19 June, 1970 – 17 November, 1985
Μιχάλης Καλτεζάς;
Michalis Kaltezas was a 15-year-old anarchist shot in the back of the head by police in Athens, Greece during the 1985 commemoration of the Polytechnic uprising.
When the annual march had finished and was dispersing, anarchist passers-by began mocking some policemen who were having a meal in Exarcheia. More police arrived from a nearby riot-police bus, as did more anarchists. The confrontation intensified, and at one point a group of young people Michalis was among threw molotov cocktails at the riot police bus. After this, while the kids were running away towards Exarcheia Square, a cop shot and killed Michalis at the intersection of Stournari and Mpotasi.
His murder prompted widespread revolt, including the re-occupation of the Polytechnic and the Old Chemistry Building in Exarcheia, followed by the violent re-taking of the Chemistry building by police, in violation of the “Asylum Law” which the recently elected socialist PASOK government had put in place just a few years earlier– an asylum law created in honor of the 1973 Polytechnic uprising.
Nine days after Kaltezas’ death, the group November 17 retaliated by bombing a riot-police bus near the Caravel Hotel, killing one cop and injuring fourteen others.
According to most contemporary accounts, Michalis’ murder and the powerful reaction of the movement brought to an end what had been a tenuous climate of peace following the election of PASOK. Many leftists had believed, when the socialist party took power, that the inherently repressive powers of the state and police were then somehow on “the people’s side,” a lie which the murder of Michalis made impossible to continue.
