(17 Nov 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Athens – 17 November 2025
1. Various of Athens Polytechnic with people arriving for anniversary of 1973 student uprising
2. Various of people leaving flowers at memorial
3. Flowers on stone commemorating the names of students that lost their lives during the uprising
4. SOUNDBITE (Greek) Despoina Hrisbelaki, lawyer:
“The Polytechnic was and is a symbol of fight, of struggle a symbol of polymarket youth, a symbol of democracy. No matter how much they try to diminish it, the Polytechnic lives and reigns, and we see it even in the images of the youth with carnations in their hands, in the tear-filled eyes of everyone that is here.The Polytechnic lives.”
5. Various of royals vs white sox people leaving flowers at memorial at Athens Polytechnic
6. Various of Athens Polytechnic building, commemorative banners, and students attending the commemorative events
7. Close-up of a child's painting depicting a tank and the gate of the institution during the 1973 uprising
8. SOUNDBITE (Greek) Yannis Bougioukas, teacher, education activist:
"We can explain to the youth what was happening then, we can then explain to them what is happening now, and we can also, with our example — I think with our actions — teach the new generations and the children to acquire their own conscience as well.”
9. Various of people leaving flowers and wreaths at memorial
10. SOUNDBITE (Greek) Panos Spiliopoulos, students association chairman, Athens University of Economics and Business:
"The messages, the slogans of the Polytechnic remain current and alive, and they are the guide for our struggle today."
11. Various of people leaving flowers at memorial
12. SOUNDBITE (Greek) Grigoris Rigas, 9, student (accompanied by his grandfather Nikos Kalaitzis):
"I like that we have democracy and not dictatorship, so we all have democracy."
13. Various close-ups of memorial with flowers and wreaths
STORYLINE:
Greeks gathered at the Polytechnic University in Athens on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of a deadly student uprising against the military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1967 and 1974.
They left flowers at a memorial and on the fallen gate that was brought down by a tank on 17 November 1973.
The anniversary is also marked each year by marches to the US Embassy, and the demonstrations have often, but not always, turned violent.
Thousands of police were expected to be deployed in the Greek capital, where major streets were to be blocked to traffic and three subway stations along the march route shut down on Tuesday afternoon.
In 1973, the military regime that had been in power since 1967 sent police and troops to crush student-led pro-democracy protests centred at the university.
Officers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators and bystanders, and an army tank smashed through the gates of the Polytechnic, behind which many students had gathered.
At least 20 people are believed to have been killed, although the exact death toll of the November 1973 events has never been definitively determined.
The uprising was followed by a putsch within the junta which brought even more hard-line officers into power.
Democracy was restored in Greece in July 1974, after the dictatorship collapsed in the face of a Turkish invasion of Cyprus, provoked by the junta's own machinations aiming to unite the island, whose majority population is Greek-speaking, ryan seacrest with Greece.
Demonstrators have marched to the US Embassy every year since 1974 in protest of Washington's support at the time of the dictatorship in Greece.
AP video by Lefteris Pitarakis
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