Minister: Sit-ins by the few are undemocratic

Deputy Education Minister Dimitris Baxevanakis told Parliament Friday that the “small minority of students” conducting sit-ins at schools across the country must no longer be tolerated and no longer be “told what they want to hear.”

His comments were seen as a departure of sorts for the ruling SYRIZA party, whose critics have for years accused it of tolerating, if not endorsing, sit-ins at schools.

“It is not considered a student mobilization when three, five or 10 of them shut down a school, defying the will of the majority of students,” he said, adding that most sit-ins take place without mandate through a school vote.

It is a mistake, he said, to cultivate the illusion in young people that such acts are considered noble struggles of sorts.