Greeks demand new beginning following 'last act of a martyr'

Until Wednesday morning, Dimitris Christoulas, a respectable, middle-class pensioner, was familiar only to the residents of the quiet Ampelokipous district of Athens where he had lived and worked for nearly 40 years.

All that changed at 8.45am, rush hour, when the 77-year-old former pharmacist and pillar of his shopkeeping community shot himself under a giant cyprus tree on the central Syntagma Square.

He fell in front of the national parliament that many Greeks blame for the mismanagement that has plunged their country into crisis, and lay there dead as shocked commuters looked on.

On Thursday, 24 hours after his suicide, the name Dimitris Christoulas is known to most in this troubled country.

"A martyr for Greece" declared the Eleftheros Typos newspaper. "Scream of desperation" said the headline in Avyi next to a picture of Edvard Munch's celebrated painting.

To many, he has become a hero. "He did not rebel from his couch. He was a beautiful man, he will live on in history," said Pannayotta, a neighbour.

The suicide note Christoulas left behind urging young Greeks to rise up has also struck a chord with people who see their highly indebted nation's social fabric being torn apart by economic recession and externally imposed austerity measures.

"I cannot find any other form of struggle except a dignified end," he wrote. "I believe that young people with no future will one day take up and hang this country's traitors in arms in Syntagma Square just as the Italians hanged Mussolini in 1945."

Violent clashes with riot police followed the suicide. Protests continued last night as hundreds of demonstrators, some carrying placards proclaiming "may his last act be a new beginning", gathered around the tree where Christoulas died.

The protests have been fuelled by politicians who initially suspected Christoulas's motives.

The offices of Panos Beglitis, a former Socialist defence minister, were attacked after interviews in which he denied that the suicide was linked to the political class's handling of the economic crisis.

"We cannot connect his suicide with the country's financial plight. Besides, we do not even know if he amassed debts or whether his children had a hand in it," he said.

With elections next month, Lucas Papademos, the technocrat prime minister appointed under EU pressure late last year, tried to ease the tension. "In these difficult times for our country we must all - the state and its citizens - support those next to us who are in despair," he pleaded.

Christoulas's daughter, Emmy, refused to discuss whether her father was severely ill and worried about how to pay medical bills. She insisted that political motives were the driving force behind his suicide. "His act was a political act," she said, adding that her father had given "no indication" of his plans, either to her or his estranged wife. "In a handwritten letter my father left, he tells me everything."

Neighbours described Christoulas as a "wonderful man, a true Hellene" who had become politicised last summer by spreading protests across Greece.

Adonis Rizos, a friend for more than 30 years, had sat with him on the evening before he killed himself in Bellou square opposite the pharmacy store sold by Christoulas. "He did not give any sign he was going to do this. He chose to commit suicide as a political act. The politicians who created this terrible situation should shut up. They are not worthy to say his name," he said.

Another neighbour, who did want to be named, said Christoulas had talked of going to hospital on the day he killed himself amid rumours that he was in the "late stages of cancer" and feared not being able to pay medical bills on a pension reduced by government cuts.

"He had a serious health problem but did not talk about it. Maybe he did have cancer but he wanted his death to be a political protest that is clear," said the man.

Fr Stavros Papachristos, a theologian of the Greek Orthodox Church, called on EU officials to give Greece some respite. "The EU must take off the pressure. We cannot handle it. Europe must understand that millions of Greeks are dying slowly," he said.

He refused to condemn the pensioner for the sin of taking his own life. "The Church cannot accept suicide, but in this situation it is different; they forced him," he said.