Riot police fired tear gas to prevent farmers from the island of Crete from caravaning their tractors from the port of Piraeus to Athens Feb. 2. More than 1,000 farmers arrived with their tractors on ferry boats from Crete, intending to block the area in Athens around the agriculture ministry's headquarters, but police prevented them from leaving the port area. Several people were injured in the clashes, and at least four arrests were reported.

Meanwhile, protesting farmers in one Thessaly district began to withdraw from their road block on the national highway near Larissa in central Greece, in accordance with a decision they reached over the weekend, but those at the Promahonas border crossing in Serres maintained their road block for a 15th day, disrupting transport into neighbouring Bulgaria. In response to the repression in Piraeus, they closed the border completely, refusing to let even trucks carrying perishables to go through as they had done on previous days. (EMportal, Serbia, Feb. 2)

See our last posts on Greece and the global econo-protests.