Monday, November 23, 2009
Letter by the imprisoned comrade P. Masouras (accused for participation in the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.)
On Wednesday September 23 and at 8.15 as I was leaving my house in Galatsi on my way to the gym, I was arrested by 25 persons of the anti-terrorist squad.
In a matter of seconds I found myself on the sidewalk, hands cuffed behind my back, while at the same time they were informing their senior officers that “everything went well” and that they “have me”. I was taken to the 12th floor of Police Headquarters (note: anti-terrorist division). The next day I am informed that at the same time with me another two friends of mine have also been arrested.
In the meantime the show has already started. Without any sleep for 48 hours and physically exhausted, with my face to the wall and then a long questionnaire following, while at the same time some police officer goes from office to office announcing in a delirium of pleasure that what is happening is called war.
After that comes the interest for my career, the friendly chat, the bravado and the humane approach to the misguided youth that followed the wrong path in his life while they self appointed themselves to straighten me out and to make me see reason, not for them as they said but for my own good, to help myself, speaking to them about situations and persons that I know nothing about. Later I was informed from an officer that I was the stupid asshole of the 12th floor because the others as he said had “snitched on me” and “cleared themselves” and that if I didn’t speak I would go down for things other people have done, so I was yet again called upon to answer about situations unknown to me.
The guard shifts started: “good” cops with a sensitive touch and childhood traumas, as they said, that recognized injustice and wanted to help. On the other hand the “tough” commandos wearing full-face masks, “stern” appliers of the law and representatives of morality, acting in an absolute way leading to physical and mental exhaustion, as a means of revenge as they said because “I kept my mouth shut”.
That I refuse the charges against me does not mean that I would ever refuse my political “identity” and “origin”. I would never hide my dignity under the carpet of incarceration, overlooking the fact that I am a political entity which also takes its position against the values and institutions of this society by the means of critical revolutionary thought and practice. I am an anarchist and I am on the side of revolution and at the same time of myself.
The reason why at the present my two friends and I find ourselves in prison is crystal clear. Even the most naïve mind can perceive that fixed situations due to the elections play a role in the present condition, situations moving in the service of political and communication interests.
The hyperbole surrounding the situation, the armed to the teeth EKAM escorts (note: Special Forces Police) and the role of those despicable snitches the journalists in combination with the political condition of these days was enough to create a feeling of order and safety to the average Greek in face of the elections, so he can move sleepwalking in the role of the active citizen towards the voting poll in order to deposit yet again in someone else’s hands his share of responsibilities for his being. It is well known nowadays that public opinion has no opinion, so someone has to take on the role of shaping it. The tone of these days was mostly set by the lowlifes of the media and their all-devouring thirst for “maniacs in Galatsi” and “monsters in Chalandri”, for serial bombers who have ties with “renown” revolutionary organizations from which they take orders to accomplish missions. About guns and bullets found at my house until money that was suddenly a product of robberies because it was well hidden-next time I’ ll leave it outside the front door.
Society is not divided into classes but only into choices and consciousnesses. So let as learn from pain and pleasure, from blood and the street. We were born to exist as a whole in our inapprehensible uniqueness, inapprehensible because we can stand the pain, unpredictable because we were taught on the streets, ruthless because we will move against everyone, because we will learn to meticulously tie steel on our skin and paint the cement with revolutionary blood.
We execute morality as a prologue for destruction, we whisper with rage biting the words: WAR ATTACK because there is only beauty and strength, but some cowards in order to balance came up with justice.
Wherever there are barbed wires, let there be bloodied hands that rip them apart, wherever there is cement let there be cries full of rage that tears it down, wherever there are bars let there be souls like corrosives that destroy them, wherever we are buried alive let us bury with us morality.
We owe it to ourselves to bite on our shackles even if it is that we die biting. Because we are nothing more then our own choices.
For honour, dignity, revolution.
FREEDOM FOR THE COMRADES: V. PALLIS- Y. DIMITRAKIS- Y. VOUTSIS-VOGIATZIS- P. GEORGIADIS- I. NIKOLAOU
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF MY FELLOW ACCUSED H. HATZIMICHELAKIS- M. YIOSPAS
Panayiotis Masouras
Avlona Prisons
21/10/2009
In a matter of seconds I found myself on the sidewalk, hands cuffed behind my back, while at the same time they were informing their senior officers that “everything went well” and that they “have me”. I was taken to the 12th floor of Police Headquarters (note: anti-terrorist division). The next day I am informed that at the same time with me another two friends of mine have also been arrested.
In the meantime the show has already started. Without any sleep for 48 hours and physically exhausted, with my face to the wall and then a long questionnaire following, while at the same time some police officer goes from office to office announcing in a delirium of pleasure that what is happening is called war.
After that comes the interest for my career, the friendly chat, the bravado and the humane approach to the misguided youth that followed the wrong path in his life while they self appointed themselves to straighten me out and to make me see reason, not for them as they said but for my own good, to help myself, speaking to them about situations and persons that I know nothing about. Later I was informed from an officer that I was the stupid asshole of the 12th floor because the others as he said had “snitched on me” and “cleared themselves” and that if I didn’t speak I would go down for things other people have done, so I was yet again called upon to answer about situations unknown to me.
The guard shifts started: “good” cops with a sensitive touch and childhood traumas, as they said, that recognized injustice and wanted to help. On the other hand the “tough” commandos wearing full-face masks, “stern” appliers of the law and representatives of morality, acting in an absolute way leading to physical and mental exhaustion, as a means of revenge as they said because “I kept my mouth shut”.
That I refuse the charges against me does not mean that I would ever refuse my political “identity” and “origin”. I would never hide my dignity under the carpet of incarceration, overlooking the fact that I am a political entity which also takes its position against the values and institutions of this society by the means of critical revolutionary thought and practice. I am an anarchist and I am on the side of revolution and at the same time of myself.
The reason why at the present my two friends and I find ourselves in prison is crystal clear. Even the most naïve mind can perceive that fixed situations due to the elections play a role in the present condition, situations moving in the service of political and communication interests.
The hyperbole surrounding the situation, the armed to the teeth EKAM escorts (note: Special Forces Police) and the role of those despicable snitches the journalists in combination with the political condition of these days was enough to create a feeling of order and safety to the average Greek in face of the elections, so he can move sleepwalking in the role of the active citizen towards the voting poll in order to deposit yet again in someone else’s hands his share of responsibilities for his being. It is well known nowadays that public opinion has no opinion, so someone has to take on the role of shaping it. The tone of these days was mostly set by the lowlifes of the media and their all-devouring thirst for “maniacs in Galatsi” and “monsters in Chalandri”, for serial bombers who have ties with “renown” revolutionary organizations from which they take orders to accomplish missions. About guns and bullets found at my house until money that was suddenly a product of robberies because it was well hidden-next time I’ ll leave it outside the front door.
Society is not divided into classes but only into choices and consciousnesses. So let as learn from pain and pleasure, from blood and the street. We were born to exist as a whole in our inapprehensible uniqueness, inapprehensible because we can stand the pain, unpredictable because we were taught on the streets, ruthless because we will move against everyone, because we will learn to meticulously tie steel on our skin and paint the cement with revolutionary blood.
We execute morality as a prologue for destruction, we whisper with rage biting the words: WAR ATTACK because there is only beauty and strength, but some cowards in order to balance came up with justice.
Wherever there are barbed wires, let there be bloodied hands that rip them apart, wherever there is cement let there be cries full of rage that tears it down, wherever there are bars let there be souls like corrosives that destroy them, wherever we are buried alive let us bury with us morality.
We owe it to ourselves to bite on our shackles even if it is that we die biting. Because we are nothing more then our own choices.
For honour, dignity, revolution.
FREEDOM FOR THE COMRADES: V. PALLIS- Y. DIMITRAKIS- Y. VOUTSIS-VOGIATZIS- P. GEORGIADIS- I. NIKOLAOU
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF MY FELLOW ACCUSED H. HATZIMICHELAKIS- M. YIOSPAS
Panayiotis Masouras
Avlona Prisons
21/10/2009
interview-with-imprisoned-anarchist-yiannis-dimitrakis/
Translators’ note: The interview below was published in an Athens paper today (November 1st). It contains some very powerful words by a comrade who has managed to deal with the barbarity of incarceration with endless dignity, sobriety and the will to keep fighting. Our warmest greetings to Yiannis Dimitrakis and all other victims of the incarceration machine: until all are free, none of us truly is.
The journalist’s introduction:
For the police, he is a member of the gang of the “robbers in black”. He was arrested during a bank robbery and convicted to a 25-year sentence. A few days ago, the Ministry for Citizen Protection set a price of 600,000 euros on the heads of the rest of the gang, at the same time arguing that they are not only robbers but also members of terrorist groups.
Yiannis Dimitrakis, an anarchist, speaks for the first time from the prison of Domokos where he is incarcerated. He talks about his comrades on the run, the recent attack on the police station of Ayia Paraskeui in Athens, the group “Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire”, while he also responds to the minister for Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrysohoidis, who recently declared: “we are at war”.
During the bank robbery of January 17th, 2006, where you were arrested, another three people (Simos and Marios Seisidis and Grigoris Tsironis) got away – and a few days ago, these three had a prize of 600,000 put on their heads by the minister of Citizen Protection, Mr. Chrysohoidis. Do you believe that anyone will step forward to supply information
Indeed, the police force, some squalid hack writers and some permanent guests of TV shows together with the minister of Public Order (and not of “Citizen Protection”, the government’s new name of preference for it) have set up an ideal scene for would-be scalp hunters. It is also a fact that the administrators of political authority would always try to form within society a mentality for informants and people snitching upon one another – sometimes with threats, other times with all sorts of rewards.
Luckily, the consciousness-bearing greek society (that is, the one that recognises the cause for all her troubles in the face of the government terrorists or the financial elites and not in the face of three wanted anarchists), has historically resisted such practices and this, I believe, will happen this time around as well.
However, because there are and will also be aspiring Inspector Clouseau’s and ingenious Agatha Christie’s, I would like to tell them that many have fell in love with informing but no-one has ever loved the informant.
Do you believe that their arrest is near?
That I do not know and I wish that it never happens. What I do know is that if they do get arrested the unemployed are not going to find a job; salaries will not increase nor, finally, will anyone who struggles from dawn to dusk (running around like a slave between one, two and even three jobs) see anything change in their lives.
Do you believe they will surrender without a fight?
I believe that a “fight” in its narrow definition, that is, an exchange of bullet rounds, will not take place. Because they will never get arrested. I know and I am sure that they fight everyday to remain free. Why, you see, humans love freedom.
What would you do if you were in their position?
I would do exactly the same. I would also avoid my arrest, which given our situation would translate into my most certain conviction for the offence committed on January 16, 2006 – that is, when the robbery of the National Bank in Athens took place.
What kind of message would you send them from prison?
They already know they have my friendship and my love. So, I would tell them something that Nikos Kazantzakis once said: “I feel as if we are banging our heads against iron bars. Many heads are going to be smashed, but one day the iron bars will be smashed, too”.
In your opinion what purpose is served by putting a price on their head?
I believe that the move to put a price on their head is part of the public relations planning of the ministry of Public Order, to contribute to the image put forward by the government: that it delivers. Unfortunately, this plan directly involves militarisation, with many units of police in Exarcheia and also with the raking up of past cases of armed struggle, as the minister himself said – which then leads to putting a price on the three comrades’ heads.
Do not forget that the evidence they provide for their involvement in urban guerilla groups is no more than media items that have themselves been circulating via “leaks” from the police headquarters to certain newspapers during the past six months. For me all this is a communication trick and maybe the setting up of an excuse for the operational inability of the police to find people involved in dynamic actions. Remember this: in the future we might even hear excuses such as “if we cannot even find the fugitives, who are definitely terrorists, how are we supposed to clear up the imbroglio of armed struggle?”
So you want to say that the government creates terrorists…
That is the only thing that is certain. They have been doing it for years now. That is the standard tactic of the government, with its only aim being to prove it can deliver.
Do you consider the recent terrorist attack against the Police Station of Ayia Paraskeui as a response to putting a price on the heads of the three wanted anarchists?
Those who did this are the most fit to answer your question with a communique. My own opinion is invalid. You are better off asking some of your co-journalists, who not only seem to know everything, they also seem to know very well how to judge and convict. They have become judges, prosecutors and attorney generals at once.
There is information leaked out from the police that yourself and your alleged accomplices are not simple robbers, but you also participate in terrorist groups. What do you have to say to that?
Look: The only things we have not been accused of through these infamous “leaks” is drug dealing, trafficking, rape of minor girls and worshipping the devil. I know that many creative minds in the police headquarters are aroused with the combination of all these and I would honestly like to apologise to disappoint them by telling them these kind of things only happen in the Hollywood films they watch and the books they read.
According to the police you belong to the gang of the “robbers in black”. What is your response?
The “robbers in black” is an unfortunate and imaginative journalistic or police description that has no real base and that keeps being used by the media despite the fact that in the trial that took place it collapsed entirely. This, in the same way that even today they attribute to me seven robberies even though they know I have been acquired for six and talk of unbelievable sums I am supposed to have in my possession, even though the court acknowledged the money belonged to the anarchist scene.
All this, finally, at the time when they know that they spectacular scuffle they describe never took place and especially concerning the three friends and comrades for which they have issued arrest warrants with evidence that in my eyes seems ridiculous.
And in any case, we should say something else that derives from common sense: CCTV in banks is usually of older technology and only records two colours, black and white. Robbers, you might know, tend to go to banks dressed in dark clothing, especially during the winter – they tend to avoid the appearance of a folk singer in a live club, for example.
You justified your participation in the robbery where you were arrested by talking of an act of “expropriation”: What is the difference between an expropriation and a common robbery?
The difference is made by the subject of the action, even if for me the two terms are as detached as politicians are from real life. For a person to name their action “expropriation” they need nothing more than to pass over from their natural reaction against the conditions they are faced with, to the conscious revolutionary position: which is no other than the struggle against the powerful of this world. The difference is signified by the subject of the action.
The bank that you robbed was later targeted with consecutive arson attacks and was eventually forced to close. What this a revenge that some took in your name?
First of all, I do not know if that particular bank closed. In any case the attacks that were taking place at the time of my arrest were, obviously, acts of solidarity. For the majority of society the bank comprises a ruthless financial mechanism that will day after day squeeze thousands of families. And everybody knows that the banking giants are responsible for today’s financial crisis that the people come to pay for.
You define yourself as an anarchist. Do you believe in armed violence?
Throughout the process of social change, a number of different forms of struggle have taken shape. Each person chooses the form of action they believe to fit the political necessities of the times in which they live. I personally believe that there is no historical or objective condition now that should make us leave any particular form of struggle in the cupboard of history. To the contrary, we live in some very violent times, where states on the international level exercise terrorism against all.
A few days ago we had the armed attack against the Police Station of Ayia Paraskeui in Athens. Do you agree with attacks like this?
What matters is how these attacks are portrayed in the eyes of society, without the Goebbels-like distorting lens of the media. I am neither a critic nor an estimator of actions of armed struggle. I have never claimed – nor could I – such a title.
Some anti-authoritarians claim that in the face of the police that were shot, police violence is punished. Do you agree with this opinion?
Whether we like it or not the armed representatives of order and security, as they are called, have connected their operational existence with violence and repression: with “random” discharging of guns, with the raping of women and the assassinations of migrants in police stations, with beatings, torturing, arbitrariness, humiliation and so much that takes place either behind station walls or out in the streets. Every one of us should, taking all this into account, reach their own conclusions.
But isn’t the logic of “collective punishment” the most fascist one?
Such a logic should be sought between the winners of socio-political clashes, who are the ones who turned it into a regular tactic. The fact that some people chose to return what they have been receiving for years might strike many as odd, but what can we do? You’re going to reap just what you sow.
Do you believe that we are entering a phase of violence without rules? For example, up to this day, never before had a woman been attacked. What have you got to say about “blind” attacks like this?
I do not know if these are, indeed, “blind attacks”. The ones that have taken place in the last few years comprise attacks against targets that historically belong to the authoritarian system of repression and exploitation of human society. I have never seen a citizen being targeted.
What kind of feelings does the attempted assassination of a 23-year old girl revoke to you?
You would be better off to ask those who have fallen dead by police bullets.
Should 19-year old children comprise the terrorists’ targets?
The police who were shot were not shot because they were young kids. They were shot for other reasons that obviously have nothing to do with their age. These will be explained to us by those who took that action.
A little while ago some youths were arrested in Chalandri, Athens, under the accusation of participating in the group “Coalition of the Cells of Fire”. What about them, are they terrorists?
The terrorists are those who daily condemn us to a slow death. To a life without living. Those who framed-up 19-year old kids with no evidence, in order to alter the dynamics of their coming electoral defeat (he refers to the Conservative government that stepped down on October 4 – trans.)
What is your life in prison like?
As difficult as it is for the rest of the prisoners. The problems of the greek purgatory-prisons are known to all of us and journalists in particular. You should know however that all of us in here will not allow neither for our dignity nor our right to freedom to rot away in the prison cells.
You exist around penal prisoners (as opposed to political prisoners – trans). How do they treat you?
First, I disagree with the term “penal”. I do not agree with distinctions between prisoners. The way people treat us depends on how we treat them too. Everything is an impression. At second sight, nothing is as we imagine it to be.
If you could escape, would you do it?
I will reply to you with a slogan: “The passion for freedom is stronger than any prison”.
Mr Chrysohoidis (the minister of “citizen protection”) has announced he will be withdrawing personal body guards from politicians and businessmen. Would you advice him to withdraw them or retain them?
The ones you mentioned will most definitely advise him much wiser on what he should do!
What would you respond to his recent statement, “we are at war”?
At first reading, someone could come to think that Mr Chrysohoidis’ statement concerns exclusively people that take part in armed attacks against state or other targets. However, a closer reading of the actions of previous governments would reveal that the war in question is launched at all times against the most vulnerable social classes. We have been at war for many years now. They just won’t admit it. I am not sure what purpose is served by these war cries behind the security of ministerial offices and scores of security guards.
Who shouldn’t sleep peacefully in Greece from now on?
Exactly the same people who should not have slept peacefully before either.
Your court of appeals case is on December 9th. How do you see things forming up for you within such a tense climate?
Seeing the result of the initial trial and the stance of justice against all prisoners, I cannot really say I hold too much hope. That said, I will try to fight my struggle with my lawyers’ assistance.
Is there anything you regret?
Every decision and choice I make I do so after much thought and throughout the principles and values I hold. These I am prepared to defend with my own life. Until the end.
How do you see your life after?
Through the philosophical stance “Carpe diem”. Or else, seize the day…
The journalist’s introduction:
For the police, he is a member of the gang of the “robbers in black”. He was arrested during a bank robbery and convicted to a 25-year sentence. A few days ago, the Ministry for Citizen Protection set a price of 600,000 euros on the heads of the rest of the gang, at the same time arguing that they are not only robbers but also members of terrorist groups.
Yiannis Dimitrakis, an anarchist, speaks for the first time from the prison of Domokos where he is incarcerated. He talks about his comrades on the run, the recent attack on the police station of Ayia Paraskeui in Athens, the group “Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire”, while he also responds to the minister for Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrysohoidis, who recently declared: “we are at war”.
During the bank robbery of January 17th, 2006, where you were arrested, another three people (Simos and Marios Seisidis and Grigoris Tsironis) got away – and a few days ago, these three had a prize of 600,000 put on their heads by the minister of Citizen Protection, Mr. Chrysohoidis. Do you believe that anyone will step forward to supply information
Indeed, the police force, some squalid hack writers and some permanent guests of TV shows together with the minister of Public Order (and not of “Citizen Protection”, the government’s new name of preference for it) have set up an ideal scene for would-be scalp hunters. It is also a fact that the administrators of political authority would always try to form within society a mentality for informants and people snitching upon one another – sometimes with threats, other times with all sorts of rewards.
Luckily, the consciousness-bearing greek society (that is, the one that recognises the cause for all her troubles in the face of the government terrorists or the financial elites and not in the face of three wanted anarchists), has historically resisted such practices and this, I believe, will happen this time around as well.
However, because there are and will also be aspiring Inspector Clouseau’s and ingenious Agatha Christie’s, I would like to tell them that many have fell in love with informing but no-one has ever loved the informant.
Do you believe that their arrest is near?
That I do not know and I wish that it never happens. What I do know is that if they do get arrested the unemployed are not going to find a job; salaries will not increase nor, finally, will anyone who struggles from dawn to dusk (running around like a slave between one, two and even three jobs) see anything change in their lives.
Do you believe they will surrender without a fight?
I believe that a “fight” in its narrow definition, that is, an exchange of bullet rounds, will not take place. Because they will never get arrested. I know and I am sure that they fight everyday to remain free. Why, you see, humans love freedom.
What would you do if you were in their position?
I would do exactly the same. I would also avoid my arrest, which given our situation would translate into my most certain conviction for the offence committed on January 16, 2006 – that is, when the robbery of the National Bank in Athens took place.
What kind of message would you send them from prison?
They already know they have my friendship and my love. So, I would tell them something that Nikos Kazantzakis once said: “I feel as if we are banging our heads against iron bars. Many heads are going to be smashed, but one day the iron bars will be smashed, too”.
In your opinion what purpose is served by putting a price on their head?
I believe that the move to put a price on their head is part of the public relations planning of the ministry of Public Order, to contribute to the image put forward by the government: that it delivers. Unfortunately, this plan directly involves militarisation, with many units of police in Exarcheia and also with the raking up of past cases of armed struggle, as the minister himself said – which then leads to putting a price on the three comrades’ heads.
Do not forget that the evidence they provide for their involvement in urban guerilla groups is no more than media items that have themselves been circulating via “leaks” from the police headquarters to certain newspapers during the past six months. For me all this is a communication trick and maybe the setting up of an excuse for the operational inability of the police to find people involved in dynamic actions. Remember this: in the future we might even hear excuses such as “if we cannot even find the fugitives, who are definitely terrorists, how are we supposed to clear up the imbroglio of armed struggle?”
So you want to say that the government creates terrorists…
That is the only thing that is certain. They have been doing it for years now. That is the standard tactic of the government, with its only aim being to prove it can deliver.
Do you consider the recent terrorist attack against the Police Station of Ayia Paraskeui as a response to putting a price on the heads of the three wanted anarchists?
Those who did this are the most fit to answer your question with a communique. My own opinion is invalid. You are better off asking some of your co-journalists, who not only seem to know everything, they also seem to know very well how to judge and convict. They have become judges, prosecutors and attorney generals at once.
There is information leaked out from the police that yourself and your alleged accomplices are not simple robbers, but you also participate in terrorist groups. What do you have to say to that?
Look: The only things we have not been accused of through these infamous “leaks” is drug dealing, trafficking, rape of minor girls and worshipping the devil. I know that many creative minds in the police headquarters are aroused with the combination of all these and I would honestly like to apologise to disappoint them by telling them these kind of things only happen in the Hollywood films they watch and the books they read.
According to the police you belong to the gang of the “robbers in black”. What is your response?
The “robbers in black” is an unfortunate and imaginative journalistic or police description that has no real base and that keeps being used by the media despite the fact that in the trial that took place it collapsed entirely. This, in the same way that even today they attribute to me seven robberies even though they know I have been acquired for six and talk of unbelievable sums I am supposed to have in my possession, even though the court acknowledged the money belonged to the anarchist scene.
All this, finally, at the time when they know that they spectacular scuffle they describe never took place and especially concerning the three friends and comrades for which they have issued arrest warrants with evidence that in my eyes seems ridiculous.
And in any case, we should say something else that derives from common sense: CCTV in banks is usually of older technology and only records two colours, black and white. Robbers, you might know, tend to go to banks dressed in dark clothing, especially during the winter – they tend to avoid the appearance of a folk singer in a live club, for example.
You justified your participation in the robbery where you were arrested by talking of an act of “expropriation”: What is the difference between an expropriation and a common robbery?
The difference is made by the subject of the action, even if for me the two terms are as detached as politicians are from real life. For a person to name their action “expropriation” they need nothing more than to pass over from their natural reaction against the conditions they are faced with, to the conscious revolutionary position: which is no other than the struggle against the powerful of this world. The difference is signified by the subject of the action.
The bank that you robbed was later targeted with consecutive arson attacks and was eventually forced to close. What this a revenge that some took in your name?
First of all, I do not know if that particular bank closed. In any case the attacks that were taking place at the time of my arrest were, obviously, acts of solidarity. For the majority of society the bank comprises a ruthless financial mechanism that will day after day squeeze thousands of families. And everybody knows that the banking giants are responsible for today’s financial crisis that the people come to pay for.
You define yourself as an anarchist. Do you believe in armed violence?
Throughout the process of social change, a number of different forms of struggle have taken shape. Each person chooses the form of action they believe to fit the political necessities of the times in which they live. I personally believe that there is no historical or objective condition now that should make us leave any particular form of struggle in the cupboard of history. To the contrary, we live in some very violent times, where states on the international level exercise terrorism against all.
A few days ago we had the armed attack against the Police Station of Ayia Paraskeui in Athens. Do you agree with attacks like this?
What matters is how these attacks are portrayed in the eyes of society, without the Goebbels-like distorting lens of the media. I am neither a critic nor an estimator of actions of armed struggle. I have never claimed – nor could I – such a title.
Some anti-authoritarians claim that in the face of the police that were shot, police violence is punished. Do you agree with this opinion?
Whether we like it or not the armed representatives of order and security, as they are called, have connected their operational existence with violence and repression: with “random” discharging of guns, with the raping of women and the assassinations of migrants in police stations, with beatings, torturing, arbitrariness, humiliation and so much that takes place either behind station walls or out in the streets. Every one of us should, taking all this into account, reach their own conclusions.
But isn’t the logic of “collective punishment” the most fascist one?
Such a logic should be sought between the winners of socio-political clashes, who are the ones who turned it into a regular tactic. The fact that some people chose to return what they have been receiving for years might strike many as odd, but what can we do? You’re going to reap just what you sow.
Do you believe that we are entering a phase of violence without rules? For example, up to this day, never before had a woman been attacked. What have you got to say about “blind” attacks like this?
I do not know if these are, indeed, “blind attacks”. The ones that have taken place in the last few years comprise attacks against targets that historically belong to the authoritarian system of repression and exploitation of human society. I have never seen a citizen being targeted.
What kind of feelings does the attempted assassination of a 23-year old girl revoke to you?
You would be better off to ask those who have fallen dead by police bullets.
Should 19-year old children comprise the terrorists’ targets?
The police who were shot were not shot because they were young kids. They were shot for other reasons that obviously have nothing to do with their age. These will be explained to us by those who took that action.
A little while ago some youths were arrested in Chalandri, Athens, under the accusation of participating in the group “Coalition of the Cells of Fire”. What about them, are they terrorists?
The terrorists are those who daily condemn us to a slow death. To a life without living. Those who framed-up 19-year old kids with no evidence, in order to alter the dynamics of their coming electoral defeat (he refers to the Conservative government that stepped down on October 4 – trans.)
What is your life in prison like?
As difficult as it is for the rest of the prisoners. The problems of the greek purgatory-prisons are known to all of us and journalists in particular. You should know however that all of us in here will not allow neither for our dignity nor our right to freedom to rot away in the prison cells.
You exist around penal prisoners (as opposed to political prisoners – trans). How do they treat you?
First, I disagree with the term “penal”. I do not agree with distinctions between prisoners. The way people treat us depends on how we treat them too. Everything is an impression. At second sight, nothing is as we imagine it to be.
If you could escape, would you do it?
I will reply to you with a slogan: “The passion for freedom is stronger than any prison”.
Mr Chrysohoidis (the minister of “citizen protection”) has announced he will be withdrawing personal body guards from politicians and businessmen. Would you advice him to withdraw them or retain them?
The ones you mentioned will most definitely advise him much wiser on what he should do!
What would you respond to his recent statement, “we are at war”?
At first reading, someone could come to think that Mr Chrysohoidis’ statement concerns exclusively people that take part in armed attacks against state or other targets. However, a closer reading of the actions of previous governments would reveal that the war in question is launched at all times against the most vulnerable social classes. We have been at war for many years now. They just won’t admit it. I am not sure what purpose is served by these war cries behind the security of ministerial offices and scores of security guards.
Who shouldn’t sleep peacefully in Greece from now on?
Exactly the same people who should not have slept peacefully before either.
Your court of appeals case is on December 9th. How do you see things forming up for you within such a tense climate?
Seeing the result of the initial trial and the stance of justice against all prisoners, I cannot really say I hold too much hope. That said, I will try to fight my struggle with my lawyers’ assistance.
Is there anything you regret?
Every decision and choice I make I do so after much thought and throughout the principles and values I hold. These I am prepared to defend with my own life. Until the end.
How do you see your life after?
Through the philosophical stance “Carpe diem”. Or else, seize the day…
The summer in Athens is in full-swing! The temperature rises, the days are longer, sweat paints your t-shirt to your body, and most Greek natives escape to one of the countries 227 islands. With the heat in the city reaching new heights, theres no harm in adding a few more degrees to the thermometer. With that being said, a tax office was bombed in the central district of Ambelokipi. The bomb that exploded at 1:30 am on Friday was placed under the office's disability ramp and the blast found its merry way to a McDonalds nearby. Before the 4.4 lbs dynamite bomb was denotated, police say an anonymous call was phoned into newspapers to warn about the coming attack.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Graffiti @ meeting in solidarity with the prisoners
Posted on November 20th, 2009
Archived in Prisoners
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alfredo maría bonano, amadeu casellas, axel osorio, chritos stratigopoulus, cristián cancino, cristián otero pérez, esteban huiniguir, flora pavez, freddy fuentevilla, gabriel pombo da silva, marcelo dotte, marcelo villarroel, marco camenish, matías castro, mumia abu-jamal, pablo carvajal, ted kaczynski, yiannis dimitrakes
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Another year since the murder of Alex Lemún
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Graffiti @ meeting in solidarity with the prisoners
A panphlet said:
Inside and Outside the Prison: Revolt and Jailbreak
“It’s time to act, in the daily basis with our related, for the destruction of the prison society and any social attemp to reform this disgusting system of death. The solidarity never should be an empty slogan, but a daily action of confrontation with power and unfalling support to our brothers kidnapped in this war to the death”. Mauricio Morales.
Axel Osorio, Marcelo Dotte, Esteban Huiniguir (Cárcel de Alta Seguridad)
Matías Castro, Pablo Carvajal, Cristián Cancino (Santiago 1)
Flora Pavez (Centro de Orientación Femenina)
Cristián Otero Pérez (Cárcel de Temuco)
Prisioneros Políticos Mapuche
Prisoners in the Social War:
¡¡A LA KALLE!!
Revolutionary Solidarity with those kidnapped from the State-Capital in the Rest of The World
It’s time to strengthen bonds of solidarity with our comrades in prison, in this territory and the resto of the world. Understanding that the fight against power is a life decision, it is urgent that every gesture of attack aims the destruction of the prisons and the society that keeps them.
¡¡Freedom now for Marco Camenisch (Switzerland), Gabriel Pombo da Silva (Germany), Amadeu Casellas (Spain), Freddy Fuentevilla y Marcelo Villarroel (Argentina), Yiannis Dimitrakes, Christos Stratigopoulus y Alfredo María Bonano (Greece), Ted Kaczynski y Mumia Abu-Jamal (USA) and all other prisoners in the Social War!!
Archived in Prisoners
Leave a comment
También en...
* English English
* Castellano Castellano
Tags
alfredo maría bonano, amadeu casellas, axel osorio, chritos stratigopoulus, cristián cancino, cristián otero pérez, esteban huiniguir, flora pavez, freddy fuentevilla, gabriel pombo da silva, marcelo dotte, marcelo villarroel, marco camenish, matías castro, mumia abu-jamal, pablo carvajal, ted kaczynski, yiannis dimitrakes
Previous Post
Another year since the murder of Alex Lemún
Next Post
Graffiti @ meeting in solidarity with the prisoners
A panphlet said:
Inside and Outside the Prison: Revolt and Jailbreak
“It’s time to act, in the daily basis with our related, for the destruction of the prison society and any social attemp to reform this disgusting system of death. The solidarity never should be an empty slogan, but a daily action of confrontation with power and unfalling support to our brothers kidnapped in this war to the death”. Mauricio Morales.
Axel Osorio, Marcelo Dotte, Esteban Huiniguir (Cárcel de Alta Seguridad)
Matías Castro, Pablo Carvajal, Cristián Cancino (Santiago 1)
Flora Pavez (Centro de Orientación Femenina)
Cristián Otero Pérez (Cárcel de Temuco)
Prisioneros Políticos Mapuche
Prisoners in the Social War:
¡¡A LA KALLE!!
Revolutionary Solidarity with those kidnapped from the State-Capital in the Rest of The World
It’s time to strengthen bonds of solidarity with our comrades in prison, in this territory and the resto of the world. Understanding that the fight against power is a life decision, it is urgent that every gesture of attack aims the destruction of the prisons and the society that keeps them.
¡¡Freedom now for Marco Camenisch (Switzerland), Gabriel Pombo da Silva (Germany), Amadeu Casellas (Spain), Freddy Fuentevilla y Marcelo Villarroel (Argentina), Yiannis Dimitrakes, Christos Stratigopoulus y Alfredo María Bonano (Greece), Ted Kaczynski y Mumia Abu-Jamal (USA) and all other prisoners in the Social War!!
News from Bulgaria - October 2009
This month some people in Bulgaria decided to fight the economic crisis in special way. A 15- years boy stated to produce money right in his home with his home computer and printer. A worker in the city of Varna went with a gun in the office of his ex-boss and asked for the money that the company owns him. Again he was told that there is no money and they cannot pay him so he took one computer.
Despite the so called crisis some people still do not lose their sense of humor. Someone called police and said something like that: “I am in front of the government building, I am close to the fountain, I am dressed in black and I am armed. I am waiting for the prime-minister to come out so I can kill him.” Police came quickly. There was a man dressed in black close to the fountain and they arrested him. He was very surprised and claimed he has nothing to do with the phone call. So police call back the telephone number and one mobile phone started to ring nearby. So they arrested the joker.
If you have lived for some time in Bulgaria maybe you have noticed how much fascists there are here. City of Plovdiv is one of their strongholds. But this month some news come from there. Some young people formed a group called “United Front” to fight back nazi scum. That’s good!
Despite the so called crisis some people still do not lose their sense of humor. Someone called police and said something like that: “I am in front of the government building, I am close to the fountain, I am dressed in black and I am armed. I am waiting for the prime-minister to come out so I can kill him.” Police came quickly. There was a man dressed in black close to the fountain and they arrested him. He was very surprised and claimed he has nothing to do with the phone call. So police call back the telephone number and one mobile phone started to ring nearby. So they arrested the joker.
If you have lived for some time in Bulgaria maybe you have noticed how much fascists there are here. City of Plovdiv is one of their strongholds. But this month some news come from there. Some young people formed a group called “United Front” to fight back nazi scum. That’s good!
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Greek radical anarchists claim attack on lawmaker
A Greek radical anarchist group has claimed responsibility for a small bomb that exploded last week outside the home of a Socialist lawmaker.
Nobody was injured in the attack, which caused minor damage to the suburban Athens apartment building where Mimis Androulakis, a member of the governing party, lives.
The Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire group says Androulakis, a former Communist, is "a television-friendly lackey of those in power."
Since the end of September, Greek police have arrested and charged with terrorism five suspected group members. Monday's proclamation, posted online, said none of the five were linked with the Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire.
The group has targeted several politicians over the past few months with small bombs, causing no injuries.
Nobody was injured in the attack, which caused minor damage to the suburban Athens apartment building where Mimis Androulakis, a member of the governing party, lives.
The Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire group says Androulakis, a former Communist, is "a television-friendly lackey of those in power."
Since the end of September, Greek police have arrested and charged with terrorism five suspected group members. Monday's proclamation, posted online, said none of the five were linked with the Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire.
The group has targeted several politicians over the past few months with small bombs, causing no injuries.
Home Roding Valley Meadows hit by anti-social behaviour Submitted by frenzy on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 04:50. 11:23am Monday 5th October 2009
VANDALS have wreaked a summer of destruction on a Loughton nature reserve - to the despair of wardens.
Thousands of pounds worth damage has been inflicted on property at the Roding Valley Meadows, and officials are pointing the finger of blame at local youths.
Essex Wildlife Trust warden Patrick Bailey said: “We have had people rampaging through, smashing gates, doing an awful lot of damage to fences, and setting fire to bins.
[bourgie wankers in their artificial wilderness]
“There's always problems over there but this year has been particularly bad. We had a really nice beginning to the summer and it really encouraged a lot of people to come out for anti-social behaviour.
“It's the worst I've seen in my time on the trust. It's just a lack of respect for the area. It's beyond me why anyone would want to cause so much damage.
“We work with volunteers so it's taking up a lot of volunteer time. In terms of materials, in one weekend alone there was well over £1,000 of damage. We had two fences, gates and railings smashed up in one evening.”
Committee member Ken Angold-Stephens blamed the problem on local youths saying that much of the vandalism has been committed during weekends.
He added: “It's causing us a huge amount of concern. As well as the damage it's costing us a lot of money. We are pretty sure it's all local youths. The police don't seem to be as actively involved as they should be. Something has to be done. This amount of damage is unbelievable.”
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/4664440.LOUGHTON__Vandalism_hits_r... w/ pictarz
Katie Rolt says, "I’m surprised they haven’t got CCTV there...."
Thousands of pounds worth damage has been inflicted on property at the Roding Valley Meadows, and officials are pointing the finger of blame at local youths.
Essex Wildlife Trust warden Patrick Bailey said: “We have had people rampaging through, smashing gates, doing an awful lot of damage to fences, and setting fire to bins.
[bourgie wankers in their artificial wilderness]
“There's always problems over there but this year has been particularly bad. We had a really nice beginning to the summer and it really encouraged a lot of people to come out for anti-social behaviour.
“It's the worst I've seen in my time on the trust. It's just a lack of respect for the area. It's beyond me why anyone would want to cause so much damage.
“We work with volunteers so it's taking up a lot of volunteer time. In terms of materials, in one weekend alone there was well over £1,000 of damage. We had two fences, gates and railings smashed up in one evening.”
Committee member Ken Angold-Stephens blamed the problem on local youths saying that much of the vandalism has been committed during weekends.
He added: “It's causing us a huge amount of concern. As well as the damage it's costing us a lot of money. We are pretty sure it's all local youths. The police don't seem to be as actively involved as they should be. Something has to be done. This amount of damage is unbelievable.”
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/4664440.LOUGHTON__Vandalism_hits_r... w/ pictarz
Katie Rolt says, "I’m surprised they haven’t got CCTV there...."
Declaration of Solidarity with Struggling and Prosecuted Proletarians in Greece “In one night “reality” and “normality” died...”
On 6th of December 2008 in Greece pigs shot dead in cold blood 15 years old Alexis Grigoropoulos. That was the last straw which broke camel’s back and proletarian anger, which had been expressing itself through strikes and riots against attacks of Capital on living standards of our class, erupted. Suddenly, an uprising broke out and after several decades the specter of proletarian insurgency and open class struggle against capitalism returned to Europe. University and high school students as well as many pupils spontaneously surged into the streets of Greek cities and towns in order to assault police stations and all cops with stones and Molotov cocktails. Students and pupils were quickly joined by immigrant proletarians of every age, young “Greeks” with badly paid precarious jobs, but also by quite a lot of workers of an older generation. Even many unemployed and people from the margins of the class society took part: Romas, illegal refugees, drug addicts… Football hooligans forgot their dim-witted fights among each other and joined the struggle against the real enemy – repressive forces of the state. Immediately, it became clear to everybody that cops are nothing else but mercenaries of state terrorism. It became evident that they “serve” only smooth working of the system of private property of some and wage exploitation of others; and also that they “protect” merely law and order of this bourgeois system. “Dutiful citizens” and the belief in Democracy disappeared in clouds of smoke and tear gas and among blows of police batons.
“We destroy the present, because we come from the future!”
It was not only about street fights with cops and burning police stations. Rebels smashed and burned the smiling face of the capital’s world – the consumer paradise of shops, supermarkets, car showrooms and banks, which lend you money for some of the splendid commodities. The world of passive consumers of goods and spectators of Spectacle was burning in flames. And there were looting proletarians emerging from this fire and practically imposing dictatorship of human needs over capital and its exchange relations. Our class brothers and sisters were re-appropriating everything that we are, as the class, forced to produce at work in order to be obliged to buy it back for money we earn. They were also re-appropriating space and time, which are otherwise strictly divided and corseted according to needs of capital – columns of cars and stressed crowds of alienated zombies rushing to work, to school, to shop... disappeared from the streets recreated by proletarian violence and they were replaced by a community of the militant class. Combat self-organisation of rebels was developing spontaneously. Dozens of universities and high schools occupied not only by students, but proletarians of all categories, which we are divided into by capital, were transformed in centres of resistance and places of encounters, discussions, love and class hate. The same thing happened to a town hall in the Athens working class district of Aghios Dimitrios, which was also occupied by local inhabitants. After a long time our class was again beginning to speak and formulate its programme on its own. When rebelling workers occupied trade union buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, they put forward a critique of these mediators of sale of our labour power to the bosses. They showed that trade unions are part of the state and it is their aim to disorganise and suppress class struggle and that the way forward goes through self-organisation of struggle in workplaces. In all those aspects of the class movement and its struggle autonomy of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie – its ideologies, organisations and way of life – began to be born.
“Stop watching TV! Everybody come to the streets!”
Although the proletarian uprising was going across many sectors, which we are separated into by capital, only a minority of our class was actively taking part in it. While there were burning barricades in the streets, shops were looted and cops were fought against, a majority sat at home in front of their TV sets and listened to the baloney of politicians and journalists. Despite their enduring effort rebels have not succeeded in breaking passivity of their class brothers and sisters – neither in Greece nor in the rest of Europe and most countries of the world. Therefore, there was not a general paralysation of capitalist economy, which means that there was neither an attack against wage labour and production for profit. The movement stopped at partial attacks against the state and incomplete subversion of capitalist relations. In December, total destruction of all state structures aiming at liquidation of bourgeois power and imposition of social dictatorship of proletariat, which would strengthen and allow communisation of social relations, was not on the order of the day yet. Revolutionary insurrection is postponed for the moment...
“Merry crisis and a happy new fear!”
It was exactly this message that the Greek uprising left on Athens walls for law-abiding citizens (who continue to submit themselves to demands of capital; whom it does not even occur to that they could resist bosses and the state and they only wait as sheep what will happen to them). This message applies for proletarians over here, in the Czech Republic, too. The crisis is coming and the bourgeois lay off hundreds and thousands of people from work and lower real wages. For instance, 4.000 laid-off glass workers are right now left without any means of subsistence. And what has happened? Nothing! Domination of social peace and Democracy lays on our class like a boulder: we will rather die from hunger or live under a bridge than we would start really struggling for satisfaction of our human needs. Democracy is like opium – it prevents us from understanding ourselves as a class with distinct interests, which are opposed to the interests of capital. We can see only our individual and family lives and their misery appears to be the best what we can have. However, the world crisis will smash our citizen-consumer illusion of happiness and even the slightest enthusiasm about capitalism. There will be more and more unemployed and homeless people, prices of basic goods will grow and those, who will have jobs, will be able to buy less and less with their wages... and at the end the ruling class may drive us into a war in order to get rid of surplus people and production capacities and to achieve a possibility of another economical growth through reconstruction.
Is economy in crisis? Let’s finish it off! Down with social peace! One Greece is not enough!
Sooner or later, capital will leave us with no reserves. We will suffer and maybe we will die, if we will continue to slavishly accept wage labour and money as a necessary means to satisfy our needs. But surely there will be proletarians, who will refuse the logic of exchange value and surge into supermarkets and take without paying, what they will need. The class movement in Greece will explode anew with even greater subversive power and this time it will not be alone. And it will not be only proletarians in China, Bangladesh, Egypt or Bolivia, who will rise up. Even over here, shop windows will be trashed. We will loot shops and luxurious bourgeois haciendas. Mass strikes without and against trade unions will subvert all the capitalist economy. The state with its police and army will, as always, defend bourgeois order and properties and make terror against the proletariat, who will never solve anything, unless it makes its own revolution. In the meantime, all our support, sympathies, thoughts belong to proletarians in Greece, who struggle or are imprisoned. We long for helping them through spreading the struggle in the Czech Republic and the whole world. We want to share and develop their experience with them, in order to put a global revolutionary insurrection back on the order of history...
World revolution against capital, wage labour and money!
Revolutionary proletarian violence against state terror of the police till the complete destruction of all states!
Dictatorship of proletariat for communisation of social relations and worldwide classless community!
Třídní válka (Class War)
“We destroy the present, because we come from the future!”
It was not only about street fights with cops and burning police stations. Rebels smashed and burned the smiling face of the capital’s world – the consumer paradise of shops, supermarkets, car showrooms and banks, which lend you money for some of the splendid commodities. The world of passive consumers of goods and spectators of Spectacle was burning in flames. And there were looting proletarians emerging from this fire and practically imposing dictatorship of human needs over capital and its exchange relations. Our class brothers and sisters were re-appropriating everything that we are, as the class, forced to produce at work in order to be obliged to buy it back for money we earn. They were also re-appropriating space and time, which are otherwise strictly divided and corseted according to needs of capital – columns of cars and stressed crowds of alienated zombies rushing to work, to school, to shop... disappeared from the streets recreated by proletarian violence and they were replaced by a community of the militant class. Combat self-organisation of rebels was developing spontaneously. Dozens of universities and high schools occupied not only by students, but proletarians of all categories, which we are divided into by capital, were transformed in centres of resistance and places of encounters, discussions, love and class hate. The same thing happened to a town hall in the Athens working class district of Aghios Dimitrios, which was also occupied by local inhabitants. After a long time our class was again beginning to speak and formulate its programme on its own. When rebelling workers occupied trade union buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, they put forward a critique of these mediators of sale of our labour power to the bosses. They showed that trade unions are part of the state and it is their aim to disorganise and suppress class struggle and that the way forward goes through self-organisation of struggle in workplaces. In all those aspects of the class movement and its struggle autonomy of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie – its ideologies, organisations and way of life – began to be born.
“Stop watching TV! Everybody come to the streets!”
Although the proletarian uprising was going across many sectors, which we are separated into by capital, only a minority of our class was actively taking part in it. While there were burning barricades in the streets, shops were looted and cops were fought against, a majority sat at home in front of their TV sets and listened to the baloney of politicians and journalists. Despite their enduring effort rebels have not succeeded in breaking passivity of their class brothers and sisters – neither in Greece nor in the rest of Europe and most countries of the world. Therefore, there was not a general paralysation of capitalist economy, which means that there was neither an attack against wage labour and production for profit. The movement stopped at partial attacks against the state and incomplete subversion of capitalist relations. In December, total destruction of all state structures aiming at liquidation of bourgeois power and imposition of social dictatorship of proletariat, which would strengthen and allow communisation of social relations, was not on the order of the day yet. Revolutionary insurrection is postponed for the moment...
“Merry crisis and a happy new fear!”
It was exactly this message that the Greek uprising left on Athens walls for law-abiding citizens (who continue to submit themselves to demands of capital; whom it does not even occur to that they could resist bosses and the state and they only wait as sheep what will happen to them). This message applies for proletarians over here, in the Czech Republic, too. The crisis is coming and the bourgeois lay off hundreds and thousands of people from work and lower real wages. For instance, 4.000 laid-off glass workers are right now left without any means of subsistence. And what has happened? Nothing! Domination of social peace and Democracy lays on our class like a boulder: we will rather die from hunger or live under a bridge than we would start really struggling for satisfaction of our human needs. Democracy is like opium – it prevents us from understanding ourselves as a class with distinct interests, which are opposed to the interests of capital. We can see only our individual and family lives and their misery appears to be the best what we can have. However, the world crisis will smash our citizen-consumer illusion of happiness and even the slightest enthusiasm about capitalism. There will be more and more unemployed and homeless people, prices of basic goods will grow and those, who will have jobs, will be able to buy less and less with their wages... and at the end the ruling class may drive us into a war in order to get rid of surplus people and production capacities and to achieve a possibility of another economical growth through reconstruction.
Is economy in crisis? Let’s finish it off! Down with social peace! One Greece is not enough!
Sooner or later, capital will leave us with no reserves. We will suffer and maybe we will die, if we will continue to slavishly accept wage labour and money as a necessary means to satisfy our needs. But surely there will be proletarians, who will refuse the logic of exchange value and surge into supermarkets and take without paying, what they will need. The class movement in Greece will explode anew with even greater subversive power and this time it will not be alone. And it will not be only proletarians in China, Bangladesh, Egypt or Bolivia, who will rise up. Even over here, shop windows will be trashed. We will loot shops and luxurious bourgeois haciendas. Mass strikes without and against trade unions will subvert all the capitalist economy. The state with its police and army will, as always, defend bourgeois order and properties and make terror against the proletariat, who will never solve anything, unless it makes its own revolution. In the meantime, all our support, sympathies, thoughts belong to proletarians in Greece, who struggle or are imprisoned. We long for helping them through spreading the struggle in the Czech Republic and the whole world. We want to share and develop their experience with them, in order to put a global revolutionary insurrection back on the order of history...
World revolution against capital, wage labour and money!
Revolutionary proletarian violence against state terror of the police till the complete destruction of all states!
Dictatorship of proletariat for communisation of social relations and worldwide classless community!
Třídní válka (Class War)
A robbery in Greece
We are not slaves, we are dynamite
WE ARE NOT SLAVES, WE ARE DYNAMITE
They are old things, from another century. Poverty, which progress seemed to have banished from the West, comes back to make us feel its bite. Bankers aren’t jumping from windows yet, but the poor are filling the streets. Factories and shops close their doors. Millions of people find themselves with no means for facing the future. They were promised that a life passed on their knees, between a job that profited a boss and obedience to the will of the government would at least ensure a quiet survival for them. Now it’s clear to all that this was a lie.
They are old things, from another century. The lines are swelling in front of soup kitchens. The number of thefts in supermarkets is constantly growing. Foreclosure proceedings pile up. And while those on the bottom try not to die of hunger, those on top prepare for the worst, for the feared social explosion. “Zero tolerance” is guaranteed for anyone who breaks the law; new structures of detention are being prepared for natives and immigrants; soldiers and “volunteers” patrol neighborhoods that are under video surveillance. The old and new poor have to know: dying of privation or suicide, these are the only choices permitted to them.
They are old things, from another century. Today, more and more people are reaching out to grab wealth from the places where it exists in abundance. Some even have a dream in their heart, like the two anarchists, Christos and Alfredo, who were arrested in Greece on October 1 for a bank robbery. Christos robbed the bank at gunpoint. They claim that Alfredo aided him, taking the money on delivery. Now the two anarchists, one Greek and one Italian, are behind bars. Prison is the fate promised to anyone who isn’t resigned to dying in misery, the fate promised to the enemies of all exploitation and authority.
They are old things, from another century. A shattered economy, skyrocketing unemployment, the deterioration of living conditions, a war among the poor fomented by the powerful henchmen, racism speeding up from a mere creep to a gallop, a planet threatened by technological development, States alternating the carrot of democracy with the stick of totalitarianism…
In this sudden return to the past, there is still something missing: the offended dignity that drives desperation away, transforming it into action; the freedom that stops being the right to obey authority and goes back to being the challenge to every form of power; the desire to live that isn’t satisfied with what exists and mounts an assault to snatch what has never been.
IT’S AN OLD THING, FROM ANOTHER CENTURY: INSURRECTION
We are not slaves, we are dynamite
WE ARE NOT SLAVES, WE ARE DYNAMITE
They are old things, from another century. Poverty, which progress seemed to have banished from the West, comes back to make us feel its bite. Bankers aren’t jumping from windows yet, but the poor are filling the streets. Factories and shops close their doors. Millions of people find themselves with no means for facing the future. They were promised that a life passed on their knees, between a job that profited a boss and obedience to the will of the government would at least ensure a quiet survival for them. Now it’s clear to all that this was a lie.
They are old things, from another century. The lines are swelling in front of soup kitchens. The number of thefts in supermarkets is constantly growing. Foreclosure proceedings pile up. And while those on the bottom try not to die of hunger, those on top prepare for the worst, for the feared social explosion. “Zero tolerance” is guaranteed for anyone who breaks the law; new structures of detention are being prepared for natives and immigrants; soldiers and “volunteers” patrol neighborhoods that are under video surveillance. The old and new poor have to know: dying of privation or suicide, these are the only choices permitted to them.
They are old things, from another century. Today, more and more people are reaching out to grab wealth from the places where it exists in abundance. Some even have a dream in their heart, like the two anarchists, Christos and Alfredo, who were arrested in Greece on October 1 for a bank robbery. Christos robbed the bank at gunpoint. They claim that Alfredo aided him, taking the money on delivery. Now the two anarchists, one Greek and one Italian, are behind bars. Prison is the fate promised to anyone who isn’t resigned to dying in misery, the fate promised to the enemies of all exploitation and authority.
They are old things, from another century. A shattered economy, skyrocketing unemployment, the deterioration of living conditions, a war among the poor fomented by the powerful henchmen, racism speeding up from a mere creep to a gallop, a planet threatened by technological development, States alternating the carrot of democracy with the stick of totalitarianism…
In this sudden return to the past, there is still something missing: the offended dignity that drives desperation away, transforming it into action; the freedom that stops being the right to obey authority and goes back to being the challenge to every form of power; the desire to live that isn’t satisfied with what exists and mounts an assault to snatch what has never been.
IT’S AN OLD THING, FROM ANOTHER CENTURY: INSURRECTION
Freedom for Alfredo Bonnano and Christos Stratigopoulos imprisoned in Greece!
Its been over a month now that two anarchists- Alfredo Bonnano and Christos Stratigopoulos had been arrested in Greece following bank robbery. Much had been written about it already, so there is no point in reminding everyone what this case is about (for those that don't know please find links below the text). Needless to say those anarchist comrades need our solidarity and support now. Especially 72 years old Bonnano is in grave danger due to his health problems and extremely bad conditions he is kept in Amfissa prison. We encourage all kinds of solidarity with them, but ina a meantime there is a simple thing that everybody can do. Below you will find example of a protest letter than can be e-mailed to different Greek institutions here and in Greece. Whilst we are under no illusion that this will get them released, nevertheless that's something that can improve their condition for now and show Greek authorities that they are not forgotten and they will not succeed in burying them alive in one of the worst Greek prisons.
Anarchist Solidarity
some background on the case:
Greetings from Greece
They’re old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested after a bank job. The first robbed it, gun in hand. They say the second helped him, holding the money. It happened in a small Greek village, this past October 1. And so? There are things that happen. And then that is a far away country, with an incomprehensible and untranslatable language. Who do you want to be interested in it? The robber is Christos Stratigopulos, already arrested and convicted here in Italy fifteen years ago on a similar charge. The penalty served, he returned to Greece. Remembered by a few, unknown to most. But the other one arrested is Italian; it is Alfredo Bonanno. Yes, precisely him; who hasn’t heard his name? In its own small way, the news has gone quickly around the world, revived by many press agencies: “one of the major theorists of insurrectionalist anarchism”, “among the major ideologues of anarchy”, “anarchist activist and writer”, “international fugitive anarchist robber”, “theorist of revolutionary violence”, has ended up behind bars again. The promoters of antiterrorism, both Greek and Italian, have rushed in, ready to exploit the juicy occasion. The elements for concocting a fine theorem are all there: a country in which there are still fires blazing after the great insurrectionary conflagration that flared up last December, a Greek anarchist active in the movement, a foreign anarchist known for his subversive theories who travelled around the country holding meetings, a bank robbed.
Christos has taken full responsibility for the act, caused by economic problems, denying Alfredo’s involvement. But, clearly, the judge didn’t believe him. So both are still in jail. The first, because he dared to reach out a hand toward wealth rather than resign himself to dying in misery. What’s more, he is an anarchist. The second, because… because… because maybe he helped his comrade. And, for sure, he is an anarchist. And that’s enough.
They are old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested after a bank job. Outside, solidarity is organized. Funds start to be collected; initiatives are prepared. But that’s not all. In Athens, the two prisoners get explosive greetings from the group Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, which had just disturbed the crowning of the new Greek premier. In Villejuif, France, someone renders their homage by smashing the windows of the local offices of the Socialist Party. One of the beauties of anarchy is that it doesn’t recognize borders. And in Italy? Bah, here it has been limited to communicating the news, faithfully and coldly reporting the journalists’ poisons. No comment. The drafters of daily virtual communiqués say nothing. The tenders of militant gardens fall silent. The little strategists of the new alliances hush up. The movement has now become a community, and anyone who doesn’t share its rules and language doesn’t exist. He is nameless. In the rush to follow the masses, have individuals been forgotten? Perhaps it’s better this way. Better a sincere silence, if in the face of such an act, one no longer knows what to say, than hypocritical chatter about solidarity. Let’s leave that to the Stalinist annoyances and other ruins. Or to a few third millennium fascists, who on one of their forums rendered “honor” to the two arrested anarchists.
They are old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested after a bank job. The first is 46-years-old, the second 72. Whether guilty or innocent, for them being anarchists doesn’t even have the excuse of being an infantile disorder of extremism. Stubborn as they are, they haven’t understood that now is the time to ride the wave of social movements, to defend who knows what in front of places of power, to act as social workers for the damned of the earth. No, they haven’t understood this. The dream that they have in their hearts is much too big to adapt itself to the tick-tock of modern times.
No pardon, no pity.
Good-bye, beautiful Lugano.
solidarity with Alfredo
solidarity with Alfredo Bonanno and Christos Stratigopoulos
(9th of october 2009)
the anarchists Alfredo and Christos are in prison of Amfissa – greece.
Christos is accused for armed robbery and Alfredo for complicity.
The lawyers made a request for Alfredo because of his health conditions to
keep him under house detention.
The two comrades can receive post at:TZAMALA 3 33100 AMFISSA GREECE
To finance the solidarity campaign for the two, solidarity concerts are
organised in Greece and elsewhere. People who are interested to get more
information or to support the solidarity fund raising can write to the
following email address:
smolikas2 [at] gmail.gr
Revolutionary solidarity with Alfredo and Christos and all the people who
struggle against the world of prisons and banks.
anarchists from Greece and elsewhere
translated from cettesemaine:
http://cettesemaine.free.fr/spip/article.php3?id_article=2598
SAMPLE LETTER (you are welcome to write your own)
We write to you concerning the case of Alfredo Bonnano and Christos Stratigopoulos, held in prison in Amfissa. It came to our attention that they are held in outrageous conditions, in “facility” thats is infected with rats and lice, with no access to running water, with 50 people in same cell. Prison of Amfissa, as you should know, doesn't even met your own standards and should be immediately closed. On top of that, 72 years old Alfredo Bonnano has serious health problems and should be immediately released. His continuous imprisonment simply proves that yo uwant to exact revenge on well known anarchist and you are prepared to put men in conditions that are dangerous not only to their health, but also to their lives.
If you persist on keeping Amfissa prison open and holding our comrades and anybody else in this outrageous conditions, you should know that it will not go unnoticed as you were most likely hoping.
Freedom for Alfredo Bonnano and Christos Stratigopoulos! Close Amfissa prison now!
Its been over a month now that two anarchists- Alfredo Bonnano and Christos Stratigopoulos had been arrested in Greece following bank robbery. Much had been written about it already, so there is no point in reminding everyone what this case is about (for those that don't know please find links below the text). Needless to say those anarchist comrades need our solidarity and support now. Especially 72 years old Bonnano is in grave danger due to his health problems and extremely bad conditions he is kept in Amfissa prison. We encourage all kinds of solidarity with them, but ina a meantime there is a simple thing that everybody can do. Below you will find example of a protest letter than can be e-mailed to different Greek institutions here and in Greece. Whilst we are under no illusion that this will get them released, nevertheless that's something that can improve their condition for now and show Greek authorities that they are not forgotten and they will not succeed in burying them alive in one of the worst Greek prisons.
Anarchist Solidarity
some background on the case:
Greetings from Greece
They’re old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested after a bank job. The first robbed it, gun in hand. They say the second helped him, holding the money. It happened in a small Greek village, this past October 1. And so? There are things that happen. And then that is a far away country, with an incomprehensible and untranslatable language. Who do you want to be interested in it? The robber is Christos Stratigopulos, already arrested and convicted here in Italy fifteen years ago on a similar charge. The penalty served, he returned to Greece. Remembered by a few, unknown to most. But the other one arrested is Italian; it is Alfredo Bonanno. Yes, precisely him; who hasn’t heard his name? In its own small way, the news has gone quickly around the world, revived by many press agencies: “one of the major theorists of insurrectionalist anarchism”, “among the major ideologues of anarchy”, “anarchist activist and writer”, “international fugitive anarchist robber”, “theorist of revolutionary violence”, has ended up behind bars again. The promoters of antiterrorism, both Greek and Italian, have rushed in, ready to exploit the juicy occasion. The elements for concocting a fine theorem are all there: a country in which there are still fires blazing after the great insurrectionary conflagration that flared up last December, a Greek anarchist active in the movement, a foreign anarchist known for his subversive theories who travelled around the country holding meetings, a bank robbed.
Christos has taken full responsibility for the act, caused by economic problems, denying Alfredo’s involvement. But, clearly, the judge didn’t believe him. So both are still in jail. The first, because he dared to reach out a hand toward wealth rather than resign himself to dying in misery. What’s more, he is an anarchist. The second, because… because… because maybe he helped his comrade. And, for sure, he is an anarchist. And that’s enough.
They are old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested after a bank job. Outside, solidarity is organized. Funds start to be collected; initiatives are prepared. But that’s not all. In Athens, the two prisoners get explosive greetings from the group Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, which had just disturbed the crowning of the new Greek premier. In Villejuif, France, someone renders their homage by smashing the windows of the local offices of the Socialist Party. One of the beauties of anarchy is that it doesn’t recognize borders. And in Italy? Bah, here it has been limited to communicating the news, faithfully and coldly reporting the journalists’ poisons. No comment. The drafters of daily virtual communiqués say nothing. The tenders of militant gardens fall silent. The little strategists of the new alliances hush up. The movement has now become a community, and anyone who doesn’t share its rules and language doesn’t exist. He is nameless. In the rush to follow the masses, have individuals been forgotten? Perhaps it’s better this way. Better a sincere silence, if in the face of such an act, one no longer knows what to say, than hypocritical chatter about solidarity. Let’s leave that to the Stalinist annoyances and other ruins. Or to a few third millennium fascists, who on one of their forums rendered “honor” to the two arrested anarchists.
They are old things, from another century. Two anarchists get arrested after a bank job. The first is 46-years-old, the second 72. Whether guilty or innocent, for them being anarchists doesn’t even have the excuse of being an infantile disorder of extremism. Stubborn as they are, they haven’t understood that now is the time to ride the wave of social movements, to defend who knows what in front of places of power, to act as social workers for the damned of the earth. No, they haven’t understood this. The dream that they have in their hearts is much too big to adapt itself to the tick-tock of modern times.
No pardon, no pity.
Good-bye, beautiful Lugano.
solidarity with Alfredo
solidarity with Alfredo Bonanno and Christos Stratigopoulos
(9th of october 2009)
the anarchists Alfredo and Christos are in prison of Amfissa – greece.
Christos is accused for armed robbery and Alfredo for complicity.
The lawyers made a request for Alfredo because of his health conditions to
keep him under house detention.
The two comrades can receive post at:TZAMALA 3 33100 AMFISSA GREECE
To finance the solidarity campaign for the two, solidarity concerts are
organised in Greece and elsewhere. People who are interested to get more
information or to support the solidarity fund raising can write to the
following email address:
smolikas2 [at] gmail.gr
Revolutionary solidarity with Alfredo and Christos and all the people who
struggle against the world of prisons and banks.
anarchists from Greece and elsewhere
translated from cettesemaine:
http://cettesemaine.free.fr/spip/article.php3?id_article=2598
SAMPLE LETTER (you are welcome to write your own)
We write to you concerning the case of Alfredo Bonnano and Christos Stratigopoulos, held in prison in Amfissa. It came to our attention that they are held in outrageous conditions, in “facility” thats is infected with rats and lice, with no access to running water, with 50 people in same cell. Prison of Amfissa, as you should know, doesn't even met your own standards and should be immediately closed. On top of that, 72 years old Alfredo Bonnano has serious health problems and should be immediately released. His continuous imprisonment simply proves that yo uwant to exact revenge on well known anarchist and you are prepared to put men in conditions that are dangerous not only to their health, but also to their lives.
If you persist on keeping Amfissa prison open and holding our comrades and anybody else in this outrageous conditions, you should know that it will not go unnoticed as you were most likely hoping.
Freedom for Alfredo Bonnano and Christos Stratigopoulos! Close Amfissa prison now!
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Riots break out across France
RIOTS erupted in cities across France this week, with cars torched and a supermarket looted.
The outbreak was sparked by the Algerian football team's success in beating Egypt to qualify for next year's World Cup, but reflects a simmering anger in French society that is never far from the surface.
Said a report from AFP on November 19: "France has a large community of Algerian origin and about 12,000 of them turned out on the Champs Elysees in Paris to fete their team's win.
"Police intervened when some revellers began throwing bottles and other projectiles and smashing shop windows, a police spokesman said.
"Similar violent scenes took place in Marseille in the south, Lyon in the centre-east as well as in some northern towns, and youths set fire to around 150 vehicles in cities across the country.
"Trouble-makers burst into a supermarket in Vaulx-en-Velin in the Lyon suburbs and made off with electronic goods and telephones, police said.
"Six police officers were injured in the incidents."
RIOTS broke out in Belgium on Friday night, November 20, over the brutal and racist treatment of prisoners by police.
A report on RTL info said the youngsters had firebombed and damaged the main police station in the Anderlecht area of Brussels, having spread the word by text message.
The crowds also broke car windows and smashed up phone boxes and the state is expected to flood the area with extra police all weekend.
Anger erupted over reports of police maltreatment of prisoners at the nearby Forest jail earlier this year, during a strike by the usual wardens. A prison watchdog has reporrted instances of torture, degrading treatment and islamophobic insults.
7s7 Belgique reported that groups of rioters had met up around the Place de la Vaillance and near the Aumale metro station, before splitting up and reforming elsewhere.
The crowds also broke car windows and smashed up phone boxes and the state is expected to flood the area with extra police all weekend.
Anger erupted over reports of police maltreatment of prisoners at the nearby Forest jail earlier this year, during a strike by the usual wardens. A prison watchdog has reporrted instances of torture, degrading treatment and islamophobic insults.
7s7 Belgique reported that groups of rioters had met up around the Place de la Vaillance and near the Aumale metro station, before splitting up and reforming elsewhere.
Vast minority
Homepage: http://www.vastminority.blogspot.com
PRISON LETTERS AND COMMUNIQUES
2009 Αυγούστου 22
Update 3 December 2007: Prison letter from Giorgos Voutsis-Vogiatzis:
Now that they’ve all shut their mouths, let’s talk about choices
“…Many of us died or were taken prisoner along the way; many others were wounded and permanently put out of action; and certain elements even let themselves slip into the background because of their lack of courage; but I believe I can say that our formation as a whole never wavered until it plunged into the very core of destruction.”
To attack the modern institutions of repression and exploitation, it takes -first of all- to refuse the mass production of consciences that this world gives birth to. Authority no more stands for a privileged technique of administration, held fast in the net of a minority elite. It is a pervasive social relationship that finds its expression in every aspect of every day life. The transmutation of social antagonism has inevitably created the necessity for the refabrication and the sophistication of the old terms of repression. This process did not appear out of the blue, nor was it simply forced by physical violence. Social relations have been shaped over the course of decades spent inside the social factory; they have plenty of their own keywords. Integration, �morality�, homogeneity, �proper citizenship�. That�s the way the bosses manufactured the managers and their supervisors, the modern class to bridge the gap that were named syndicalists as well as, of course, the obedient worker, who, having broken �at last- the chainsaws of mass production, is now able to afford his own proper handcuffs. They created volunteers to raise the vision of �Great Greece�. Unpaid submissive people who named their volontary servitute �giving back to society�. Social groups working for the maintenance of the existent repression and exploitation that now act the role of shock absorbers contributing to the global attack of the rulers.
Organisations (i.e. the N.G.O.s) created out of democracy’s need to show a humanitarian public image. Based on non-violence and charity they are busily preparing the cemeteries for tomorrow’s casualties on their battlefields of democracy. They maintain the modern work camps in the third-world countries. Factories of misery, where the slaves of economy build the glass window of western civilization, as well as the consent of the modern schizo-proletariat, transforming its class conscience into consumerist conscience.
The �proper citizens�, the armed heroes of the greek democracy constitute the modern expression of law and order. They participate actively in volunteer work in security projects, they inform the police on suspicious figures and even attack delinquents themselves. They get their little awards from the police for their achievements and feel proud. The demand for security is not an imposed convention anymore. It is a social instinct. A pervasive militarized demand for the merciless defence of property. The cops are not the only ones in uniforms. This world’s morality wears a uniform too, and has enlisted with vigor on the side of the bosses.
On 3-10-2007 I robbed the ETE (Ethniki) bank on Gyzi Street. On my way out, about 1,5 minute after the robbery and once I got on my bicycle, I noticed a passerby crossing Ragkavi Street not far from where I was (a street parallel to the one I was on), who was heading towards me. After a short dialogue and while I was still on my bicycle, this passerby turned into a �hero� and kicked my bicycle resulting to its crashing with a passing car, and me falling down, on the pavement. From that point on alarm sirens were blasting all around me…
My choice to rob a bank constitutes a point in my way to negation. Guerilla attacks to the enemy�s wealth under by acts of expropriation uphold a perpetuous choice of attack, historically consistent to the history of negation. Consistency has to move with a military step between thinking and acting. Rioters, robbers, arsonists, they are all detonators to set off the same war. The negation of work is a partial negation of the economy and its world. Wage labour is an alienated process producing inequalities, based upon one�s exploitation by another. It is the commercialization of humanity’s natural urge for creation and its integration in the social factory of alienated relations. Alienated work has its own ethics of submission. Legality, the boss-model, career.
Where do you work? How much do you earn? When do you get a day-off? Questions to inquire the subject�s social status. Alienated work manages and organizes also leisure/spare time, that is equally modified by the work status that enslaves it (weekend, holidays, days off). In reality, alienated work defines our whole existence. Our every day chat: How was work? When do you get paid? Our mood: I �m dead-tired today, not in a mood for anything, I have to wake up early in the morning. We can finally see how exactly the deep meaning of time is in great degree shaped upon the world of labor and the needs of the economy. The immaterial dimension of time takes on a material expression modified by the schedule of our every day captivity. Robbing an economic mechanism of captivity is not the only choice to realize negation to work. But even attacks against economic targets constitute a radical suggestion of organization and struggle, which jumpstarts the project for the destruction of work.
I will say it again: the negation of work constitutes a partial negation of economy and its world. For example: the expropriation of commodities (from bookstores, super markets) constitutes a kind of negation of consumption, though not a total attack on economy. Robbing a bank is a way of negating work, but is not a total attack on capitalism. If the end justify anything, it’s not the means, but the choices developed for action. The means follow the decision to act. They are dialectically related to the project. They are shaped inside it, but don�t shape it. My decision to rob the ETE bank at Gyzi was not a vindictive, fortuitous attempt based on the weapons I possessed, but a point in my way to a total negation of this world. A way with no final destination, but with many intermediate points. Many as the guns a revolutionary possesses at his arsenal. So, if there is anything we need to take back, it is personal consciousness. Or else, everything mass-based and collective is doomed to reproduce the simultaneous defeat of our consciousness, that will turn into the new defeated masses of our era.
Hostilities continue.
Giorgos Voutsis-Vogiatzis
Instead of a P.S.: The identity of a person is not defined by its surname, but by the way and the choices that are of his own. We know however that when the cameras are smashed and the informants of the lie are beaten up mercilessly a timer begins ticking, measuring a reverse reality. Those that have slandered and pillaged my “personal data” will soon find me in front of them. In any action of solidarity, I wish all mentions of my name to include both my surnames.
[Some actions of solidarity (October-November 2007):
12 October: Arson attacks against two banks at Zografou (Athens)
13 October: Arson attack against the offices of the deputy minister of education (Athens)
16 October: Arson attack against an ETE bank in the city center and a rulling party office at Evosmos (Thessaloniki)
18 October: Arson attack against an ETE bank and a rulling party office at Nea Krini (Thessaloniki)
5 November: Broken glass windows and damages at the ETE bank in Exarchia, at Eurobank on Solonos Str., and at the Union of Greek Banks, on Massalias Str. (Athens)
Giorgos will be held for up to 18 months before jury in Korydallos' Prison, Athens.]
Translator’s note: Thanks for all the help to J.M.L (http://situationist.gq.nu/), any mistakes are my fault: …for the transmission of infectious rabies – December 2007
UPDATE 3 September 2007: You can check out some news on the anarchists detained for the faliro police car attempted arson at our page on Chr. Kontorevithakis and M. Tsourapas . Giannis Dimitrakis remains emprisoned, and so is Vassilis Stergiou and Giorgos Tsolkas. Update 12/10/2007: New letter on Giannis Dimitrakis latest transfer from Korydallos prison anarchists!
ON GIANNIS DIMITRAKIS TRANSFER TO ALIKARNASSOS’ PRISON
Friends and companions, we salute you
We decided to write this letter in order to strengthen our action�s front within the prison. As well as outside, the state tries to recuperate and repress anything that steps beyond the limits of legality.
As well as outside, recuperation takes the meaning of snitching, ass-licking, an illegalist lifestyle, submission, and drugs.
As much as for repression, its expression takes the forms of beating, exits deprival, humiliations, blackmails, follow-ups, kidnap-style transfers.
These transfers form a part of the repressive planning. It is a means of dividing the prisoners aiming at their isolation and their physical and mental annihilation.
Yesterday was carried out for once more a transfer of the companion Giannis Dimitrakis from the juridicial Prisons of Korydallos to Alikarnassos� Prisons.
As a minimal gesture of solidarity, we choose today to abstain from the meal the juridicial Prison of Korydallos offers. An action that so as not to limit itself to its symbolic character, will be continued for the next days as well.
For us there is not an option of holding back our actions once within the dungeons of punishment, as there was neither outside the prisons. We maintain our self esteem, our fury and our aggressive stance as individualities.
Meanwhile, we don�t step back to expect the next prison mutiny in order to attack the treaty of captivity. It is what we clear the ground for daily. Everyday life inside the prison is also a battlefield.
Taking this route, we choose to connect with the few persons that preserve their self esteem and their dignity and to act jointly, till the destruction of every last prison.
The strength you give us every day cannot be impressed in words.
Let us leave the actions speak out loud.
Giannis Lazaridis
Giorgos Tsolkas
Marios Tsourapas
Giorgos Voutsis-Vogiatzis
ON THE MAY 6 DETAINEES
In May 6 2006, riots erupted during the European Social Forum march in Athens. For a period of three hours following a 2km route, 2500 anarchists in small groups of 4-500 attacked banks, large department stores, police cars, government buildings, the police headquarters, riot police, riot police buses as well as “Z-team” policemen (motorcycle team). They attacked the US embassy, the Hilton hotel, the Italian embassy, and the riot police guarding the house of parliament. 20 people were arrested 17 of them are charged with multiple felony charges. 3 of them were detained since then. One of those 3, Tarasios Zadorozni, anarchist immigrant from Ucraine, is on a hunger strike since 29/11, and 12 days later he was transfered to the prison hospital due to health problems. There was also an announcement from another detainee, Gerasimos Kyriakopoulos, that he is going on a hunger strike, but we cant accertaine this, because it is hard to communicate with the prisoner. The third one’s name is Kostas Katsadouros, but there is no information about him nor any communication. Update 18/12: Gerasimos is on a hunger strike since December 15. Update 17/1/2007: Added occupied techical school’s solidarity message, as well as the occupied theological faculty in Thessaloniki. NEW: THE MAY 6 DETAINEES ARE N’T UNDER DETAINTION ANY MORE, AFTER 70 DAYS OF HUNGER STRIKE (TARASIOS) AND 54 (GERASIMOS)
There is also a translation of anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis’ letter to “Pontiki” newspaper taken from http://www.325collective.com/ . Giannis Dimitrakis is an anarchist arrested in 16/1/2006 for an armed expropriation of a bank in Athens. He is since then, detained, previously in Korydalos and after 14/11/2006* in Neapoli Prisons, in Crete.
*During that week there was a pogrom against anarchist prisoners, who were violently abducted in early morning hours from their cells, in Korydallos Prisons near Athens, and transfered secretly to different prisons around Greece. Giorgos Kalaitzidis was moved to Ioannina, Nikos Kountardas in Nafplion, and Giannis Dimitrakis in Crete,(there are some cool photoes of an intervention some anarchists organised there in http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=612172#612190 ).
For info on prisoners of the greek state check out: http://www.geocities.com/anarcores/krat.html
There is also a site on the three 6 May detainees in greek language: http://www.geocities.com/may6solidarity as well as http://athens.indymedia.org
LETTERS IN ENGLISH
COMMUNIQUE OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SQUATTED POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS
Today, January 13 2007, police attacked the anarchist and anti-authoritarian motorbike demo in solidarity to the three comrades arrested at the social forum on May 6 2006 in Athens. The demo was attacked by special motorbike forces (Z team) on the way back from Nikea hospital where there had been a solidarity gathering for two of the imprisoned comrades Tarasio Zadorozni and Gerasimos Kiriakopulos who are on hungerstrike. The anti riot police squads (MAT) then stormed the comrades on the ground, 42 were taken into custody at the national security police headquarters in Athens, many of them injured, and 4 of them are still being held 9 hours later. Tarasio Zadorozni and Gerasimos Kiriakopulos have been on hunger strike for 46 and 28 days respectively and were transferred from Koridalos prison to a secure unit in Nikea hospital on January 9 as their condition had deteriorated. They have been held in prison since May 6 2006 along with another demonstrator, Kostas Kachadouras, accused of rioting during the international antiwar demo of the European Social Forum in Athens.
The imprisoned demonstrators of May 6 are 3 of the thousands of people that took to the streets that day when riots erupted between the forces of repression and anarchists and young rebels and attacks were made against State and capitalist targets. The police arrested 17 demonstrators who were accused on trumped up heavy charges and 3 of them have been held in prison awaiting trial without any evidence against them (with the political consent of the traditional leftist parties and groups) so that they can be punished as an example for those who choose to resist without mediation or institutional representation. The struggle that those on hunger strike began for their freedom, using their body as a weapon, has now become the terrain where a general conflict between the State and those who fight it is being expressed.
It is about an attack in which the State, using all the repressive mechanisms of propaganda and control in its power, is attempting to isolate and eliminate anarchists and anti-authoritarians, who are the most radical part of social resistance, with the surrender of the whole of society as its final objective. Under these conditions of intensifying State terror, every action of solidarity to the imprisoned fighters has been under attack. The aim of this repression is not only to keep the 3 in prison as long as possible, it is also to eliminate the very dynamic of solidarity, self-organisation and resistance against the plans of the State and the bosses.
So, on January 12, the police attempted to prevent the solidarity demonstration that had been organised by anarchists and anti-authoritarians. The order was pronounced by the chief of police forces present, stating that he had instructions from the prosecutor, but this was subverted by the persistence of the demonstrators and finally a strong demo was held in the centre of Athens. The attack on todayʼs demonstration (January 13), with the arrests and the wounded, are the peak of this repressive violence, showing the Stateʼs intent to bury the struggle of those on hunger strike in silence, to terrorise those in solidarity and attack the development of the anarchist struggle. What has preceded todayʼs events: the arrest of an anti-authoritarian comrade outside his home following the motorbike demo to the house of the minister of justice; intensive provocation and pressure by the Z motorbike police squad on another motorbike demo to Koridalos prison on December 15; police attack on new yearʼs eve motorbike demo on its return from the prison that resulted in many comrades being taken into custody and one arrest, and on January 9 the surrounding by anti riot police squads of a radio station which had been occupied by 50 anarchists to transmit solidarity messages and news of the hunger strike.
AGAINST the attempts of the State to isolate the struggle of our imprisoned comrades who are on hunger strike behind a wall of silence
AGAINST the constant repressive attacks against anarchists and antiauthoritarians, aiming at their isolation and annihilation
AGAINST the attempt to impose social acquiescance
WE ARE TAKING OVER THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS AND WE DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF OUR 4 COMRADES BEING HELD IN THE NATIONAL SECURITY BUILDING FOLLOWING TODAYʼS ATTACK BY POLICE AGAINST THE SOLIDARITY MOTORBIKE DEMO AND THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE IMPRISONED PROTESTORS OF MAY 6 2006
By taking over this university building we are creating a place of constant counterinformation and solidarity within our city, an attempt that is operating horizontally and against all hierarchy, on the basis of the occupiersʼ general assembly. No repressive action will extinguish our solidarity to our imprisoned comrades, or prevent the social struggle for liberation from the chains of Authority
THE PASSION FOR FREEDOM IS STRONGER THAN ANY PRISON CELL
SOLIDARITY TO THE HUNGERSTRIKERS TARASIO ZADOROZNI (SINCE NOV 29 2006) AND GERASIMOS KIRIAKOPULOS (SINCE DECEMBER 15 2006)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE 3 IMPRISONED PROTESTORS OF MAY 6
THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF OUR 4 COMRADES WHO ARE BEING HELD IN THE NATIONAL SECURITY BUILDING FOLLOWING TODAYʼS ATTACK BY POLICE AGAINST THE SOLIDARITY MOTORBIKE DEMO
SOLIDARITY TO ALL IMPRISONED AND ACCUSED SOCIAL FIGHTERS
FREEDOM TO ALL THOSE IN PRISON CELLS
SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!
Assembly of the occupied Polytechnic University January 13 2007, 7pm.
Ps. At the moment of writing the four arrested have been set free, one of whom with serious chest and back wounds, and many stitches in the head.
STATEMENT OF THE SOLIDARITY OCCUPATION AT THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF THESSALONIKI
Today, Wednesday January 17th, anarchists, antiauthoritarians and comrades in solidarity, haven occupied the theological school of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in solidarity with the hunger strikers T. Zadorozni (since 29/11) and Y. Kiriakopulos (since 15/12). The occupation will act as a counter-information and action center, aiming the immediate release of the 3 imprisoned demonstrators during the clashes at the European Social Forum in Athens on May 6th in Athens.
That day, hundreds of anarchists, antiauthoritarians and rebel youth clashed for hours with the cops and attacked banks, embassies and luxury stores. On 6th May the social anti-violence justice is kept alive and also the denial of the systemic Left which conciliates with the state and capital. 17 arrests take place and 3 of them (T. Zadorozni, Y. Kiriakopulos and K. Katsaduros) are still incarcerated, due to falsified copsʼ statements. This moment their hunger strike is critical. Tarasio Zadorozni is on his 50th day of hunger strike and already they face serious health problems, capable of causing irrecoverable damage. G. Kiriakopulos has already suffered spleen and kidney rupture.
The struggle for their liberation is taking place at a point when the states, globally, upgrade their legal and suppressive arsenal, enact (anti)terrorist decrees, promote fear systematically and tighten social control. The greek state also promotes the suppression or deterrence of social resistance. For this reason, the struggle of the hunger strikers is directly related with the struggle for social and individual liberation.
We don’t intend to negotiate their health and their existence. WE DEMAND their immediate release.
OPEN ASSEMBLY 7 pm daily
The assembly of the theological school occupation
GERASIMOS KYRIAKOPOULOS ON HUNGER STRIKE (since December 7)
My name is Gerasimos Kyriakopoulos. I am detained in the Prisons of Korydallos, accused for the episodes of May 6 during the 4th European Social Forum. A few things for my affair have as follows: The afternoon of May 6 in the Thiseio area, where there were no riots, six police officers of M.A.T. squad made six blind and unjustified arrests, one from which was my own. Once being arrested with no obvious reason, I thought they were just doing some simple suspect presentations, aware of the situation created that day. However, as you understand, as I am writing to you this letter, finally the things were not like that at all.
Thus, later, taking me to the G.A.D.A. police building, with no evidence, without any proof, the police officers passed me a paper to sign, with an awful lot of accusations. Of course, the police in order to support theese accusations have testified in their six similar reports that the arrestations did not take part in the Thiseio area, but in the Monastiraki square, where there indeed were riots, presenting us as a team that attacked them. Thus without any genuine clue, taking us later on to the interrogative process, they attributed to me some severe accusations as homicide attemptings and also supply and possession of 50 explosive bombs and without being suspect of escape or having a background in such similar situations (how coud I, anyway?) they ordered my detaintion.
Thus I find myself detained in the Korydallos Prisons, without any ecidence, facing severe accusations. Continuously, all appeals I submitted were rejected extending my imprisonment without any genuine evidence. Thus I am puzzled and I wonder how could I ever, being simply one person, prove – having no proof but my words for what I have lived – the opposite towards six untruth accusations made by the police. I think I can not.
So, being desperated and having no other way to stand up to all these theese untruth accusations that they attributed to me, and also aware – despite the serious health problems I face (as rupture of kidney and rupture of spleen) – of the fact that what I am going to do may cost my life, I will go on a hunger strike protesting against the false accusations they attributed to me, and also demanding to be set free directly until my case’s trial.
Gerasimos Kyriakopoulos
TARASIOS ZADOROZNI ON HUNGER STRIKE (since November 29)
Imprisoned behind the bars and cement walls, after six and a half months of captivity, in the juridicial prisons of Korydallos, I come to realise that all they can do is to emprison my body. Everything else that is genuine and free, I have succeeded to maintain intact.
I am found in place of captivity to the state, because I decided to participate in a march of protest, because the system searched to find expiatory victims in order to promote the spectacle of control and justice. The system’s decay was obvious in all its greatness since all previously existing inaccuracies and inconherences in the cops’ statements were later on extinct when forced to modify before taking them to the interrogator. Of course these changes in combination with other excuses that offered the interrogator as objective had no other than to take back my case so as to influence the six-monthly council on its decision and to decided my further detaintion. How indeed could this decision be valid whether they did n’t use methods of manipulation and distortion of the clues, since there is no real case against me.
Excluded from all the possible choices, led to a no-way out rout, disgusted with continuing unfairness against me, I continue my struggle with all means i have left.
If they believe that putting me to jail, can extinguish my passion for freedom they are laughed. In a attempt to accentuate the contradictions of this decadent system and to show its totalitarian character I will stop giving them the right to rule my body. Since it is the unique thing that they keep in their hands I will turn it in a form of struggle against them, aiming at my release.
Thus I go on a hunger strike from Wednesday 29th of November and demand my direct and unconditional release of me and my codefendants, the withdrawl of categories and ceasing of our case. I will not leave them use freedom as a tool in their legal and political games. However my fight will be hard and it will need the support and solidarity of persons out there who interest to support my struggle.
Consciences are not ruled, nor jailed, nor guided.
Tarasios Zadorozni, “Γ” wing Juridicial Prisons of Korydallos
Appeal for solidarity from Greek anarchist prisoners
Athens, Greece – Gerasimos Kyriakopoulos and Kostas Katsadouros are in prison from 6 of May. They are anarchists that were arrested after the riots at the European Social Forum. They are 2 of the 4 people still detained after the disturbances. Another young man, 17 years old, was released after some weeks in the cells, and is continuing the anarchist political activities.
For communication with the imprisoned comrades:
(name)
Dikastikes fulakes korudallou
T.k. 18110
Athens
Greece
The specific prisoner support group (in Greece) working for these 2 men have had problems communicating with the prisoners. They don’t know if the prisoners get letters, but it is needed to show international interest and apply pressure on the guards. Please send them letters, postcards and take actions in solidarity! More information coming soon, there is also a demonstration in Greece being planned in support.
May 6, Athens, Greece – Riots erupted during the European Social Forum march in Athens. For a period of three hours following a 2km route, 2500 anarchists in small groups of 4-500 attacked banks, large department stores, police cars, government buildings, the police headquarters, riot police, riot police buses as well as “Z-team” policemen (motorcycle team). They attacked the US embassy, the Hilton hotel, the Italian embassy, and the riot police guarding the house of parliament. 20 people were arrested 17 of them are charged with multiple felony charges.
A LETTER FROM ANARCHIST GIANNIS DIMITRAKIS PUBLICED IN “PONTIKI” NEWSPARER>
Letter from Anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis, from Koridallos prison, Greece
On the afternoon of 16/1/06 an armed robbery took place at the national bank of Greece in the centre of Athens. After an exchange of fire with 2 cops from a special unit, one of the participators Yannis Dimitrakis, was seriously injured when shot by the cops 3 times at several parts of his body. The other 4 participators managed to get away from the scene with about 50,000 euro with one of them being slightly injured too. Yannis, who openly admitted that he is an anarchist, stayed in different hospitals for a few months till he recovered, then he was sent to Korydallos prison of Athens. In another parody of the Greek justice system Yannis was charged with 7 robberies! Also he was charged with numerous counts of attempted murder, topped with the anti-terror law! Its not the first time that a fixed charge is given towards anarchists in Greece. This is the letter he sent from prison on the 23rd of June where he explains a lot about what happened in the meantime and his personal position on the robbery.
Comrades,
This letter is my first attempt to communicate and comment on the events that took place and I experienced due to my participation in the bank robbery of the National Bank of Greece that took place in the centre of Athens on January 16th. Before I go on to enlarge upon the actual events, I’d like to say a few things in regards to my motives that lay behind my choice in taking such action and what it means to me.
For me, present-day society is a wagon following a pre-defined course that leads straight towards its complete dehumanization. The role of its passengers, its wheels and its horses- in other words of its driving force- is played out by ourselves, the people. The wagon’s driver has the cruel face of capitalism and its co-driver is a faceless and vague state. The path the wagon follows is of course not strewn with rose petals and flowers but with blood and human bodies. With individuals or groups of people that wanted to either resist and change its frantic course or to stand as an obstacle in front of it. The list of those is long: insubordinates, rebels, leftists, anti-authoritarians and anarchists fill many bloody pages in this journey’s storybook. Somewhere in between the last two groups is where I place myself.
So, to the degree of consciousness that my world-view and perception offers me, what I can easily discern is that present-day society relies only on violence, oppression and exploitation. A society which aims at the loss of human dignity in every way, by all means. This is something that is experienced and received by each and every one of us in their everyday life, either by being forced to deal with state institutions either at our work-place and from those who manage and profit from our work. Employment, work: words whose true meaning is wage slavery, enslavement. Work and its surplus-value are the pillars of today’s economic system while the individuals that carry it through and the circumstances under which this takes place confirms that people are treated as expendable goods, as modern slaves. We see workers that are rotting away from illnesses that are due to their long-term exposure to hazardous substances, that die either by fall or by explosion in the capitalist temples they are building, losing their urge, their liveliness, their spontaneity all that characterizes a would-be free person. Working exhausting hours and employed in two or three jobs simultaneously just for a few crumbs. When to cover their most basic needs a person is obliged to mortgage to those cold-hearted oppressors that are otherwise known as banks and under the burden of this financial responsibility start showing signs of subservience and submission whereas in the case that they cannot in the end cope and are led to bankruptcy and in the end commit suicide or are publicly ridiculed by the mass media as one more human wreckage, leads us to one conclusion.
The state and capital in order to continue existing manufacture modern-day helots who can easily be compared to the Spartan ones. A system which at the alter of profit sacrifices human lives inconsiderably and with audacity. As I’ve already mentioned one of the main partners in this crime are banks which are nothing less than legitimate loan-sharks and are partly to blame for the plundering that’s taking place at the expense of peoples’ work.
Taking all the above into consideration we can understand Maki in Brecht’s … When he asks ‘what is a bank robbery compared to the establishment of a bank?’ But also taking me into consideration who wanting to resist on a personal level- as on a mass level all that know me personally know that I have participated as much as I could- to my future yoke, to determine myself the conditions and quality of my life, to put in to practice my refusal to ‘work’ and also to play the role of yet another productive unit, of yet another wheel in the wagon, wanting to attack the monstrosity that is called a bank (however at the same time having no illusions that I’ll inflict any major blows to this economic institution), choosing to mark a course of dignity in my life I decided to rob a bank. An act which I consider, amongst many others, as revolutionary and which claims deservingly its own place as such.
In all honesty I must admit that the money I was going to acquire through the robbery was going to have me as the end-recipient. At the same time, however, as an anarchist and as a person who wishes to show their solidarity through deeds I’d be one of the first to actively and with joy help in contributing to monetary needs, which might come up in this scene which I belong. Finally, what I’d like to point out here is that all which I have mentioned up to now does not in any way mean that I support a notion that whoever is an anarchist should be a bank robber or that whoever works is enslaved.
Going on now to recount the chain of events that took place, I take as a starting point the scene where I’m lying on the ground seriously injured by the cops’ fire and I have to let myself be taken into the states’ ‘warm’ embrace. The welcoming is to, say the least, impressive as an image, as most people saw, but also exemplary towards anyone who is considering acting in a similar way: A pack of hunters in blue uniforms and me in the role of the injured game being surrounded and receiving ‘friendly’ kicks- which later I found out where part of the framework to disarm me- and comments like ‘we fucked you’ or ‘you’re not such a big shot now, you fucker?!’ amongst other brave words. Finally, being handcuffed from behind despite the fact that I couldn’t move or breathe having received bullets in my lungs, liver and elbow completes the picture. I refer to these events without the slightest trace of bitterness, complaining or disappointment, as I didn’t expect any better treatment from my enemies in the case that I did fall into their hands. In any case, a similar attitude has been displayed to less ‘dangerous’ villains and as a mere example I’ d like to remind you of images such as the arrest of protesters and immigrants or the pogroms at gypsy camps just to name a few. I do refer to these events, however, as, in a tragic and insane way, these are the people who at my trial will come forward as the ones who defend and honor human life and dignity, while I’ll have the role of the immoral, hardened, violent and heartless criminal.
For the time that I was kept at Athens General Hospital I literally experienced the violation of every human right as an arrestee and later as a prisoner. There were early signs regarding how I was going to be treated when at my parents first visit to see me at the ICU (Intensive Care Unit). While there are very strict rules about the number of visitors- even in the case of relatives- an armed to the teeth police officer barges in and places himself in a corner which as a consequence destroyed any concept of at least sharing a private moment with my family, as from the drug-treatment I was receiving I couldn’t even open my mouth, much less hold a conversation. Following this incident and at an unsuspected time, while in a hazy condition from the heavy drug treatment I was undertaking due to the pains I had from my wounds and swimming in a sea of tubes that were coming out of my body, I realized that a guard was now permanently positioned inside the room and right next to me. This situation really irritated me and didn’t allow me to rest and I made it known to him. Strangely enough he then left the room and instead stood right in front of it. Of course when the doctors and the head of the ICU came to examine me I reported this incident and truly astounded and irritated by the event they got rid of the cop, wondering who had let him in.
Here, a big thank you needs to be given from my behalf to all those people, from the doctors to the nurses, who paid me attention and who irrelevant of their own political beliefs took care of me as best as they could. Some of these people also resisted as much as they could to the different pressures put on them by the prosecuting authorities, either in regards to my guarding or my transport and exit from the ICU.
On the third or fourth day of my hospital treatment I was informed that prosecutor Diotis was coming to see me later that afternoon. I must confess that to start with I wasn’t sure whether in my condition I would be up to facing him. The head of the ICU, however, assured me that he would be by my side for the duration of the interrogation and made it known to me that due to my condition I had a right to stop the process at whatever moment, something that I was unaware of. So when Diotis arrived escorted by a security police chief and another person whose official role I can’t remember, but was probably the interrogator, and as soon as each of them had spoken to me to me for a couple of minutes I signaled to my doctor that I wanted them to leave. On his way out Diotis told me that in any case they were going to find who else was with me and that to talk now would just make it easier for me. Of course his words fell on deaf ears. The second time he came I was given a chance to understand who Diotis really is when in a lively exchange of words with the head of the ICU a very strange phrase slipped his mouth. Having finished his monologue and having delivered me the arrest warrant and the list of accusations I was facing he asks me to sign. My doctor immediately intervenes and explains to him that I am incapable of doing such a thing at the moment and asks him to leave as my strength was deserting me. Then Diotis, to both our surprise, answers: ‘ Of course I respect the boy’s condition and I don’t intend to give him a hard time, because if I did I could just pull on his tubes a little and put his pressure up to 50′. I realized at that moment what would have happened in that room if the doctors weren’t people with willpower and values but simply pawns. I would have, no doubt, discovered the ‘famous’ interrogation methods that prosecutor Diotis has used in the past.
After this incident the conditions of my detention really worsened. Two armed guards were permanently placed inside the ICU and pressures were put on the head of the department for me to be admitted out earlier, which was achieved. I was then transferred to an especially laid out room in the Eye Clinic with the excuse that they would be able to guard me more efficiently. In this new space in which I was placed I was sleeping with two undercover cops by my side. Another two cops were permanently stationed in front of the open door of the room while one character kept trooping in and out every half hour to check up on things, another 5-6 cops were in the waiting room and an unknown number of individuals in the corridor outside.
The result of all this was for me not to able to sleep for 3-4 days and to feel like a monkey in the zoo as every jumped-up cop came in looking at me up and down and discussing me on his mobile phone or with his collegues. I was at the end of my tether and so made a complaint to the head of security about it all who replied that I was a prisoner now and that they’ll be the ones to judge how I should be guarded and that they’re protecting me from myself meaning, if you can believe, that they were watching over me so I didn’t commit suicide. Other amazing scenes that took place included me, still bed-ridden, relieving myself in front of them while they watched undisturbed, or me being handcuffed to the bed inside the ICU, again with the excuse of preventing me from committing suicide and other such incidents. Like the attempt to kidnap me from the Eye Clinic and to transport me to the hospital at Korydallos prisons while I still had stitches in from the surgical incisions, falsely claiming that the doctors had given their permission and which in the end was, for the time being, avoided due to my parents notifying the doctors.
I believe the sole purpose of all this was to humiliate me, to make me lose all sense of self-respect and to generally make me realize the fact that I was a captive in their hands and I no longer had any rights. These situations drove me to think of the hospital and prisons at Korydallos as a haven of mental tranquility.
In the mean time, while I was waiting to be transferred to Korydallos prisons, we all saw an orchestrated attempt by the prosecuting authorities to manufacture culprits with their only indication being that they belonged to my friendly environment or to the anarchist scene. I am now sure that the taking in of people to be interrogated, the making public of names and the issuing of arrest warrants were triggered by the police finding some of my personal photos, calls to and from my mobile or whatever document proved I had a friendly relationship with these individuals. I want to express my solidarity to all of them.
According to the police and journalist scenarios we form an, unknown at least to me, ‘gang in black’ which consists of 10-15 individuals, anti-authoritarians and anarchists (which leaves open an option of the authorities involving other individuals) and this gang has committed another 6 bank robberies, goes on holidays in expensive resorts, has close ties to Passaris and so on. As far as the money that had been gathered by various comrades to cover needs of the anarchist scene and which I kept in a bank deposit box, it was labeled as the product of robberies.
As an outcome of all the above, I ended up defending myself in front of the interrogator for 7 bank robberies, for attempted homicide and for money laundering plus being put under the anti-terrorist law.
That the state and its underdogs have as a standard tactic for years now to tarnish peoples’ reputation, to inflate briefs, to manufacture culprits, to organize trials that are judicial parodies and generally in all kinds of ways to demonstrate their hate and vengefulness towards whoever resists is well known. One question however forms when taking into serious consideration all the above. What kind of treatment and what kind of methods will the state use in the case of the arrest or voluntary coming forward of the three comrades in order to get a confession out of them and to send them to trial but also how will a ‘fair trial’ be secured for whoever goes through with this procedure?
Finally I have one thing to say to all those who are planning our physical, ethical and political annihilation, once and for all: no matter what dirty and unethical means they use, no matter how much they hunt us down and imprison us they will never crush us and tame us. Because those who are just are those who revolt not those who snitch and bow their heads down.
I also want to say a big thank you to all those who have chosen, chose or will chose to give me their support and solidarity, by whatever means, even though the nature of my case is, I believe, very difficult.
In struggle
Giannis Dimitrakis
Korydallos Prisons, 5 June 2006
You can send mail to Giannis at:
Giannis Dimitrakis
dikastikes filakes neapolis kritis
72400
Neapoli Kritis
Greece
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Solidarity Poster for Polykarpos Georgiadis and Vaggelis Chrisohoidis (greece)
POSTER SAYS:
did anyone speak of a
KIDNAPPING?
“…A handful of capitalists
have organized a criminal gang
and have kidnapped the proletarians,
demanding for ransom
their labor force,
merchandising their human activity,
their time (which is turned into money),
their own being itself…”
to vaggelis Chrisohoidis and Polykarpos Georgiadis
who the persecuting authorities, exactly because they denied to betray values and people,
accuse them as participators in the kidnapping of industrialist Milonas
anarchists from Serres from north-greece
VIDEO FROM THE COMRADES IN THE SUPERMARKET IN SALONIKI 15/6
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!!
Keny Arkana - La Rage English Subtitles
1976 - 2000 Greek Anarchists Fight for Freedom
(December Riots in Greece)