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Greece in Times of IMF: Teacher Commits Politically Motivated Suicide

Teacher Savvas Metoikidis,44, showed no sign of ‘strange behaviour’, eye witness told local media. On Saturday morning he visited the village cafe and played backgammon. He later had lunch with father, mother and a brother. At 6 o’clock in the afternoon, he was to due to start his trip back to Athens. Metoikidis was visiting his home town Stavroupolis in Xanthi, in NE Greece, over the Easter holidays. He never entered the trip. He hang himself in the storage of the family house, after the lunch.

Xanthispress.gr reported that he left behind two letters: one for his family and one with a clear political content where he explains the reasons for his suicide as “protest act for the impact of the crisis on the Greek society.”

The suicide of the teacher and unionist shoke the local community, his colleagues and members of left-wing party ANTARSYA where he was a member.

Savvas Metoikidis was active in many strikes and protests. His friends describe him as ‘tireless fighter’ and uploaded a video on YouTube showing him holding banners of the Athens Teachers Union. His nickname was “Captain Nestos.”

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Metoikidis apparently politically motivated suicide is the second in Greece. On April 4th, retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas  shot himself at Syntagma square just a few meters away from the Greek Parliament.  

There were reports for another politically motivated suicide a couple of days ago on the island of Crete.

Politically motivated suicides is a new phenomenon in the Greece of loan agreements and recession. Suicides due to debts and economic despair have claimed the lives of more than 1,700 people in the last two years of strict austerity and rash impoverishment of the society.

 sources: also Proto Thema, Zougla.gr

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4 comments

  1. For anyone reading this, please DONT DO IT. The reasons are obvious for why this is happening, but if you feel like committing suicide, please think again. Go get help. It is nothing to be embarrassed about. All it does is make the lives of people we have left behind, even more difficult, in what is a VERY DIFFICULT LIFE at the moment. Help is there, we just need to search for it.
    R.I.P Savvas & Dimitris