ATHENS, Kingdom of Hellas

“Long live the great Syntrophos Lenin!”

“Down with the monarchofascist junta!”

These were the cries heard outside of the New Royal Palace on as a crowd of a new hundred people gathered and yelled and hurled bottles and rocks. Seemingly (according to the regime) inspired by the recent rehabilitation of the arch-communist Nikos Zachariadis by the re-stalinizing regime in Moscow.

Events proceeded peacefully, though more and more Athens police and Greek army units were arriving on the scene each hour, slowly corralling the roughly 485 protestors, students and urban laborers alike. News access to the park outside of the Palace was restricted to state media, and several arrests occurred before noon.

Shortly after 1:45 in the afternoon, elite Royal Guard units arrived to reinforce the beleaguered guards that had been keeping the crowd from breaching the premises. It seemed as though these Guards were less willing to tolerate the protestors and at roughly 2:30 in the afternoon, they allegedly began firing into the crowd. The official story was that the crowd shot first and that “the King’s guards’ had lost their discipline.” With the restriction of news access, no other story has been able to get out.

As bodies hit the floor in what some critics of the regime call the “Royal Massacre,” the Athens police arrested all the fleeing protestors and carting them off in a veritable fleet of police vans that had amassed. That day, 23 people were killed, and over 350 were arrested. The Prime Minister has blamed the lack of training of the “corrupt royal guard” and stated that a full investigation would be conducted, and that the families of the victims will be compensated.