Greek pensioner left note of economic despair

People lay flowers at the site where an elderly man shot himself
 at Syntagma Square in Athens.

ATHENS -- A retired pharmacist who shocked Greece by shooting himself dead on Athens' busiest square in protest over the country's economic crisis left a suicide note lamenting poverty and hopelessness, excerpts published on Thursday showed.

The 77-year-old man, who killed himself under a cypress tree on Syntagma Square on Wednesday morning, around 1,00 meters from parliament, said government austerity cuts had “wiped out” his pension and left him in penury.

He also compared the government, which is implementing an unpopular economic overhaul in return for EU-IMF loans, to the regime imposed by Greece's Nazi German occupiers in 1941.

“The occupation government ... has literally wiped out my ability to survive, based on a respectable pension which I had paid for during a 35-year period,” the pensioner said in an excerpt published in Greek newspapers.

“I find no other solution for a dignified end before I start sifting through garbage to feed myself,” he allegedly wrote in red ink.

A police source said the man had cancer.

Hundreds of thousands of Greeks have lost their jobs in the last year, and unemployment currently tops one million, a quarter of the workforce.

Authorities have been applying a tough economic overhaul since 2010, when Greece was forced to appeal to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund for bailout loans after its borrowing costs hit the roof.

To secure loan payments, Greece has been forced to drastically cut state spending and has slashed civil servant salaries and pensions by up to 40 percent.

Syntagma Square for two years has been the main rallying point for protests against austerity measures designed to haul Greece from its fiscal crisis.

About 1,000 people poured into the area early in the afternoon Wednesday, rallied by messages on social media.

They left flowers, candles and handwritten messages at the foot of the cypress tree where the elderly man had shot himself. Some of the notes placed there called for an “uprising of the people.”

Scuffles broke out with riot police after a group of around 50 youths threw stones at them. The police fired tear gas and charged the protesters after they began smashing the entrance of a nearby luxury hotel. (AFP)