There are no report on the damages from the Chinese community in Athens during the rioting demonstration in the past few days in Athens, Panos Livadas, secretary-general of Information of Greece said in an interview with Xinhua on Friday.
Livadas said Greece is still a safe and peaceful country to live in and to travel in despite the violence erupted during the demonstrations against the death of a 15-year-old student who was shot by a policeman.
"The death has created unanimity between whole Greece, no matter the government, the opposition, and the people. Thousands of people took to streets to demonstrate their outrage, sorrow, pain for this tragic, horrible act," said Livadas.
Talking on why the riots lasted for almost one week, Livadas said, "People has the freedom of expression and demonstration which is guaranteed by our constitution and our democratic beliefs. "
"However, hundreds of marginal, extremist groups have hijacked the freedom of expression and demonstration as well as the condemnation and outrage of people in order to do what they want, transfer the peaceful demonstration into violence." said Livadas.
He said Greece has successfully hosted a peacefully Olympic Games after the 9/11 terrorist attack which shows Greek government and police are efficient and strong enough to handle the violent demonstration.
But he pointed out this demonstration is to protest the death of a very young people and huge percentage of demonstrating people seen on the street are teenagers. "We have to take the decision to be patient with the demonstrators, even those extremists and take protecting the human life as our top priority. We don't want to see any other innocent blood," said Livadas.
He said that Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis expressed that there would be no lenience in the attribution of responsibilities.
A 15-year-old boy was killed in police firing last Saturday, sparking several nights of rioting in capital Athens and other major cities in the country.
(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2008)
