Owners and employees of the Funeral Homes of Thessaloniki rushed to the side of protesting farmers, who have come out with tractors and agricultural machinery to the Malgara blockade.
Early on Thursday morning they gathered outside the Resurrection of the Lord cemeteries in Thermi and in a procession through the city center they went to the farmers’ gathering point.
The employees of the Funeral Homes express in this way their support for the struggle of the farmers, who are on the roads with blockades throughout the country demanding the immediate payment of community aid and measures to reduce production costs, along with support for the primary sector.
Nestoras Nikolopoulos, president of the Macedonian Funeral Directors Association, stated that “we want to take this opportunity to promote our own demands, as the government has never legislated for the funeral directors sector.”
The funeral home owners were greeted with applause from the farmers, who showed their support by honking their horns for a while.
Christos Gatzaras, a rice farmer from Chalastra, said that in the coming days, truckers, fishermen, delivery drivers and other professional categories of workers will join the farmers.
Funeral workers, a forgotten category, bravo, i love it….
This is a profoundly symbolic act of solidarity. When the institutions responsible for marking the end of life publicly align with a living struggle, it transcends typical protest support and frames the farmers’ plight as a matter of communal survival. The visual of funeral homes suspending services is incredibly powerful, communicating that the current policies are seen as existential.
My question is about the practical and legal ramifications. Has this collective action by funeral homes prompted any formal response from the government or religious authorities regarding the handling of burials, or is there an established, mutual understanding that this is a temporary symbolic gesture with alternative arrangements quietly in place for genuine emergencies?