowing the work.

There is tension in Exarchia Square, with the police using chemicals, as residents protesting the cutting of the trees have gathered there and do not seem to have been convinced by the claims of “Attiko Metro” that the trees are simply “pruned” and that “they will be transplanted”, while upon completion of the projects, due to a contractual obligation, he will undertake the planting of 2,000 trees in green spaces in the city.

On Monday, in the morning and in the evening, hundreds of demonstrators, residents of the area mobilized with slogans such as “No Metro in the square”, “Exarchia will remain a neighborhood”, “Hands off the square”, “The trees will remain in the square”.

In the evening there was even tension, as the approximately 500 protesters were confronted by strong police forces when they tried to hang on the fence of the works for the metro the banner against the construction of the station.

The Assembly “No Metro in Exarcheion Square” addressed a call to residents and supporters to guard the square and not let the destruction and the cutting of trees continue.

Emergency press conference

An extraordinary press conference on the matter, in the garden of Tsamadou street, will be held at 2 pm.

At the press conference on the topic “Stop the cutting of trees and the destruction of Exarcheion Square”, Kostas Papadakis, elected municipal councilor of the Subversive Alliance for Athens, Yannis Kiatos, lawyer of “No Metro in Exarcheion Square”, Petros Konstantinou, will intervene. municipal councilor of Athens with the Rebellion in the neighborhoods of Athens and plaintiff against everyone responsible for the cutting of trees, Panagiotis Kefallinos, municipal councilor of Athens with the Anti-Capitalist Upheaval in Athens.

The municipal factions claim to put an end to, as they note, “the coup d’état actions of destruction of Exarcheion Square and for the emergency convening of the municipal council of Athens”.