The elderly lady of the photo was one of those who yesterday participated in a large pensioners' demonstration against the austerity, antipeople measures of the Greek government.
This woman, along with other retirees took the streets of Athens in order to assert their rights; the rights of their children and grandchildren. The Greek police "welcomed" this woman and the other pensioners with violence and tear gas.
The name of the lady is Katina Manitara, a resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Greece. As a child, in the beginning of the fascist occupation, Katina was delivering secret messages "under the radar" of the italian police. At the age of 14 she witnessed her father's torture from Greek fascists.
On May 1947, at 15 years old, she joined the heroic Democratic Army of Greece; the KKE-led guerrilla army which fought against the bourgeois military forces and their imperialist allies between 1946-1949. During the war, a bullet fragment stucked in her head where it still remains. At the age of 17, Katina Manitara graduates from the Military School of the Democratic Army with the rank of second lieutenant.
This lady, Katina Manitara, consists a symbol of resistance, of courage and dignity.
