Greek police raid occupied TV station

In a pre-dawn raid Thursday, Greek riot police stormed the building of former state television station and evicted dozens of protesters occupying it since June when the government abruptly shut the broadcaster, police officials said.

Four people were briefly detained during the operation in the northern Athens suburb of Agia Paraskevi, and about 50 people were removed from the building. No violence was reported, although police later used tear gas to push back a crowd of about 200 who turned up outside the complex to support the former ERT workers.

The complex had been occupied by the protesting ex-employees since June 11, when Greece's conservative-led government abruptly closed the station, known as ERT, and fired all 2,700 staff, citing the need to cut costs due to the country's severe financial crisis. They continued to produce unauthorized broadcasts online, including airing news reports and documentaries.

These ended Thursday, although regional former ERT branches were still broadcasting their own unauthorized programs.

"The broadcasting complex had been illegally occupied, and that resulted in daily financial losses for the Greek state," Kedikoglou said. "The (police) intervention was carried out in the presence of a prosecutor."

The government opened a replacement state broadcaster, EDT, based in a small former ERT building in another part of Athens.

The former workers had turned down repeated government calls to leave the ERT headquarters so that full-scale state broadcasts can resume from the complex.

The Syriza radical left coalition, the country’s main opposition party, protested Thursday's "illegal" police operation, with several Syriza lawmakers joining protesters outside the building.

"The government ... has created a black page in the history of state television and democracy in our country," a party statement said.

On Wednesday, thousands of Greek workers went on strike and marched to the country’s parliament in pouring rain to protest against austerity measures.

Greece is in its sixth year of a recession, and repeated rounds of austerity measures have strained households and sent unemployment skyrocketing to more than 27 percent.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press