LETTER FROM KONSTANDINA KARAKATSANI (greece)

LETTER FROM KONSTANDINA KARAKATSANI

Accused in the Conspiracy Cells of Fire case 

On 4-2-2011 I appeared in court after being called by the judge in order for me to develop with my presence the demand that for quite some time now I've submitted, a few days postponement of the trial. My appearance in the court gave the spark for some vulture-journalists to throw their mud, saying even that i I disagree with the demands that have been placed, creating and promoting thus an image of a climate of division. In the frames of faithful service to the governmental interests some of the Media as the trial day approached proportionally laid out the climate sharpening the knives of the court with open challenges to it, sucj as “now justice will show us if it is terrorised by imposing heavy sentences to the defendants” etc. 

This was continued with the beginning of the trial where they began to show extracts always adapted to a practice of libel and accompanied by propagandistic comments, while they also mentioned the tragic “escape operation” that obviously no one believes, they simply said it in order to overstress that there are reasons for the conduct of the trial in the prison and in order to justify our non transport to a regular room, something that would resolve all the problems. 

The climax came yesterday (4/2/11) where they used my own attitude for the creation of an image of a “divided front of the defendants” with an obvious target the devaluation of the hunger strike that my co-defendants have begun. First of all let it become clear that no matter what the state says, which speaks to us through the news reports and the internet, I never expressed myself against the demands. I simply believe that the root of evil is the legislation about special conditions of trial in its entirety. 

Even though this letter is primarily a drop of counter-information in the ocean of misinformation I cannot omit certain other important things. It should also be known that I never said in court that I accept to be tried in absence. Despite that whether I agree, or I disagree, I participate or not in the hunger strike, any choice of struggle of prisoners is respectable by me. My presence in court in no way means that I adopt the attitude of the judges that insistingly deny to accept the demands the moment 4 of my codefendants have gone on hunger strike. 

Also my presence signals my refusal to grant to the state the privilege to have a trial without lawyers and defendants, therefore without another side, something that means that they will easily impose the totalitarianism of their speeches and their decisions. I do not want this court to be turned into a cemetery that will bury in it the refusal of the charges, will bury my speech, my political substance, my dispute with those who either played a constructional role regarding the charges, or those gave false testimonies, the choice of clandestinity that I took, not recognizing any prosecution and no charges, and naturally will bury my cry against the persecutors and my accusers, who because they simply “suspected” did not hesitated together to imprison me. 

But these are the signs of our times. The season of the economic bloodsucking of society, the systemic crisis, the season where governmental savagery is accentuated and shielded. The season of 30 and more political prisoners. 

KONSTANDINA KARAKATSANI 

Femal prisons of Koridallos