Calay News
The former Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, was assaulted in a restaurant in Athens by a group of hooded men. According to his party, the Democracy in Europe 2025 Movement, the attack was a “fascist attack.” Varoufakis was having dinner with European colleagues in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia when several people began to insult him. Although he tried to calm the situation, the assailants beat him, kicked him, and knocked him to the ground, causing a broken nose. Varoufakis had to be treated at a hospital.
The former minister has thanked Twitter for the medical care and solidarity received and denied that his assailants were anarchists or leftists but “thugs” who had accused him of betraying Greece during the 2015 debt crisis when he was a minister in the Syriza government. Varoufakis was one of the best-known faces of the resistance of the then Greek executive to accept the conditions of the so-called ‘troika’ — the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund — to sign a new bailout in exchange for austerity measures.
Greek media put the number of assailants at around twenty. Varoufakis is now a member of parliament, and his party has a 3.5% voting intention in the polls. The note from his party, Mera25, accuses the assailants of being “thugs” and of having accused the politician of having bowed to the wishes of the Troika. Despite the aggression, Varoufakis has declared that “we will not let them divide us.”
