Friday, June 19, 2009
Anarchist A. Kiriakopoulos To Be Released From Prison
Today, the good news came in that A. Kiriakopoulos along with three other insurgents held in state captivity since the December insurrection are scheduled to be released from Koridallos prison before the coming Monday. After a solidarity campaign that inspired dozens of attacks, the state relinquished the remand that held the prisoners for over six months without trial. The wave of actions over the past weeks shows that solidarity, concieved as the furtherance of the class clash with the state, can indeed free our imprisoned comrades without compromising our revolutionary principles.In other news (I write this with the dryest of eyes: not a hint of saltwater to be found), an anti-terrorism police officer was shot around 20 times and killed last Wednesday in Athens. The police officer was attempting to protect a snitch who testified for the prosecution in the 2004 trial of a man the state claims was a member of the armed group ELA.
In what can be seen as nothing other than a thuggish act by a police gang with recently damaged egos, about 40 members of the newly formed police Delta Team attacked an occupied parking lot turned neighborhood park in the center of Athens. The swine arrested about 15 locals without warning or reason.
And so the struggle the continues...
Solidarity is the weapon of the people! (a greek anarchist protest slogan)
Friday, May 29, 2009
Letter from anarchist A.Kiriakopoulos from Koridallos prison
Five months after the explosive events of December, the mass arrests and the prosecutions that took place, six of us remain captives in the claws of the state.Recently, the so called “justice state” and its servants decided to extend my pre-trial detention (remand) stating that what should come first is the extermination of my person and of my “criminal” activity and the protection of society. According to their characterization, I am a reckless and fanatical person. To sum it up they characterized me an enemy of society. But the enemies of society are all those who after the cold-blooded murder of comrade Alexis Grigoropoulos tried to repress the social phenomenon of the violent insurrection in December with the reckless and mass use of teargas to the extent of torture, the beating of protestors, and their swift imprisonment. Anyway, it is known for years now that the cops, especially when dealing with anarchists demos, unleash chemical warfare with the slightest pretext so they can torture people. Despite the vicious repression of December’s insurrectionary violence, it continues to persist and is proof that the fire that was lit cannot be put out. After all Alexis’ murder was the cause and at the same time the pretext for the outbreak of social rage.
As always, a special role was taken on by mass media and the lowlife journalists brought their propaganda to the limit of vileness. After the state murder of Alexis, they reported about the widespread destruction in the whole of Greece and that the police made no arrests. I believe that the fact that all of us imprisoned for the insurrection face the same charges is no coincidence. The line from the state was exactly the same for nearly all of us.
Inside prison, time is the worst enemy. Especially when you are in custody awaiting trial there is a continuous uncertainty as you never know exactly when you are going to be released. This is a situation that definitely wears you down psychologically. This is also an effect of being locked up against your will with four people for 14 hours a day in a 9 square meter cell designed to fit only one person. It is especially felt when relationships of camaraderie or even of understanding are rare as they are outside the prison bars. Of course there are always those who choose to stand in dignity and struggle.
Incarceration is an everyday psychological warfare enforced upon you by the system when you are in prison. On top of this you also have the screws usually treating prisoners who take part in struggles (hunger strikes, refusal of prison food, demanding their printed material from the censorship) in a derogatory and sly way. One typical example is the last time prisoners were refusing prison food as a protest for the murder of Alexis, the warden of the wing came in together with other screws and threatened the prisoners taking part in the protest with disciplinary prison transfers.
Generally, when you are not subjugated to their correctional system they try to create a climate of fear. Anyway prison is like a large melting pot of souls. If you are a coward it will mince you up and make you even more of a coward but if you are tough it will make you even tougher and colder as a person. The cell makes the prisoner suffocate. Outside in the prison yard is the illusion of freedom…
Still through all of this nothing has ended, the struggle continues
Those who are right are the rebels
not the snitches and those who bow down
(a popular greek anarchist chant)
A teenager murdered by the Greek police!
We stand in solidarity with the struggling people!
On December 6th two police officers murdered Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15 year old teenager, by shooting him right in his heart. At first, both government and police claimed that the police officers were attacked, which turned out to be a lie. The Media despite their effort to distort the facts and reproduce the government and police propaganda didn’t manage to succeed. Witnesses say that, right before the incident, the policemen provoked the group of young boys and a verbal conflict followed but at no instance were the policemen attacked or physically threatened.
It’s not the first time the police have murdered in cold blood and it will not be the last. This bloody brutality must stop. This event occurred at a time when the reactionary plans of the government force the majority of the people to live in the worst conditions possible, without rights, condemning them to live a life of unemployment and poverty.
Immediately after the incident, thousands of people all over Greece went out in the streets to protest. Greek police confronted the protesters with extreme violence. Many ended up in hospital injured by plastic bullets or seriously beaten, and others were arrested. The amount of tear gas used was so large that the Ministry of Health issued a statement to stop their use. Hundreds of people were sent to hospitals with respiration problems.
This murder is another incident in a long series of police brutalities. But it is far more than that. It is another instance of the violence which is created by the world-wide economic system. Other incidents include the murder of the suspected terrorist Brazilian plumber in the London subway and the death of the French youth that triggered the massive French riots, but the list is longer and more multifaceted. A social system based on the principle of individual profit cannot but create violence, everywhere present whether visible or hidden.
09.12.08
Solidarios
• SOLIDARITY TO THE COUNTRY-WIDE ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS
• DOWN WITH THE MURDERERS AND THEIR POLICIES!
• THEY WILL NOT PREVAIL!
• IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF EVERYONE ARRESTED IN SOLIDARITY ACTIONS WORLDWIDE
• THE PEOPLE AND THE YOUTH WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Anarchists Disrupt Popular Jazz Festival
Yesterday, comrades took the stage at an outdoor jazz festival in Athens (you are right to assume they weren't invited.) Two banners were hung across the stage and, in between sets, two texts were read. One was about A. Kiriakopoulos and the other prisoners still held in jail after December's insurrection and the other was about state terrorism against immigrants. Jazz likely hasn't been this interesting since the musicians kicked heroin. Friday, May 29, 2009
FIRE TO CLEANSE THE EARTH
FIRE TO CLEANSE THE EARTH
A movement that is not capable of looking after its comrades in prison is destined to die, and that at a high price under atrocious torture.’ - Daniela Carmignani, Revolutionary Solidarity
The insurrection in December was a visible and mass expression of the social war that rages at all times and will continue until the destruction of all domination.
Thousands fought in the re-appropriated streets of the necropolis. Hundreds were arrested and, with exceptionally swift procedures, several were thrown in prison. Six of them still remain imprisoned up to this day. Because for those in power someone has to pay the price for the negation in practice shown by all of us against this decaying world.
Within the first two weeks of June the remaining prisoners of December, amongst them the anarchist A.Kiriakopoulos, will be coming in front of a board of judges who will determine whether their imprisonment will be extended. Days of action will take place between the 12-15 of June in solidarity across Greece.
Prison is a direct and violent tool that power has at its disposal to use against those that are not able or refuse to follow its rules. Especially in moments of intensified struggle or revolt, prison plays the role of isolating the “troublemakers” to weaken our collective attack and instill fear in those who may be willing to join the fight. In this way, prison and the justice system are structures that aim to inhibit the generalization of social conflict. Therefore, solidarity with all those imprisoned for the insurrection in December is necessary for the furtherance of the revolutionary project.
Solidarity should not be viewed through the lens of duty, obligation or charity nor does it require a personal relationship or absolute political identification with those imprisoned but is a means to strengthen our ties as collaborators in a conspiracy against the existent. Solidarity is our weapon by which we attack not only the prison but all the structures of power in a continuation of the social struggle as a whole. At the same time, solidarity is a tool used to obtain the immediate practical result of freeing our comrades in prison.
This is a call to comrades wherever they may be to start a wave of solidarity that sends shudders down the spine of the bastards in power. Let’s prove to them that the Athens syndrome is indeed a contagious disease.
Inside and outside the prison bars, the insurrectionary perspective is a permanent condition which does not wait for a specific moment, does not accept charity but attacks directly, everywhere, always.
Until the destruction of all prisons
FREEDOM TO THE COMRADE A.KIRIAKOPOULOS AND TO ALL THE PRISONERS OF DECEMBER
SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE PROSECUTED
Friday, May 29, 2009
NOTHING IS OVER: EVERYTHING CONTINUES
Insurrection is permanent, everywhere, and inevitable.
Though December will come again every year, nothing will ever be the same. It is war; paths of ashes leave the past behind, towards the total dismantlement of this old dead world, against which the attack accelerated in the past months, that will never be over; there is no going back from it. This war knows no innocence, while living in this reality makes us all a hunter for life: the ones that cry; the ones that sleep, the ones that sigh; the ones that spit in its mouth, the ones that build; the ones that break out. Once ignited the revolt continues in a dynamic of tension, recuperation and attack, by many, by few, by dark, by light; for as long as our time, our bodies and our freedom remain stolen from us. There is no counting on where the revolt begun or where it will go to, the open unknown is in the hands of the ones with the eternal youth, the stones, the passion and the gasoline. It will all continue.Smelling the fire, the state took hundreds of people off the streets in a fearful attempt to maintain its fragile power, to weaken the attack. But rebellion cannot be outnumbered, cannot be softened. As long as the prison society holds a grip on lives inside and outside, there is no desire to wait for a “second December”, because if waiting in the streets takes long; waiting in the prison takes eternally, while the state, the capital and their dominion find their space to root in the normality of apathy ever more. With an increasing amount of security and surveillance measures, they try to alienate reality more and more from its rebels in high speed and it speaks proudly of clean streets and sweet dreams, of law and order.
About 30 anarchists with helmets and hoods went into the supermarketnear the university of Saloniki and destroyed the security system! They took the foodstuff from the shelves and also took the moneyfrom the cash desk and burnt it outside the supermarket!nobody arrested!!