ATHENS — Main opposition SYRIZA – Progressive Alliance honoured the celebration of the Polytechnic uprising by sending a five-member delegation with representatives of its parliamentary group, party and youth party, while observing health protocols and the necessary social distancing.

The head of the delegation was party leader Alexis Tsipras, who arrived at the premises of the Greek military police holding a flower and laid a wreath at the monument of Spyros Moustaklis, in memory of the tortured.

"This day marks 47 years since the Polytechnic uprising. Forty-seven years from a crucial historical moment in modern Greece, which struck a decisive blow against the dictatorship of the colonels, but also defined in the clearest way the unfree regime and its methods, which had been imposed on the country since 1967," SYRIZA said in its message for the 47th Anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising.

The message also underlined that the Polytechnic uprising "was a creative political outburst of the youth of the time. And so it has remained to this day in our collective memory," noting that the anniversary every year is a "source of inspiration for young people of all subsequent generations" and of "political quests, the source of demands for a better future and the source of democratic visions."

SYRIZA stressed that the slogans of the Polytechnic continue to call the younger generations and the people to struggle, adding that "slogans such as 'bread, education, freedom' still touch the young today – in a completely different difficult time we are going through."

However, the party added, these difficulties cannot justify or permit a government, in their name, "to rank social demands, needs and democratic freedoms in second place."

"On the occasion of the anniversary of the Polytechnic, let us remember that democracy can't be placed in quarantine", SYRIZA noted in its message, emphasising that "this is the enduring homage for those who fought for the fall of the dictatorship and for those who lost their lives for this, but also the constant obligation of the young people of our time, who are looking for a creative way out and a better future."