ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION
Clashes erupt in the Greek capital during a protest in front of the parliament building where a pensioner killed himself because he said he had financial problems.
Protesters hurled petrol bombs at police who responded with tear gas during the violence in Athens on Wednesday (April 4).
The public suicide of the 77-year-old retired pharmacist has unleashed an outpouring of sympathy in a nation where a fifth of the population is unemployed.
A sense of national humiliation has also accompanied successive rounds of salary and pension cuts.
Greece is stumbling through its worst post-World War Two economic crisis as austerity measures to sort out the country's messy finances push it into a fifth year of recession.
The austerity measures, demanded by foreign lenders in return for bailout loans, triggered a wave of mass protests during 2011.
The latest data shows a rise in suicides in Greece, up 19 per cent in 2010 from the previous year as rising unemployment, higher taxes and shrinking wages drove some people to despair.
Last year the number of suicides in Athens alone jumped more than a quarter from a year ago.
