I always have in mind this image of myself, every time I passed outside a prison, unconsciously looking up at the high walls with the barbed wire on top. Which prison do I mean? Well, every time I went to visit some friends in the Nikea neighborhood on my motorbike and passed down Grigoriou Lambraki street, Koridallos prison with its stone walls magnetized my gaze. I don't know why this happened. Was it because there were times I was on the streets near the prison, on the occasion of solidarity demos with imprisoned comrades, but never within breathing distance as all the passages to get closer were completely blocked by the police? Or was it perhaps because that huge impotent building that hid with incredible diligence everything that happened in its depths, an unknown world with its own rules and laws, full of peoples' stories, some heroic some of torture, provoked my curiosity?
Now that I think about it, I remember I was once again in front of a prison. I think it was the spring of 2003 when we demonstrated outside the “correctional” institution of Larissa. One more dungeon located in a suburb of that city, next to a school. There, the prisoner has the unfortunate privilege of feeling the psychotic climate of the Thessaly plain on his own skin. In the summer, boiling in his skin with temperatures around 43 º C and in winter searching for some heat under a pile of blankets in order to escape the one-or two-digit Celcius degrees below zero. Pure madness. I obtained this information later from prisoners who were there or who had passed through, and Vagelis Pallis also confirmed it to me in the summer of 2008 when we communicated daily.
The rally was convened in the city's central plaza surrounded by cafes. I had the impression that the local people looked at us puzzled as if they had seen something that was completely foreign and alien to them. We had come up to Larissa because there were rumors that they were constructing a new wing, also of an isolation type, intended to receive the people involved in the case of the revolutionary organization 17 November. This meant that they would be transferred from the special wing in Koridallos where they were already being held, thereby causing many problems for themselves, their families and lawyers, considering the distance from Athens. It's not easy to travel 700km there and back in one day for an hour or a half an hour visit. So, immediate reflexes and the black swarm takes up a position of combat in Larissa square and then a demo up to the prison. Naturally, when the demo started it attracted the attention of the locals and, as expected, as soon as we approached our destination 2 or 3 buses of riot police and lined-up green uniforms containing something resembling humans were waiting for us, forbidding any closer approach to the prison.
Slogans and shouting from us, hands that reached out as far as they could through the bars of their cells, greeting us by waving tops and sheets, whistling loudly. The distance forbiding any recognition of their faces, each had to draw in our mind the fantasy image of a person desperately trying to return what they received: Solidarity or simply the human presence? Who knows ...
The demo left us all with a good feeling. It had been vibrant, intense, with a lot of people and zest. However, what has been deeply carved into my memory from that day was a picture, which I have no idea if any or how many had the fortune to take in. At the time when we were at the final stretch before the prison and we were passing the last houses of the city and the air vibrated with our slogans, which became stronger and stronger so that we could be heard by those inside the walls, my eyes alighted upon a figure on the balcony of a fairly old, two-storey house. Looking more carefully I noticed, astounded, that it was an old man, some 80 years old, who, obviously touched, was waving at the demo with tears in his eyes! I wonder what we reminded him of? What kind of memories did we draw from the depths of his mind, which he compared to what he saw at that moment? It remains unknown and of minor significance. What matters is the fact itself and the resulting flood of sensations, on the one and the other side. It is not a small thing to realize in the present that what you are doing is matched by two nostalgic tears of a person that moisten the traces of his past, who in a curious way is encountering the future, which is however your present. A present that on the one hand you are creating mutually in comradeship with others, and on the other you also experience uniquelly as a unique and different being within a group of people.
Anyway, whatever my reason for being stuck with the image of the prison, finally curiosity “killed” the cat. And what a cat! Armed to the teeth and ready for everything or at least that's what I thought. To tell the truth, as a "promising" youth and anarchist then, at the twilight of 1997 and in subsequent years during which I ran, immersing myself without a second thought, into the cauldron of social fermentations, I was convinced that they would never catch me. Me, the cat! But alas, what an illusion! Although a cool retrospective of my records can verify that, as they say in the street, I lasted for a bit. Not for long, but I managed to withstand walking like an “anastenaris” (fire-walker) over glowing coals for nearly 8 years, until finally my fur got singed. Because I was walking on the coals in the way I had decided to participate in the preparatory works, those necessary, according to my evaluation, to pave the ground for the advent of the future and deeply desired revolution.
So it didn't take long for things to go wrong, and a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and a little also due to my damn luck that left me hanging in one of the most critical moments of my life, fighting alone with three angry cops' bullets with my name writen on them, bullets that seemed destined to accompany me on my journey of no return - but that in the end, like a real cat with seven lives, for reasons unknown I was left on the pier without embarking on the boat of the famous boatman dressed in black - I ended up there where I was before, itching with curiosity to see what was going on. There where, as I already mentioned, I did not expect to go when I was a young and promising anarchist.
Behind the bars ...
A new chapter opened in my life from that moment and it still refuses to close. It is, you see, that I was caught for a very serious offence, according to their penal codes. A bank robbery with 110 thousand euro in loot, mixed artfully with another six cases and a heap of other felonies, which the jackals up at the police headquarters found easy to charge me with - accomplishing their sacred vocation with the perfect sense of professionalism and honesty that has always characterized them - and also search and arrest warrants for three friends and comrades. Marios, Grigoris and Simos: named as my accomplices and codefendants who over time were renamed arch-thieves and a connecting link that would help dismantle the domestic armed guerrilla groups and who knows what else written in various "distinguished" stinking newspapers or said by television reporters of “unquestionable ethics and merit" spouting police propaganda. The result? In October 2009 the newly established parliamentary terrorist organization PASOK put out a 600,000 euros bounty on their heads, making life even more difficult for them, because also before they were fleeing the law and hiding from view of the persecutory bodies, since they had already refused to accept the warrants.
And if things had stopped going wrong there one could perhaps, with difficulty of course, have swallowed this bitter cup. But no, the devil had to break a leg again. This time not for me, but for Simos. And this time he not only broke it but literally lost it. An armed robbery at the hypermarket "Praktiker" on Piraeus street, near Gazi. Screams, gunfire, wounded people, total chaos. The police arrive at the incident site and listen to an eyewitness saying that one of the criminals was tall, and already the butterfly had flapped its wings in Vietnam so the hurricane strikes in the neighbourhood of Keramikos in Athens. Even twice, as apart from the coincidental tracking down, arrest and serious injury of Simos, another friend and comrade, Aris, was caught in the same area and then imprisoned with the most ridiculous and completely prefabricated charges. A late finding by the persecuting authorities inside the inquisitor's office, just moments before he was set free for the misdemeanours he was accused of during his arrest in Keramikos. And as if it was not enough that freedom be stolen from him at the last moment, they also deprived him of his father, a comrade for us, as his heart could not take so much injustice, anger and indignation and he said goodbye to us forever. And if I start to tell you everything that has happened in recent times, from the day that this damn 2010 dawned with all these sad and disturbing developments within the anarchist milieu, I only want to do this for the names of those involved, memories careful not to forget any comrade. Like Lambros, for whom a police bullet with his name on it took away his life in the alleys of Dafni at the moment when he was expropriating a car as part of broader plans related to the class war. Like Haris, Panagiotis, Konstantina, Ilias, Giorgos, Polikarpos, Vagelis, Christos, Alfredo, Pola, Nikos, Vagelis, Kostas, Hristoforos and Sarandos.
Leaving aside for now the sad and tragic evaluation of 2010 and rejoining my writing to the dark days of my past, to the beginnings of an iron-clad life, the "search" on my biological hard drive stops somewhere at the end of January 2006.
I still remember that sunny morning when the cops at the General Hospital of Athens notified me that I had to prepare for transfer to the prison hospital "Agios Pavlos". I have a vivid recollection of the moment because it marked the end of a snow blizzard that had struck the whole of Greece, bringing chaos and mayhem over urban areas, paralyzing almost everything, removing, if only for a few days, the organized structure of large cities, cancelling all forms of transportation and plans, as well as everyday workings throughout the public and private sector.
It was that snow blizzard, or at least a strong stroke of bad weather according to the weather broadcasts, that we were expecting to assist us in achieving our unholy objectives. To rob the National Bank at the intersection of Solonos and Ipokratus streets. A central point in the heart of Athens and our optimistic anticipations about a big booty, but of course accompanied by a disproportionate, almost prohibitive, risk. Not that we would postpone the day of the hit in the case that the weather was not in our favour. We were not those kind of kids. The day had been decided. Monday 16 January. A pretty bad day for attempting to carry out such an action, as in the beginning of the week all are poised and ready to fulfill their duties, especially cops. Yet there was something that kept frantically driving us to the brink.
Finally, the weather played a bad trick on us and that Monday morning, the sun, triumphant and proud of its victory in the full heart of winter, rose high above and, unhindered, was blasting its hot rays on the citizens of Attika. The result? On the one hand everyone was out and about doing errands or having a stroll, a fact that functioned positively for us the unholies, since the centre looked like a viscous human river in which you could move only with difficulty, on the other hand I, along with the others in the car, butt jersey, winter jacket and military means of expropriation, flushed and sweating, were cursing our bad luck while watching all those foot patrols in the centre of Athens parading with a smile in the sunshine.
Pensive and nervous having seen the first bad signs, we arrived at the meeting point from which we had to get moving toward our final destination. There we found the others. A strange feeling was cerainly surrounding as all. We were a small circle of conspirators, far removed from everything going on around us, strangers to the general climate of joy that was emerging in the atmosphere from all those that had come to the centre of the city to enjoy the sunny day. Our own universe was at this time and in the moments that would follow, light years away in relation to the one all the others belonged to. Our universe would be colliding with theirs, and actually violently, making our presence tangible within a few minutes, when we would be upsetting the parallel and rarely intersecting courses of our different lives. A momentary invasion of one word into another that would create an uncontrollable chain of events. A further slap in the face of normality, one more slap in the face of the horizontal and rectilinearly coordinated sequence of things. Something like a pileup on the motorway, when the act of a fast or careless driver also carries with it the fate of other passengers, disrupting and blocking the normal flow of traffic according to the size of the pileup.
Those who were already waiting for us at the meeting point had some bad news. As they were coming to meet us they passed a police blockade that was so near the place of the attack that it posed a serious threat to the whole operation, made it almost impossible. Immediate reactions of the sort "who gives a shit, we go and whatever" or "fuck it, lets defer and see some other time" were balanced out by some going to check if the blockade was still there, and then act accordingly. Finally the cops had gone, but "are gone" is so relative in the centre of Athens and even more at the point where the bank was as is a supermarket frozen pizza compared to one made at a good pizzeria. Thus, since, as I said, something was pushing us over the edge, we decided to go through with it as the cops had “gone”. What followed that of course has to do exactly with Murphy's Law, which says that if you drop a piece of toast with jam on it, 9 times out of 10 it will fall to the floor jam side down. The fact that everything went pear-shaped definitely belongs to this story with the jam, those damned factors of uncerainty that can overturn everything and above all the unpredictable nature of human character and behaviour. A whirlwind of faces and things which after stopping its manic spinning washes ashore an urban area, a stupid bank guard injured by his equally incredibly stupid willingness to stop the flight of the robbers in a totally wrong and distorted perception of the limits of his duty, in addition to a car that never started, a bag with arms and money, three people who frantically dissolve in the neutral crowd and yours truly left injured in the hands of his pursuers.
The same indifferent to what happens a thousand million miles from him sun, that warmed that wintry day in January, was the one that made a presence in the hospital that morning, creating these parallel memory projections.
I expected it to happen at some point. I knew they had put pressure to get me out of the intensive care unit sooner and I had learned that they were in a rush to take me to the prison hospital. To get rid of me. I still had the stitches, bits of metal in the form of a Greek P, similar to those with which they nail the upholstery onto the skeleton of a sofa, from the chest to the pubic area and in general a few little fixes, but no matter how strongly I protested that I should still not be moved from the hospital, the pigs had their orders from their superior. And since the superior had said it, what could I do? With great effort and pain I started to gather my things, crippled and incapable of even straightening my own body. Just some minor details as far as the superior was concerned. Obviously this was also included in the price I had already started to pay for my choices.
However, the finishing touches of my abrupt dismissal from the hospital were still to come. Before two dozen police radios, weapons, boots and another so many problematic brains were able to coordinate the operation "safe departure", just then my mother makes her appearance arriving early for the standard visit to her beloved son.
My mother ... Mrs Eleni, who is seperated by only 17 years from her son, and so in the 90's, whenever we opened the door together to some bookseller, they always asked us "where is your mother?" Mrs Eleni, who upon hearing the news that I was involved in a bank robbery that ended with me seriously injured, was a breath away from having a nervous breakdown. Although not completely so, as ultimately the cops at the Police Headquarters failed to obtain any statement from her, as she started screaming out of control: "I want to see myyyy chiiiild.....” The cops lost it by the reaction of my mother and, well, what could they do? She was a mother worried about her son. Give her a beating? Throw her in the detention room so they don't have to listen to her? It would have been like that or worse if we went back 60 or 35 years into the past, either to the dark days of the civil war in 1946 or to the later seven-year period of the audacious cowarldly scum of the Junta. However it was 2006 and we were already traversing 30 years of pseudodemocratic parliamentary oligarchy, where the fascistic and harsh authoritarian behaviour was hidden behind other, more flexible and perhaps more effective forms of violence . In any case, the screams of my mother brought her in no time to the hospital where I was being held and the statement was given at a later time. As if those bright brains would have forgotten all about it!
So, this mixture of a woman with strong doses of maternal instinct who as a genuine female turned into a mother lioness, into a wild beast, when she felt that one of her children was in danger and under threat - especially when compared with her usual everyday stance in regards to institutions, powers and voluntary rules - appeared unprepared that morning for what was happening at the moment, but in combative mode as every true mother and ready to oppose anything that would endanger my physical and psychological integrity.
As one can easily imagine, my abduction-transfer to the prison hospital for a few moments remained in the air, until the "responsible power", meaning my mother, returned with the doctors who took care of me and who, as she said, were the only ones suitable to decide whether to discharge me. And so it was. A crowd of white shirts, clearly disturbed and surprised, with my mother in the front row, appeared from a distance heading towards the stretcher that was already in course for departure.
- Who ordered the transfer of the patient? , one of the doctors' asked the cops.
- We have orders from above sir, it's not our decision.
- Maybe I can talk to your superior?
- One moment, I have to confirm ...
And while those in authority and those responsible were involved in a verbal duel, my stretcher was brought back to the room in order to – as the outcome of the battle between the cops and doctors finally turned out - give me a last look. The last stitches were removed, medications were prescribed and confirmations were given that the most difficult part and the most important care for my injuries was over, and that the only thing left was for my strength to return through rest and abundant food. That certainly was a half truth, or rather a lie well-wrapped up in its package of powerlessness. The fight between the doctors, my mom and the cops reached my ears, with those first insisting that I'm still not fit to be discharged and those last monotonously repeating that they were simply following orders.Obviously, as was expected, the following of orders prevailed.
But this was not the first time the scale tilted in favor of the cops and their fucking orders. Hadn't the same situation already taken place on the issue of guarding me inside the Intensive Care Unit? Then, the medical team for two days managed to resist pressure from security forces who wanted to invade my room, with their key argument being that something like that would be dangerous not only for my health but also for other patients'. However, it would be naive to believe that fundamental human values would be able to prevail over the new dogma of "repression and security."
Hadn't the same thing happened when the head of the ICU came to announce to me, crestfallen, that he was unable to keep me any longer under his own supervision, even though the state of my health required it, as he was under extreme pressure by the prosecuting authorities, who wanted him to sign my discharge from the 24 hour Monitoring Unit and the continuation of my hospitalization in the Eye Department! Why there and not in the surgical depatment? But of course for security reasons. The cops demanded the evacuation of an entire chamber in the surgical department from all other patients so that they can guard me better, as they believed it should be, something that was impossible for the hospital. So, I was taken to a room in the eye department, which was already prepared, because, as I was informed, it had "hosted" Dimitris Koufodinas during the hunger strike carried out demanding the removal of the mesh placed above the yard in which he and others of the 17th November armed group were imprisoned. Prepared ... Yes it was prepared. That is, there was nothing inside, or better yet they had removed or fixed everything, according to them always, that could be used by the inmate in a possible suicide attempt or an attack on the guards, and of course the balcony door had bars. Square logic of stupidity at its height.
Was it not the dogma of security and intimidation which, in the twinkling of an eye wiped out every trace of human dignity and integrity in this room? Was it not pure sadism and revenge that drove these subhumans to monitor my mother when she was cleaning my shit as I lay still bed-ridden, without even diverting their eyes for a moment? Was it not their boorish behavior during all those days I was in their suffocating "embrace" which resulted in the interrogator and prosecutor who came for my statement finding me dozing, sleepless and exhausted? Or was there I wonder even a trace of humanity in the chief torturer I. Diotis, when he payed me a visit in a hurry to take my statement while I was still intubated, obviously unable to whisper even a whole sentence, thus not only ignoring but also posing a threat to my tragic health condition?
These are of course rhetorical questions and there are not posed as another cry of protest against the trampling of democratic rights or something like that, but as a record of the terms in which the conflict between two countervailing forces, between two completely different worlds, is carried out. On one side we have those who dream of a society totally subjugated and enslaved at the service of the oligarchic appetites of insatiable idlers and on the other side those who fight for true equality, justice and freedom, which create a new reality away from terms such as gain, competitiveness, exploitation and hierarchy.
While the wheels of the stretcher passed quickly over the small irregularities in the hospitable floor, with each one being translated as a sharp pain on my operated back, the savage pack escorting me amidst shouting and consecutive contradicting orders led me, to its great relief, towards my final exit from the General Hospital of Athens. The first rays of warm light that I encountered on the patio, there where the ambulance and escort cars for my safe transfer to the prison hospital "Agios Pavlos" were awaiting, were something really liberating, something that seemed to atone for these three weeks of my coexistence with Cerberus in uniform. Those few seconds that passed until they placed me inside the ambulance was for me the last chance to breathe fresh air and watch the sun without the interference of fences and barbed wire. With the sun as my comrade I bed my final farewell to freedom and entered the deepest winter of my life.
To be continued...
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Domokos Prisons
10/9/2010
Thursday, 23 December 2010
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
LETTER FROM THE SPECIAL BASEMENT OF THE 6TH WING OF KORIDALLOS PRISONS ( ATHENS GREECE)
boubourAs translation for actforfreedomno
22 December 2010
Since the 29th of November, we the three political prisoners of the underground special wing 6 of Koridallos, defendants for the case of Revolutionary Struggle, participated in the mobilizations of the prisoners of all prisons who either with prison food abstention, or with hunger strikes are fighting for the improvement of certain provisions of the C.C. (Correctional Code) regarding the leave days, the probations and disciplinary matters, decent treatment and improvement of the conditions of detention, the abolition of certain draconian penal provisions, special detainment conditions, reduction of the life sentence as well as the release of disabled prisoners and cancer patients.
In the frames of these demands it is also claimed that the special antiterrorist legislations that occasionally have been voted are abolished, with the most recent that passed in August which the “progressive” Kastanidis passed secretly and where it's allowed for anonymous witnesses to testify in trials of cases of armed revolutionary organizations and “organized crime” as well as the penalization of violent action of demonstrators in mass mobilizations as “terrorist actions”.
The situation in which they passed these two provisions is not accidental since the present minister of “Justice” Kastanidis participates in a government of traitors of the Greek people that executes the commands of the lenders of the international economic elite.
It is natural that along with the application of the Memorandum, there is State repression for the defense of the regime since they await social explosions that can put at risk its very existence.
Also among the demands of the prisoners is the abolishment of the special regime of detention of political prisoners whether it's the special wing in the F.P.K. (female prisons of Koridallos) where those sentenced for the 17N (17November organization) are detained, or the basement of the 6th wing.
The 6th wing is an isolated small wing and the basement in which we are kept has 8 cells of 2 people.
The 6th was a building - warehouse which was transformed into a detainment space in 2002 when the 17N arrests happened.
For many months, the arrested of the 17N experienced a regime of isolation where they were locked in the cells 23 hours a day, without free access to information and correspondence, while to the courtyard - grave 20 x 10 meters that sees only to the sky through a barbwire, they came out 1 hour 2 people at a time escorted by a prison guard.
Even though this special regime was abolished, the basement of the 6th continues to function despite all the insufficiencies of the building infrastructure in air, lighting and the great lack of space since outside the cells there is only a narrow corridor 10 x 2,5 m for the prisoners to walk.
As anyone can realize we have the same space that the domestic animals have in a cage or in a pen.
To the basement of the 6th, the prison authorities sends either prisoners like us political, with the decision of the Ministry, or prisoners that are branded dangerous (e.g. could escape) and are sent here for isolation, or prisoners who have problems with other prisoners from other wings.
Despite all this, recently, the prison authorities have crammed 20 detainees into the basement of the 6th, putting a third person in the cells of two, who slept on the floor, while the maximum capacity is 16 individuals in such a narrow space.
On Friday the 10th of December in the afternoon, some of us protested this situation to the sergeant on shift who although justified us regarding that this situation offends human dignity, declared to us he cannot do anything because there is no other space to put the extra prisoners.
After few hours and just before the prison closed, we were informed that the minister of “Justice” of the troika, Kastanidis, was visiting the prisons of Koridallos to “discuss” with a “delegation” of detainees the demands which have been placed with the mobilizations that are taking place all over Greece in all prisons.
Then we decided the 19 prisoners of the basement, in common defiance, to refuse to enter the cells at 8.00pm in the evening as is the regulation of the prison and demanded that the minister himself to come and visit the basement of the 6th and see the situation for himself.
Since we realize that the minister came to Koridallos in order to make another political “communication funfair” meeting with a non-existent “elected self-organized committee of struggle”, we refused as it was proposed to us by the prison authorities that 2 individuals go as representatives of the basement of the 6th and we insisted that he should come down to the basement and that we would not enter the cells if he did not come. We had no intention of “discussing” with someone that, because of his political identity, the fake promises and the “I will” of his profession, e.g. he had promised when he was in the opposition to abolish the “hoodlaw” (law which says that if you cause damage while wearing a hood or mask, it's a terrorist action) while now as minister of the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank. and the E.U. applies even more draconian laws.
Naturally our demand that the minister comes to the basement of the 6th was not accepted either because the “honorable” minister denied, or because the sergeant denied to transmit our demand.
We then decided that we are not going to enter the cells all night if the basement of the 6th is not relieved of the overcrowding, which means the transport of the extra prisoners, something that finally happened at 11.30 at night.
Nothing of course guarantees that we will not have similar situations in the future.
The obvious that we demand is dignity and this consists of the abolishment of the Basement of the 6th wing, the abolishment of the special division where they keep the sentenced of the 17N, the abolishment of every special regime of detainment for any category of prisoners, while we support all the demands of our fellow prisoners that are participating in the mobilizations.
The most and real criminals are not behind the prison walls. The real robbers and murderers, those that rob the Greek people, that plunder the wages and the pensions, those that deprive care and health, are in the “Megaro Maximou” (Maximou mansion, the Greek equivalent of the White House, in the ministerial offices, in the seats of parliament, in the bourgeois districts, in the villas and in the luxurious offices of the bankers, the businessmen and the shipowners.
K. Gournas, S. Nikitopoulos, N. Maziotis
22 December 2010
Since the 29th of November, we the three political prisoners of the underground special wing 6 of Koridallos, defendants for the case of Revolutionary Struggle, participated in the mobilizations of the prisoners of all prisons who either with prison food abstention, or with hunger strikes are fighting for the improvement of certain provisions of the C.C. (Correctional Code) regarding the leave days, the probations and disciplinary matters, decent treatment and improvement of the conditions of detention, the abolition of certain draconian penal provisions, special detainment conditions, reduction of the life sentence as well as the release of disabled prisoners and cancer patients.
In the frames of these demands it is also claimed that the special antiterrorist legislations that occasionally have been voted are abolished, with the most recent that passed in August which the “progressive” Kastanidis passed secretly and where it's allowed for anonymous witnesses to testify in trials of cases of armed revolutionary organizations and “organized crime” as well as the penalization of violent action of demonstrators in mass mobilizations as “terrorist actions”.
The situation in which they passed these two provisions is not accidental since the present minister of “Justice” Kastanidis participates in a government of traitors of the Greek people that executes the commands of the lenders of the international economic elite.
It is natural that along with the application of the Memorandum, there is State repression for the defense of the regime since they await social explosions that can put at risk its very existence.
Also among the demands of the prisoners is the abolishment of the special regime of detention of political prisoners whether it's the special wing in the F.P.K. (female prisons of Koridallos) where those sentenced for the 17N (17November organization) are detained, or the basement of the 6th wing.
The 6th wing is an isolated small wing and the basement in which we are kept has 8 cells of 2 people.
The 6th was a building - warehouse which was transformed into a detainment space in 2002 when the 17N arrests happened.
For many months, the arrested of the 17N experienced a regime of isolation where they were locked in the cells 23 hours a day, without free access to information and correspondence, while to the courtyard - grave 20 x 10 meters that sees only to the sky through a barbwire, they came out 1 hour 2 people at a time escorted by a prison guard.
Even though this special regime was abolished, the basement of the 6th continues to function despite all the insufficiencies of the building infrastructure in air, lighting and the great lack of space since outside the cells there is only a narrow corridor 10 x 2,5 m for the prisoners to walk.
As anyone can realize we have the same space that the domestic animals have in a cage or in a pen.
To the basement of the 6th, the prison authorities sends either prisoners like us political, with the decision of the Ministry, or prisoners that are branded dangerous (e.g. could escape) and are sent here for isolation, or prisoners who have problems with other prisoners from other wings.
Despite all this, recently, the prison authorities have crammed 20 detainees into the basement of the 6th, putting a third person in the cells of two, who slept on the floor, while the maximum capacity is 16 individuals in such a narrow space.
On Friday the 10th of December in the afternoon, some of us protested this situation to the sergeant on shift who although justified us regarding that this situation offends human dignity, declared to us he cannot do anything because there is no other space to put the extra prisoners.
After few hours and just before the prison closed, we were informed that the minister of “Justice” of the troika, Kastanidis, was visiting the prisons of Koridallos to “discuss” with a “delegation” of detainees the demands which have been placed with the mobilizations that are taking place all over Greece in all prisons.
Then we decided the 19 prisoners of the basement, in common defiance, to refuse to enter the cells at 8.00pm in the evening as is the regulation of the prison and demanded that the minister himself to come and visit the basement of the 6th and see the situation for himself.
Since we realize that the minister came to Koridallos in order to make another political “communication funfair” meeting with a non-existent “elected self-organized committee of struggle”, we refused as it was proposed to us by the prison authorities that 2 individuals go as representatives of the basement of the 6th and we insisted that he should come down to the basement and that we would not enter the cells if he did not come. We had no intention of “discussing” with someone that, because of his political identity, the fake promises and the “I will” of his profession, e.g. he had promised when he was in the opposition to abolish the “hoodlaw” (law which says that if you cause damage while wearing a hood or mask, it's a terrorist action) while now as minister of the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank. and the E.U. applies even more draconian laws.
Naturally our demand that the minister comes to the basement of the 6th was not accepted either because the “honorable” minister denied, or because the sergeant denied to transmit our demand.
We then decided that we are not going to enter the cells all night if the basement of the 6th is not relieved of the overcrowding, which means the transport of the extra prisoners, something that finally happened at 11.30 at night.
Nothing of course guarantees that we will not have similar situations in the future.
The obvious that we demand is dignity and this consists of the abolishment of the Basement of the 6th wing, the abolishment of the special division where they keep the sentenced of the 17N, the abolishment of every special regime of detainment for any category of prisoners, while we support all the demands of our fellow prisoners that are participating in the mobilizations.
The most and real criminals are not behind the prison walls. The real robbers and murderers, those that rob the Greek people, that plunder the wages and the pensions, those that deprive care and health, are in the “Megaro Maximou” (Maximou mansion, the Greek equivalent of the White House, in the ministerial offices, in the seats of parliament, in the bourgeois districts, in the villas and in the luxurious offices of the bankers, the businessmen and the shipowners.
K. Gournas, S. Nikitopoulos, N. Maziotis
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
9 December. Revolutionary StruggIe: International call for solidarity
actforfreedomnow!
9 December 2010
INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SOLIDARITY
Comrades,
We are three political prisoners, members of the armed group Revolutionary Struggle [Epanastatikos Agonas], and we send you militant greetings from the Greek prisons.
We were arrested in April 2010 along with other three comrades who are being accused of involvement in the organization. Since then, we have been on pretrial detention [under the terrorism act], waiting to be referred to a trial in the first months of 2011.
In an open political letter to society, the three of us claimed political responsibility for our participation in the organization of Revolutionary Struggle. In this way, we defended our actions which were directed against the Capital and the State, and contributed through practice and speech towards the overthrowal of the State and capitalism, aiming at social revolution, at a non-statist, anti-authoritarian, communal and communist society, in which assemblies and councils of the people will undertake social, political and economic operation and management.
By claiming political responsibility, we also want to defend armed struggle, and to highlight its timelessness and importance within the broader struggle for overthrowal and social revolution. Most importantly, we want to highlight its relevance and necessity for our times. It is our belief that the appropriate objective conditions for the overthrowal of capitalism have developed in this era of global economic crisis more than in any other time since the Second World War.
Also, by undertaking political responsibility we wanted to restore the memory and honour of our comrade Lambros Foundas, who was a member of the Revolutionary Struggle and was killed in an armed clash with cops in March 2010 during an attempted expropriation of a car – a preparatory action of a wider action plan of our organization.
The political, economic and social environment in which the Revolutionary Struggle was formed and has developed its action is very different from that of the Western-European urban guerrilla groups, which were active from the 1970s and 1980s up until the early 1990s. Back then the bipolar, the competition between the US-USSR and their political-economic systems were dominant. It was the time when the model of Keynesianism was sinking into crisis and political devaluation, as Capital regained its strength against the proletariat, governments of Western countries one after the other abandoned state intervention in the economy – the so-called ‘economics of demand’ – and replaced them with ‘economics of supply’, while the States began the assault on labor and social gains, defending the interests of the economically powerful and imposing the neoliberal financial and political model of governance.
The economic and political environment in which Revolutionary Struggle was formed was set by the USA monocracy, economic globalization, neoliberalism and the fight against terrorism, which is the peak of political-military globalization. Because, for us, both the “fight against terrorism” and the totalitarianism of the markets are two sides of the same coin; they are the political and economic nature of globalization. Whenever and wherever globalization is not able to be imposed by the weapons of the capitalists and international financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, ECB, FED), by the financial tools of international stock markets, by poverty, hunger and marginalization, it is imposed by the sharpening of state violence and power, by repression, war and military incursions, by fire and iron.
The period from 2003, when the Revolutionary Struggle started its action, up to 2007, while the growing social crisis was creating strong social dissatisfaction, the neoliberal consensus was strong, due to the fact that capitalist development was continued ‘smoothly’ using bank loans, as a global scale bubble growing against the successive financial crises that were shaking the planet (Southeast Asia crisis, economic collapse in Argentina, Dot.com crisis in the US).
Since 2007, year of the first ‘bursting of the bubble’ of the residential mortgage loans in the US, which gave the onset of the global financial crisis, the failure of the neoliberal consensus started, leading to deeper and deeper political and social scorn for the regime.
During its first period Revolutionary Struggle set as cutting-edge issues the ‘fight against terrorism’ with the military operations of the US and their Western allies to the countries of the region, and with the intensity of state violence, repression and terrorism in the countries of the capitalist centre and the semi-periphery, in which substantially Greece belongs (rocket attack against the US Embassy, attack against the former minister of Public Order, against police targets and courts), the neoliberal invasion, the marketization of all the economic and social functions left, the attack of Capital against labor gains (bomb attacks against Ministries of Employment and Economy).
Then, since 2008, the global financial crisis was a true challenge for us in order to upgrade our action, making attacks against economic structures and institutions such as the stock market, Citibank and Eurobank. Our ambition was to hurt the vulnerable – due to the crisis – system as long as possible, to strongly sabotage the political choices of the Greek government and the ‘rescue-of-the-country’ plans imposed by the troika (IMF, EU, ECB).
This was the reason that PASOK government was so afraid of Revolutionary Struggle, since – according to the statements of a member of the government – the organization ‘could blow up the financial measures.’ That’s why our arrests, which took place a few days before the IMF, the EU and the ECB entirely take the reins of power in Greece, were characterized by the Greek government and other European and American political factors as a great success.
For us, the financial crisis we live today is the first truly global crisis in history and the only one since the Great Depression of the early 1930s that affects so intensely all the countries of the capitalist centre, while its character is systemic; it concerns the nature of capitalism itself and the nature of the market economy, and it is multi-dimensional, because other than financial it is political, social and environmental.
On the occasion of the current crisis, both economic and political elites around the world are conducting a frontal attack against societies; former achievements of the labor movement are permanently buried in the name of competitiveness, the welfare state is long past, while institutions of the system such as the nation state lose their importance, concepts such as sovereignty have no real meaning, and representative democracy in many countries such as Greece, which come under the supervision of the transnational elite and economic institutions (IMF, Central banks, etc.) is humiliated, since in fact a series of constitutional provisions are cancelled, and it becomes the vehicle for the establishment of a globalized totalitarianism, that of markets, multinationals, bankers and their political institutions.
Against this charge of the political and economical elites there is no room for the implementation of Keynesian experiments and reforms. This has been obvious by the governments’ respond to the crisis, by unleashing their wildest neoliberal attack against the middle and lower classes, against the willing of the majority of people. On the occasion of the financial crisis, they forward the greatest robbery and looting in human history and the greatest transaction of wealth from the basis to the top of the social hierarchy, driving more and more people to hunger, impoverishment and death.
For vast parts of the societies both of the periphery and the centre of the capitalist world, the neoliberal model of development has bankrupt alongside the general economic regime. Next in line to fall is the political system of representative democracy.
The lack of social consent doesn’t stop the European governments from a series of political coup d’état with the excuse of over-passing the crisis while supported only by minorities. In this way, they provoke the rage and exasperation of the social majorities, which quite often are expressed in violent ways on the streets of European cities (of France, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy…).
All the above record a series of political and social conditions that, for us, are the most appropriate in order to put into practice the international proletarian counterattack, to accomplish the overthrowal of capitalism and the State, to undertake the revolution. Because today the dilemma of the fighters but also the people repressed is one: social revolution or total submission and death.
Our obligation is to create the subjective circumstances, namely to contribute to the creation of a polymorphic revolutionary movement at national and international level that will form the conditions for the realization of the social revolution.
Within this political and social situation, the armed struggle can be of particular importance and may hold a central role, as it may reflect the overall political conflict with the regime, to herald the armed proletarian counterattack of peoples and to propagandize in the most dynamic way the overthrowal and social revolution.
We want our trial to be a political step to express in public these political positions; we want it to be registered in history as a moment of the struggle for freedom. To highlight the importance of the social revolution as the only answer to the crisis that condemns the largest parts of society to economic and social devastation.
[We want our trial] to become a public condemnation of the system and all its collaborationists no matter their political accession. To highlight that the armed struggle, despite the attacks by the system, is vivid and well-timed but also important in our days in order to promote the revolutionary process. We want to speak out the need for the formation of revolutionary movements everywhere, which will persuade the accomplishment of the social revolution.
In such a trial we believe that the best ‘witnesses of defense’ are the comrades who have chosen their dynamic clash with the system. These are the fighters who have been members of guerilla groups and have remained immovable and impenitent in their choices, by defending their struggles, their comrades who died in prison, those who were imprisoned for many years.
With their political statement in court, they will testify their own experiences, their own struggles as these were expressed through different social and economical conditions. They will speak about the timelessness and historical continuity of the social and class struggle that will be waged until the total destruction of the capitalist system. They will also speak about the struggle that is continued inside prison cells by the prisoners of this war. Because we do not choose the path of struggle to accept the conditions of imprisonment imposed by our enemy in order to morally defeat us and lead us to political or even physical extermination.
For us, that would be the best expression of solidarity; to make this trial a cry for freedom.
Pola Rupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
9 December 2010
INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SOLIDARITY
Comrades,
We are three political prisoners, members of the armed group Revolutionary Struggle [Epanastatikos Agonas], and we send you militant greetings from the Greek prisons.
We were arrested in April 2010 along with other three comrades who are being accused of involvement in the organization. Since then, we have been on pretrial detention [under the terrorism act], waiting to be referred to a trial in the first months of 2011.
In an open political letter to society, the three of us claimed political responsibility for our participation in the organization of Revolutionary Struggle. In this way, we defended our actions which were directed against the Capital and the State, and contributed through practice and speech towards the overthrowal of the State and capitalism, aiming at social revolution, at a non-statist, anti-authoritarian, communal and communist society, in which assemblies and councils of the people will undertake social, political and economic operation and management.
By claiming political responsibility, we also want to defend armed struggle, and to highlight its timelessness and importance within the broader struggle for overthrowal and social revolution. Most importantly, we want to highlight its relevance and necessity for our times. It is our belief that the appropriate objective conditions for the overthrowal of capitalism have developed in this era of global economic crisis more than in any other time since the Second World War.
Also, by undertaking political responsibility we wanted to restore the memory and honour of our comrade Lambros Foundas, who was a member of the Revolutionary Struggle and was killed in an armed clash with cops in March 2010 during an attempted expropriation of a car – a preparatory action of a wider action plan of our organization.
The political, economic and social environment in which the Revolutionary Struggle was formed and has developed its action is very different from that of the Western-European urban guerrilla groups, which were active from the 1970s and 1980s up until the early 1990s. Back then the bipolar, the competition between the US-USSR and their political-economic systems were dominant. It was the time when the model of Keynesianism was sinking into crisis and political devaluation, as Capital regained its strength against the proletariat, governments of Western countries one after the other abandoned state intervention in the economy – the so-called ‘economics of demand’ – and replaced them with ‘economics of supply’, while the States began the assault on labor and social gains, defending the interests of the economically powerful and imposing the neoliberal financial and political model of governance.
The economic and political environment in which Revolutionary Struggle was formed was set by the USA monocracy, economic globalization, neoliberalism and the fight against terrorism, which is the peak of political-military globalization. Because, for us, both the “fight against terrorism” and the totalitarianism of the markets are two sides of the same coin; they are the political and economic nature of globalization. Whenever and wherever globalization is not able to be imposed by the weapons of the capitalists and international financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, ECB, FED), by the financial tools of international stock markets, by poverty, hunger and marginalization, it is imposed by the sharpening of state violence and power, by repression, war and military incursions, by fire and iron.
The period from 2003, when the Revolutionary Struggle started its action, up to 2007, while the growing social crisis was creating strong social dissatisfaction, the neoliberal consensus was strong, due to the fact that capitalist development was continued ‘smoothly’ using bank loans, as a global scale bubble growing against the successive financial crises that were shaking the planet (Southeast Asia crisis, economic collapse in Argentina, Dot.com crisis in the US).
Since 2007, year of the first ‘bursting of the bubble’ of the residential mortgage loans in the US, which gave the onset of the global financial crisis, the failure of the neoliberal consensus started, leading to deeper and deeper political and social scorn for the regime.
During its first period Revolutionary Struggle set as cutting-edge issues the ‘fight against terrorism’ with the military operations of the US and their Western allies to the countries of the region, and with the intensity of state violence, repression and terrorism in the countries of the capitalist centre and the semi-periphery, in which substantially Greece belongs (rocket attack against the US Embassy, attack against the former minister of Public Order, against police targets and courts), the neoliberal invasion, the marketization of all the economic and social functions left, the attack of Capital against labor gains (bomb attacks against Ministries of Employment and Economy).
Then, since 2008, the global financial crisis was a true challenge for us in order to upgrade our action, making attacks against economic structures and institutions such as the stock market, Citibank and Eurobank. Our ambition was to hurt the vulnerable – due to the crisis – system as long as possible, to strongly sabotage the political choices of the Greek government and the ‘rescue-of-the-country’ plans imposed by the troika (IMF, EU, ECB).
This was the reason that PASOK government was so afraid of Revolutionary Struggle, since – according to the statements of a member of the government – the organization ‘could blow up the financial measures.’ That’s why our arrests, which took place a few days before the IMF, the EU and the ECB entirely take the reins of power in Greece, were characterized by the Greek government and other European and American political factors as a great success.
For us, the financial crisis we live today is the first truly global crisis in history and the only one since the Great Depression of the early 1930s that affects so intensely all the countries of the capitalist centre, while its character is systemic; it concerns the nature of capitalism itself and the nature of the market economy, and it is multi-dimensional, because other than financial it is political, social and environmental.
On the occasion of the current crisis, both economic and political elites around the world are conducting a frontal attack against societies; former achievements of the labor movement are permanently buried in the name of competitiveness, the welfare state is long past, while institutions of the system such as the nation state lose their importance, concepts such as sovereignty have no real meaning, and representative democracy in many countries such as Greece, which come under the supervision of the transnational elite and economic institutions (IMF, Central banks, etc.) is humiliated, since in fact a series of constitutional provisions are cancelled, and it becomes the vehicle for the establishment of a globalized totalitarianism, that of markets, multinationals, bankers and their political institutions.
Against this charge of the political and economical elites there is no room for the implementation of Keynesian experiments and reforms. This has been obvious by the governments’ respond to the crisis, by unleashing their wildest neoliberal attack against the middle and lower classes, against the willing of the majority of people. On the occasion of the financial crisis, they forward the greatest robbery and looting in human history and the greatest transaction of wealth from the basis to the top of the social hierarchy, driving more and more people to hunger, impoverishment and death.
For vast parts of the societies both of the periphery and the centre of the capitalist world, the neoliberal model of development has bankrupt alongside the general economic regime. Next in line to fall is the political system of representative democracy.
The lack of social consent doesn’t stop the European governments from a series of political coup d’état with the excuse of over-passing the crisis while supported only by minorities. In this way, they provoke the rage and exasperation of the social majorities, which quite often are expressed in violent ways on the streets of European cities (of France, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy…).
All the above record a series of political and social conditions that, for us, are the most appropriate in order to put into practice the international proletarian counterattack, to accomplish the overthrowal of capitalism and the State, to undertake the revolution. Because today the dilemma of the fighters but also the people repressed is one: social revolution or total submission and death.
Our obligation is to create the subjective circumstances, namely to contribute to the creation of a polymorphic revolutionary movement at national and international level that will form the conditions for the realization of the social revolution.
Within this political and social situation, the armed struggle can be of particular importance and may hold a central role, as it may reflect the overall political conflict with the regime, to herald the armed proletarian counterattack of peoples and to propagandize in the most dynamic way the overthrowal and social revolution.
We want our trial to be a political step to express in public these political positions; we want it to be registered in history as a moment of the struggle for freedom. To highlight the importance of the social revolution as the only answer to the crisis that condemns the largest parts of society to economic and social devastation.
[We want our trial] to become a public condemnation of the system and all its collaborationists no matter their political accession. To highlight that the armed struggle, despite the attacks by the system, is vivid and well-timed but also important in our days in order to promote the revolutionary process. We want to speak out the need for the formation of revolutionary movements everywhere, which will persuade the accomplishment of the social revolution.
In such a trial we believe that the best ‘witnesses of defense’ are the comrades who have chosen their dynamic clash with the system. These are the fighters who have been members of guerilla groups and have remained immovable and impenitent in their choices, by defending their struggles, their comrades who died in prison, those who were imprisoned for many years.
With their political statement in court, they will testify their own experiences, their own struggles as these were expressed through different social and economical conditions. They will speak about the timelessness and historical continuity of the social and class struggle that will be waged until the total destruction of the capitalist system. They will also speak about the struggle that is continued inside prison cells by the prisoners of this war. Because we do not choose the path of struggle to accept the conditions of imprisonment imposed by our enemy in order to morally defeat us and lead us to political or even physical extermination.
For us, that would be the best expression of solidarity; to make this trial a cry for freedom.
Pola Rupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
Sunday, 5 December 2010
FOR DECEMBER. Giannis Dimitrakis
FOR DECEMBER
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Memories that need to be recalled, emotions and images. All of them exiled and buried deep in the depths of the soul and the mind. It’s a painful procedure to describe how you experienced a situation in which you weren’t present but your whole being raged to be there.
The murder of a child and the fragile and hollow social balance tumbles down like a house made of cards. The mass media are late to realize the magnitude of the chain reactions that the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos will unleash and the first clashes with the pigs in uniform on the dawn of December 7th are considered the beginning and the end of a small and anticipated protest. The next hours and days will prove otherwise.
In the background of an insurrection and around it, a different and parallel reality, in its own space/time, exists and takes breaths. It listens carefully to the beats of a society that is awake from its slumber and desperately seeks to join it, in a common course. It is my own, personal, individual reality. Wrapped in a shroud for the last three years, “protected” by bars, walls and CCTV, and although it has had its own small insurrections-breaks of illegality and of abolition of everyday normality behind the prison walls nonetheless it lusts for freer, more comradely, more incendiary moments to clash with the existent.
My operational inability in transferring the external reality to the prison body, infecting it with the insurrectional virus tuning in also other individuals to the rhythm of a generalized clash against those who hold life tied in chains, creates disappointment and sadness. The apparent, personal defeat against the prison, the communication bridges with the fellow prisoners that are already dissolving or have already long ago crumbled, the emotional charge with everything that is happening out there leads me with mathematical precision to complete isolation.
Confined within the confined, the evening of December 7th I lay empty and breathless in the detention cell of some prison, trying to understand how I ended up thrown away in a wet and filthy dungeon as a hunger striker demanding my transfer to another hellhole(!) while outside the walls all my friends, acquaintances, comrades are living days of unparalleled magic. The magic that life has when you arm yourself and together with others you attempt the impossible, the ideal, the oneiric. When you allow a rush of emotions to overflow which are then transformed into energy and action.
Four walls, a disciplinary cell, dark and cold, with two squalid mattresses thrown on the filthy floor, without natural light and with a yellow lamp that is slowly frying the last of your brain functions. And, as a topping off to the ill-favored and martyric scenery the endless and unbearable irony of getting a television in the middle of the cell, with the “possibility” it provides to observe from nearly a breath away the fires, the street clashes and everything taking place, a friendly nearly comradely being that commands the mind and the soul to a one and only duty. To stare with absolute devotion at every image it projects and to listen to every upstart screaming like a hysteric about the ordeals and the end of the world possibly coming after the days of December or every wishy-washy attempting to find a psychological alibi for the insurgents in order to demonstrate his philanthropic understanding but of course also his disagreement with acts of “blind violence”.
It is certain that if my punishment for transgressing the laws and moral codes of this society could have a metaphysical texture, this would have been my own individual eternal hell. The posthumous cauldron deriving from a fictitious christian inspiration in which I will stew in repayment for my mortal sin. The sin of walking in streets of liberation. Streets of self-knowledge and self-consciousness.
To be bound down to a standstill by the weight of personal and other bonds, to adopt the role of a spectator without having a choice, at the same time that you would sell your soul to the devil to be free, participating in an endless festival of fire, is a torture that is difficult to match even if it does not entail physical pain.
A knot in the throat, a tight feeling in the stomach and a tidal wave of emotions shaking me violently whenever I share the ecstasy, the joy, the intensity and the anguish of comrades who in those days were a part of this insurrection. Moments immersed in contradiction. The deceptive feeling of living the lives of others is completely stripped naked and I am brought back to the harsh reality, where action defines life.
Every memory from those days an open wound and the pain festers in silence. It’s been years now that my eyes can’t shed any tears, only black clouds shadow my face every time that like a castaway on a desert island I look into the distant horizon at another ship passing me by.
With comradely greetings
Yiannis Dimitrakis
8/5/09
A communication from the Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
It's been more than four years since the morning of January 16th 2006, when the anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis was arrested, heavily wounded by police fire, after a robbery at a branch of the National Bank in the center of Athens.
From the very first moment a storm of constructed information broke out, systematically supplied by the police and readily carried out by the mass media. The police constructed "the gang of robbers in black," so that other comrades could be named as members, to which was attributed a string of robberies but also a close association to armed revolutionary groups, and then it was proclaimed that the whole of the anarchist- anti-authoritarian movement is closely connected to organized crime !!
Gianni's arrest, the slander and the manhunt unleashed against his three supposed accomplices (which were later on declared wanted for astronomic rewards) - four comrades known for their many years of political activity - on the one hand aims for their legal annihilation and on the other, promotes a holistic plan of stripping of meaning and criminalization of anarchists, anti-authoritarians and class struggle. Because of his political identity, the state moved with rage against him from the first moment.
Parallel to the crescendo of misinformation and impression creating by the media, the district attorney tried to interrogate him in the emergency room while he was bedridden and under pharmaceutical influence. The charges against him were based on the "anti-terror" law and enriched with six unsolved robberies, attempted manslaughter and money laundering. He was probably the first man in custody to be held at Malandrino maximum security prison, which is intended to hold convicts only, while attacks by prison guards, vindictive transfers and disciplinary sentences, the exhausting sentence of the first trial (an unheard of for a robbery sentence of 35 years) and the provocative deprivation of basic rights for the preparation of his defense at the court of appeals supplement the oppressive aggressiveness against him.
In these extreme conditions, the comrade defended from the beginning his choice to expropriate a bank, without statements of remorse and with clarity as towards his motives and intentions. He gave meaning to his act as a moment in his critique and action against the system of wage slavery and exploitation, against the antisocial role of the banks and as a part of the polymorphic social struggle.
urthermore, in the wretched reality of the prisons, he stood dynamically and with dignity from the beginning. He participated in all of the prisoner's struggles happening the past years in Greece. Advancing to hunger strikes and abstinence from the prison meals - despite the permanent health problems given him by the cop's bullets - showing his solidarity for his fellow prisoners and fighting for the terms of his survival and existence in the difficult position of imprisonment. Along with other imprisoned anti-authoritarians he was an interactive channel of communication with the grandiose prisoner's movements in the fall of 2008.
All these reasons - and because Giannis Dimitrakis and the other three anarchists are some of us, comrades and co fighters in the diversity of the struggles for freedom - fired off a mass of actions of solidarity and political defense for them in many cities in Greece. From the posters, texts and brochures to the flyers, banners and slogans on walls and from the attack actions against banks, other economic targets or government vehicles to the massive presence of people at the public events in the amphitheaters, the march in the center of Athens and the demonstrations outside of the prisons of Malandrino, Koridallos, Neapolis and Alikarnasso, the anarchists and anti-authoritarians made clear the way in which they respond to their comrades being held hostage by the state.
For active solidarity to Giannis Dimitrakis!
With comradely greetings,
Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Memories that need to be recalled, emotions and images. All of them exiled and buried deep in the depths of the soul and the mind. It’s a painful procedure to describe how you experienced a situation in which you weren’t present but your whole being raged to be there.
The murder of a child and the fragile and hollow social balance tumbles down like a house made of cards. The mass media are late to realize the magnitude of the chain reactions that the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos will unleash and the first clashes with the pigs in uniform on the dawn of December 7th are considered the beginning and the end of a small and anticipated protest. The next hours and days will prove otherwise.
In the background of an insurrection and around it, a different and parallel reality, in its own space/time, exists and takes breaths. It listens carefully to the beats of a society that is awake from its slumber and desperately seeks to join it, in a common course. It is my own, personal, individual reality. Wrapped in a shroud for the last three years, “protected” by bars, walls and CCTV, and although it has had its own small insurrections-breaks of illegality and of abolition of everyday normality behind the prison walls nonetheless it lusts for freer, more comradely, more incendiary moments to clash with the existent.
My operational inability in transferring the external reality to the prison body, infecting it with the insurrectional virus tuning in also other individuals to the rhythm of a generalized clash against those who hold life tied in chains, creates disappointment and sadness. The apparent, personal defeat against the prison, the communication bridges with the fellow prisoners that are already dissolving or have already long ago crumbled, the emotional charge with everything that is happening out there leads me with mathematical precision to complete isolation.
Confined within the confined, the evening of December 7th I lay empty and breathless in the detention cell of some prison, trying to understand how I ended up thrown away in a wet and filthy dungeon as a hunger striker demanding my transfer to another hellhole(!) while outside the walls all my friends, acquaintances, comrades are living days of unparalleled magic. The magic that life has when you arm yourself and together with others you attempt the impossible, the ideal, the oneiric. When you allow a rush of emotions to overflow which are then transformed into energy and action.
Four walls, a disciplinary cell, dark and cold, with two squalid mattresses thrown on the filthy floor, without natural light and with a yellow lamp that is slowly frying the last of your brain functions. And, as a topping off to the ill-favored and martyric scenery the endless and unbearable irony of getting a television in the middle of the cell, with the “possibility” it provides to observe from nearly a breath away the fires, the street clashes and everything taking place, a friendly nearly comradely being that commands the mind and the soul to a one and only duty. To stare with absolute devotion at every image it projects and to listen to every upstart screaming like a hysteric about the ordeals and the end of the world possibly coming after the days of December or every wishy-washy attempting to find a psychological alibi for the insurgents in order to demonstrate his philanthropic understanding but of course also his disagreement with acts of “blind violence”.
It is certain that if my punishment for transgressing the laws and moral codes of this society could have a metaphysical texture, this would have been my own individual eternal hell. The posthumous cauldron deriving from a fictitious christian inspiration in which I will stew in repayment for my mortal sin. The sin of walking in streets of liberation. Streets of self-knowledge and self-consciousness.
To be bound down to a standstill by the weight of personal and other bonds, to adopt the role of a spectator without having a choice, at the same time that you would sell your soul to the devil to be free, participating in an endless festival of fire, is a torture that is difficult to match even if it does not entail physical pain.
A knot in the throat, a tight feeling in the stomach and a tidal wave of emotions shaking me violently whenever I share the ecstasy, the joy, the intensity and the anguish of comrades who in those days were a part of this insurrection. Moments immersed in contradiction. The deceptive feeling of living the lives of others is completely stripped naked and I am brought back to the harsh reality, where action defines life.
Every memory from those days an open wound and the pain festers in silence. It’s been years now that my eyes can’t shed any tears, only black clouds shadow my face every time that like a castaway on a desert island I look into the distant horizon at another ship passing me by.
With comradely greetings
Yiannis Dimitrakis
8/5/09
A communication from the Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
It's been more than four years since the morning of January 16th 2006, when the anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis was arrested, heavily wounded by police fire, after a robbery at a branch of the National Bank in the center of Athens.
From the very first moment a storm of constructed information broke out, systematically supplied by the police and readily carried out by the mass media. The police constructed "the gang of robbers in black," so that other comrades could be named as members, to which was attributed a string of robberies but also a close association to armed revolutionary groups, and then it was proclaimed that the whole of the anarchist- anti-authoritarian movement is closely connected to organized crime !!
Gianni's arrest, the slander and the manhunt unleashed against his three supposed accomplices (which were later on declared wanted for astronomic rewards) - four comrades known for their many years of political activity - on the one hand aims for their legal annihilation and on the other, promotes a holistic plan of stripping of meaning and criminalization of anarchists, anti-authoritarians and class struggle. Because of his political identity, the state moved with rage against him from the first moment.
Parallel to the crescendo of misinformation and impression creating by the media, the district attorney tried to interrogate him in the emergency room while he was bedridden and under pharmaceutical influence. The charges against him were based on the "anti-terror" law and enriched with six unsolved robberies, attempted manslaughter and money laundering. He was probably the first man in custody to be held at Malandrino maximum security prison, which is intended to hold convicts only, while attacks by prison guards, vindictive transfers and disciplinary sentences, the exhausting sentence of the first trial (an unheard of for a robbery sentence of 35 years) and the provocative deprivation of basic rights for the preparation of his defense at the court of appeals supplement the oppressive aggressiveness against him.
In these extreme conditions, the comrade defended from the beginning his choice to expropriate a bank, without statements of remorse and with clarity as towards his motives and intentions. He gave meaning to his act as a moment in his critique and action against the system of wage slavery and exploitation, against the antisocial role of the banks and as a part of the polymorphic social struggle.
urthermore, in the wretched reality of the prisons, he stood dynamically and with dignity from the beginning. He participated in all of the prisoner's struggles happening the past years in Greece. Advancing to hunger strikes and abstinence from the prison meals - despite the permanent health problems given him by the cop's bullets - showing his solidarity for his fellow prisoners and fighting for the terms of his survival and existence in the difficult position of imprisonment. Along with other imprisoned anti-authoritarians he was an interactive channel of communication with the grandiose prisoner's movements in the fall of 2008.
All these reasons - and because Giannis Dimitrakis and the other three anarchists are some of us, comrades and co fighters in the diversity of the struggles for freedom - fired off a mass of actions of solidarity and political defense for them in many cities in Greece. From the posters, texts and brochures to the flyers, banners and slogans on walls and from the attack actions against banks, other economic targets or government vehicles to the massive presence of people at the public events in the amphitheaters, the march in the center of Athens and the demonstrations outside of the prisons of Malandrino, Koridallos, Neapolis and Alikarnasso, the anarchists and anti-authoritarians made clear the way in which they respond to their comrades being held hostage by the state.
For active solidarity to Giannis Dimitrakis!
With comradely greetings,
Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Sofoklis Nigdelis, roommate of Vangelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information from the Greek prison.
actforfreedomnow!
Sofoklis Nigdelis, room-mate of Vaggelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information.
The situation of the great fighter Vaggelis Pallis remains crucial but steady.
As for the slaves of the system that have as a profession journalism, I have a message for some of them: Fascists and servants of the rotten state mechanism that you recycle and like goats re-chew false and forged news, stop the unofficial, unconfirmed, provocative announcements that you put out against Vaggelis Pallis, because don't forget that human-wolves are hungry and one morning while your going to work, which is none other than to promote imaginary stories to fit the mold of your snitching boss.. that a wolf will jump on you and will start eating you starting from the tongue. You, the specific snitches, remember that wolves are always hungry. My warm hello to your colleague Sokratis Giolias and his family. Solidarity and comrade collectiveness are some of our destructive weapons.
Regards and strength to the comrades in solidarity with Vaggelis Pallis, inside and outside the walls.
Sofoklis Nigdelis 30/8/10
Grevena prisons.
Sofoklis Nigdelis, room-mate of Vaggelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information.
The situation of the great fighter Vaggelis Pallis remains crucial but steady.
As for the slaves of the system that have as a profession journalism, I have a message for some of them: Fascists and servants of the rotten state mechanism that you recycle and like goats re-chew false and forged news, stop the unofficial, unconfirmed, provocative announcements that you put out against Vaggelis Pallis, because don't forget that human-wolves are hungry and one morning while your going to work, which is none other than to promote imaginary stories to fit the mold of your snitching boss.. that a wolf will jump on you and will start eating you starting from the tongue. You, the specific snitches, remember that wolves are always hungry. My warm hello to your colleague Sokratis Giolias and his family. Solidarity and comrade collectiveness are some of our destructive weapons.
Regards and strength to the comrades in solidarity with Vaggelis Pallis, inside and outside the walls.
Sofoklis Nigdelis 30/8/10
Grevena prisons.
ANOTHER PRISONER INJURY IN GREECE
actforfreedomnow!
29 August, 2010 - The injury of another prisoner in Grevena prisons has caused riot today. Prisoners burnt their mattresses demanding better living conditions, more leave days etc. The conditions in most of democracy s hell holes are inhuman.
FIRE TO THE PRISONS
29 August, 2010 - The injury of another prisoner in Grevena prisons has caused riot today. Prisoners burnt their mattresses demanding better living conditions, more leave days etc. The conditions in most of democracy s hell holes are inhuman.
FIRE TO THE PRISONS
Vangelis Pallis (49 years old), aka ‘Apache’, seriously injured inside Trikala’s jail Saturday, August 28, 2010
actforfreedomnow!
28 Αugust - 2010 - This morning, at 9 o’ clock, Vangelis Pallis was found in his cell seriously injured in the neck by a piece of glass. The headquarters of the jail said that he did it by himself. The advocate ordered his cell to be sealed for further investigation.
Vangelis Pallis is now in intensive care, hospitalized in a very serious situation.
Vangelis Pallis has many times in the past participated in riots inside the jail. In the big riot in the jails in November 2008, as he was a member of the steering committee, he was on a hunger strike for a long time. People that know him say that there is not even one chance in a million that he injured himself with his own will. As you understand, he is fighting against the cruel conditions of the jail. Therefore, our suspicions about what really happened are not unrealistic. Updates soon.
28 Αugust - 2010 - This morning, at 9 o’ clock, Vangelis Pallis was found in his cell seriously injured in the neck by a piece of glass. The headquarters of the jail said that he did it by himself. The advocate ordered his cell to be sealed for further investigation.
Vangelis Pallis is now in intensive care, hospitalized in a very serious situation.
Vangelis Pallis has many times in the past participated in riots inside the jail. In the big riot in the jails in November 2008, as he was a member of the steering committee, he was on a hunger strike for a long time. People that know him say that there is not even one chance in a million that he injured himself with his own will. As you understand, he is fighting against the cruel conditions of the jail. Therefore, our suspicions about what really happened are not unrealistic. Updates soon.
Prisons in Greece. Stories of Shame and Horror.
actforfreedomnow!
1 August, 2010 - After good morning, take of your underwear, sit down, turn around, bend, cough, the ultimate humiliation.
Prisoner D. Proestos describes how they search for the smuggling of drugs into Greek prisons.
Shame and horror ...He first went to prison in 1984, came out in 1994 and returned in 1995, where he has been held until now with a life sentence. Overall, this man has served nine years in the diciplinary section: "Diciplinary, pissed dirty mattress, you don't eat, you don't get to drink water, no smoking. They have you in a concrete cage, handcuffed", he recalls."They tore out my soul" Diavata Prison. Thessaloniki. There "I was tied up in the diciplinary for six weeks. I got beat up a lot. I pissed and I shat on the mattress I slept on. It was so bad I got sick with hepatitis.
Sergeant Mitsios and Director Eftihidou, after they had severely beaten me, I remember them begging me to leave the diciplinary cell and go to the Infection hospital in Thessaloniki, so I don't die."For Proestos there are incidents that have "torn" his soul, as he says. "Extreme events only with some staff are in my mind and occurred where there was no "third eye"... solitary cells, dungeons, tie-downs, cross, torture and humiliation "...Another prisoner, G. Makis, reveals: "Faced with eight members of the prison staff I had been asked to lean over and cough (naked). Irefused to because I felt that my dignity was being insulted and undermined. Based on the penal code it's any inmate's right to refuse anything that lowers and undermines his dignity. " Small print for some ...Many are the letters we've received from prisoners in prisons all over the country. Human stories scattered on four sheets of paper ith a blue pen.
People who for whatever reason were sentenced and today are in custody. But it seems that the blaming stops with the sound of the prison door opening.
Then there is no blaming but on the prisoner. And when the balance is not kept, given that many social services are broken down, the game becomes dangerous and he comes back seeking revenge on society itself. So this is why the issue of prisons should concern us all. Several of our prisoners complain that even the benefit of wages provided is only "to serve some particular balance within the prison."Indeed, in some cases, the internal mechanism of each prison goes beyond even the power of the appropriate ministry. "The Secretariat of the prison affects even the Appeal Council in the manner that they present the cases and all this creates a strange and often lawless behaviour and relationship," he says. It seems that even a transfer to a prison farm is considered a "buyable benefit". Literally an impossible dream for some. While most prisons are overcrowded, there are prison farms that are 'empty' and could accept prisoners."And this situation continues because no Minister of Justice until now, even if he has the will - which is rare - has had the power to go against the establishment of prisons" says a prisoner, whose data is available to the newspaper.
translated by boubourAs for Actforfreedomnow...
1 August, 2010 - After good morning, take of your underwear, sit down, turn around, bend, cough, the ultimate humiliation.
Prisoner D. Proestos describes how they search for the smuggling of drugs into Greek prisons.
Shame and horror ...He first went to prison in 1984, came out in 1994 and returned in 1995, where he has been held until now with a life sentence. Overall, this man has served nine years in the diciplinary section: "Diciplinary, pissed dirty mattress, you don't eat, you don't get to drink water, no smoking. They have you in a concrete cage, handcuffed", he recalls."They tore out my soul" Diavata Prison. Thessaloniki. There "I was tied up in the diciplinary for six weeks. I got beat up a lot. I pissed and I shat on the mattress I slept on. It was so bad I got sick with hepatitis.
Sergeant Mitsios and Director Eftihidou, after they had severely beaten me, I remember them begging me to leave the diciplinary cell and go to the Infection hospital in Thessaloniki, so I don't die."For Proestos there are incidents that have "torn" his soul, as he says. "Extreme events only with some staff are in my mind and occurred where there was no "third eye"... solitary cells, dungeons, tie-downs, cross, torture and humiliation "...Another prisoner, G. Makis, reveals: "Faced with eight members of the prison staff I had been asked to lean over and cough (naked). Irefused to because I felt that my dignity was being insulted and undermined. Based on the penal code it's any inmate's right to refuse anything that lowers and undermines his dignity. " Small print for some ...Many are the letters we've received from prisoners in prisons all over the country. Human stories scattered on four sheets of paper ith a blue pen.
People who for whatever reason were sentenced and today are in custody. But it seems that the blaming stops with the sound of the prison door opening.
Then there is no blaming but on the prisoner. And when the balance is not kept, given that many social services are broken down, the game becomes dangerous and he comes back seeking revenge on society itself. So this is why the issue of prisons should concern us all. Several of our prisoners complain that even the benefit of wages provided is only "to serve some particular balance within the prison."Indeed, in some cases, the internal mechanism of each prison goes beyond even the power of the appropriate ministry. "The Secretariat of the prison affects even the Appeal Council in the manner that they present the cases and all this creates a strange and often lawless behaviour and relationship," he says. It seems that even a transfer to a prison farm is considered a "buyable benefit". Literally an impossible dream for some. While most prisons are overcrowded, there are prison farms that are 'empty' and could accept prisoners."And this situation continues because no Minister of Justice until now, even if he has the will - which is rare - has had the power to go against the establishment of prisons" says a prisoner, whose data is available to the newspaper.
translated by boubourAs for Actforfreedomnow...
Monday, 30 August 2010
ANOTHER PRISONER INJURED IN GREECE
actforfreedmonow!
The injury of another prisoner in Grevena prisons caused a riot today. Prisoners burnt their mattresses demanding better living conditions, more leave days etc. The conditions in most of democracy's hell holes are inhuman.
FIRE TO THE PRISONS
This morning, at 9 o’ clock, Vangelis Pallis was found in his cell seriously injured in the neck by a piece of glass. The headquarters of the jail said that he did it by himself. The advocate ordered his cell to be sealed for further investigation. Vangelis Pallis is now in the intensive care, hospitalized in a very serious situation. Vangelis Pallis has many times in the past participated in riots inside the jail. In the big riot in the jails in November 2008, as he was a member of the steering committee, he was on a hunger strike for a long time. People that know him say that there is not even one chance in a million that he injured himself with his own will As you understand, he is fighting against the cruel conditions of the jail. Therefore, our suspicions about what really happened are not unrealistic.
Updates soon.
Picture from athens.indymedia.org outside Trikala jail Aug 2010
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Interview of comrade George Voutsis-Vogiatzis.
actforfreedomnow!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
(the hearing for the appeal of George Voutsis-Vogiatzis was set for June 7th, 2010 but was postponed for may 6th, 2011. Here's an interview he gave to the newspaper “Proto Thema” on may 9th 2010)
-The tragic account of the march last Wednesday counts three deaths, among them a pregnant woman, which with other victims were locked inside Marfin bank. Murders attributed to the anarchists Molotov...
The emotional and political gap in the last hours after the death of the three workers in the bank from asphyxiation can not be described in words or replaced by actions, counterbalancing or convictions. The value of human life when its not jointly responsible for the criminal plans of authority is the purest in the world. Of course, the anarchist movement is not accountable towards this event. Anarchists are not representatives of abstract violence. Anarchists express revolutionary violence. A violence expressed by targeting state and capital. The operation of de-politicizing the anarchist movement will not work for them again. Anarchists are proving, especially in recent years, through carrying out attacks with Molotov cocktails, gas canisters and other means of action against targets of authority that they never turned against the life of the workers since in every case, people involved in those actions first make sure to evacuate the buildings or attacking them at night when they are closed.
-What label would you put on what you are? Are you a bank robber? Was your aim the money?
The bank robbery as a practice is part of the overall rupture with the system of injustice. This is the basic difference between the revolutionary-anarchist and the career-robber. Revolutionary experience consists of a total of practices and tactics of battle, that have as their purpose to attack the enemy forces and to destabilize the existing social situation to make the transition to a free society. Beyond that a bank robbery remains a decent choice over the years, since it is an act against the predatory role of the banks.
-What was your first thought when you heard about the arrest of the people belonging to the "Revolutionary Struggle"?
Initially I followed with great care the operation or dislocation of the comrades, allegedly members of the "Revolutionary Struggle". Once again we became receivers of the cultural poverty of a system that is collapsing. Of course the presumption of innocence and the respect of prisoners lifes are completely unknown to the man-preying vultures of the media, the audacity of which has exceeded all limits.
-In what recent case do you think that the media have gone beyond the limits?
In the case of the strange death of a 15 year old Afghan refugee,(meaning the 15year old afghan boy that died when a bomb he found in a bin exploded in his hands, also injuring his sister) which was the backbone of the "anti-terror" campaign in the part of the ideological devaluation during the arrests of comrades who are persecuted for their involvement in “R.S.”.
The media handled the incident with the now usual tactic of publicizing made up telephone calls that are not a result of police surveillance, but leaks from the police.
In the conversation comrades, suspected members of the “R.S.” are supposedly giggling with an incredible amount of cynicism when one of them is watching the kid looking over the already placed bomb. A conversation that is not included in any court documents. Beyond that, the imperial Greek government, allies of the Americans and their genocides, of course, in Afghanistan, is calling for a social consensus against "terrorism" in response to a dead boy from Afghanistan. How many such boys has the Greek Army assassinated in Afghanistan? This is an interesting survey that unfortunately never took place, since a missile to the U.S. embassy in Greece is a terrorist act and is punishable with decades in prison, unlike the murderous Greek troops in Afghanistan who are portrayed as "humanitarian assistance" and are decorated by their bosses.
.ExternalClass ecx_filtered #ecxyiv91090919
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All this time I remain consciously away from any kind denouncing of revolutionary action and continue to defend the substance and scope of the practice of which im prosecuted for. The captors are not only interested about your imprisonment, they are especially interested when you are a political subject, in a statement of renouncement or repentance. The capitulation to the oppressors and the admission to a futile struggle are elements that do not suit us. I came out untouched from their penitentiaries and the factories of manufacturing repentants . I belong to the proud generation that does not apologize in the courts, does not speak to security forces and does not bow the head in the prison courtyards. In the generation that knows how to honor their dead and punish their enemies.
- According to police leaks, you belong to the "Bandits in Black No. 2” What is your answer?
That i belong to the "Bandits in Black No. 3” But do not tell anyone ...
- Couldn't the reaction of the youth be expressed within the official Left parties? What is your opinion on this specific ideological movement?
The leftist regime can no longer inspire the larger sections of the youth. For the same reasons as the official trade unions can no longer manipulate the workers. Pieces of the youth realize that the right to life, is not begged for with votes and peaceful protests or complaints and convictions. The message of the youth that rose up in December was clearer than any political doublespeak: "If you don't respect us, you will fear us." The role of the leftist regime will be proven particularly dangerous in the period that will follow. Because I believe that as an alternative apologist of the regime will help alleviate social contradictions, since the practices it choses are delineated within the framework of the existing legitimacy and the commitment to parliamentarianism.
-Your father is a member of SYRIZA. (greek left wing political party) What is your opinion about politicians?
Personally, I grew up in a warm environment, full of books, political files, a place infused with the values and traditions of the left political culture. My father to me is a benchmark in terms of morals and values as a man.
-Do you believe that your father is one of those responsible for the current situation of the country?
As grateful as I am to my father for the way he raised me, equally my political beliefs do not allow me to exclude him of the politically responsible for the current political situation of the country. The leftist regime has its own responsibilities for what we are experiencing today.
-What message would you send him from inside prison?
With my father i have a very strong relationship, a strong personal contact and see each other regularly on visiting hours.
-Michalis Chrisohoidis (minister of protection of the citizen, ex ministry of public order) is considered a very successful minister. What is your opinion about him?
"We have war," he has declared. Beyond that, this war is not about a vendetta between cops and anti-authoritarians as deliberately presented by representatives of the regime, to spread confusion and to separate the whole of society from a war that eventually involves them and touches them directly. Bosses and oppressed, dead workers in LARCO, in Corinth Pipework, in the ship repair zone of Perama, guards with bats and prisoners in the dungeons, torturing psychiatrists and human experiments in blue cells, sadistic prosecutors and convicts sentenced to a life of suffering. Police murderers, young people and immigrants packed into the cells and police vans. In democracy there are torturers, but its so smart that it gives other definitions to the crimes it commits. Because how else can you describe those who committed crimes for two months on the mind, body and soul of fighter Savvas Xiros (imprisoned for participation in the revolutionary group “17th November”) in "Evangelismos" hospital after the bomb exploded in his hands? If we consider success synonymous with effectiveness regardless of the methods used to reach the ultimate goal, then the minister to protect the snitches is a successful minister. The problem is that society should understand that nowadays success is synonymous with cannibalism, self-interest and personal ambition. That to be successful you should not have morals, you should be a liar, you should sell your soul to the devil, or rather the Americans.
-Tell us about your detention conditions, about your life in prison.
Life inside a prison is quite routinized. When I entered prison, I received a letter from a very good friend and comrade, former prisoner, stating that the prison is a revolutionary's monastery. Nervously and clumsy, I replied that prison is bullshit and that we should get out of here as quickly as possible. Three years after my imprisonment I understood the true meaning of his words. Prison is a place away from the mundane, which allows you to reconstruct yourself. It's a test that if you come out untouched you're a winner. The strengthening of personal faith in the struggle and boost of revolutionary self-esteem is a reward that cannot be earned even with all the money in the world. Deeper meanings for higher ideals.
- Your court of Appeals is on June 7th. If you got out today how would you choose to live?
While I've been here I haven't planned my life outside. I try to be vigilant every day, to be in a physical and mental alertness. I live the present as intense as possible and when the door opens, I will look at the future.
"I do not regret my action but i would not do it again because the personal weight for me, my family, friends and my comrades is enormous," you said. Is this a sign of remorse?
The appeal of the prosecutor on the existing sentence of eight years imprisonment imposed on me at the first trial is an order that was given by high ranks, police and judicial leadership. I am in prison for almost three years accused of bank robbery. Those who have the audacity to ask me to regret for the expropriation of stolen social wealth are the main responsible for the systematic terrorizing of the Greek society. Because for me, terrorism is the bank that seizes homes and the predatory interest rates. Terrorism is working all your life for the bosses and then they take your salary and pension. Terrorism is living with the stress of survival. Terrorism is trying to lie to convince the goodness of the dictatorship of the I.M.F. (international monetary fund) I do not regret my action, but the reason why I would not choose the practice of robbery has to do with my personal development as a person and the priorities I have from now on in my life.
George Voutsis-Vogiatzis
translation BoubourAs actforfreedomnow!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
(the hearing for the appeal of George Voutsis-Vogiatzis was set for June 7th, 2010 but was postponed for may 6th, 2011. Here's an interview he gave to the newspaper “Proto Thema” on may 9th 2010)
-The tragic account of the march last Wednesday counts three deaths, among them a pregnant woman, which with other victims were locked inside Marfin bank. Murders attributed to the anarchists Molotov...
The emotional and political gap in the last hours after the death of the three workers in the bank from asphyxiation can not be described in words or replaced by actions, counterbalancing or convictions. The value of human life when its not jointly responsible for the criminal plans of authority is the purest in the world. Of course, the anarchist movement is not accountable towards this event. Anarchists are not representatives of abstract violence. Anarchists express revolutionary violence. A violence expressed by targeting state and capital. The operation of de-politicizing the anarchist movement will not work for them again. Anarchists are proving, especially in recent years, through carrying out attacks with Molotov cocktails, gas canisters and other means of action against targets of authority that they never turned against the life of the workers since in every case, people involved in those actions first make sure to evacuate the buildings or attacking them at night when they are closed.
-What label would you put on what you are? Are you a bank robber? Was your aim the money?
The bank robbery as a practice is part of the overall rupture with the system of injustice. This is the basic difference between the revolutionary-anarchist and the career-robber. Revolutionary experience consists of a total of practices and tactics of battle, that have as their purpose to attack the enemy forces and to destabilize the existing social situation to make the transition to a free society. Beyond that a bank robbery remains a decent choice over the years, since it is an act against the predatory role of the banks.
-What was your first thought when you heard about the arrest of the people belonging to the "Revolutionary Struggle"?
Initially I followed with great care the operation or dislocation of the comrades, allegedly members of the "Revolutionary Struggle". Once again we became receivers of the cultural poverty of a system that is collapsing. Of course the presumption of innocence and the respect of prisoners lifes are completely unknown to the man-preying vultures of the media, the audacity of which has exceeded all limits.
-In what recent case do you think that the media have gone beyond the limits?
In the case of the strange death of a 15 year old Afghan refugee,(meaning the 15year old afghan boy that died when a bomb he found in a bin exploded in his hands, also injuring his sister) which was the backbone of the "anti-terror" campaign in the part of the ideological devaluation during the arrests of comrades who are persecuted for their involvement in “R.S.”.
The media handled the incident with the now usual tactic of publicizing made up telephone calls that are not a result of police surveillance, but leaks from the police.
In the conversation comrades, suspected members of the “R.S.” are supposedly giggling with an incredible amount of cynicism when one of them is watching the kid looking over the already placed bomb. A conversation that is not included in any court documents. Beyond that, the imperial Greek government, allies of the Americans and their genocides, of course, in Afghanistan, is calling for a social consensus against "terrorism" in response to a dead boy from Afghanistan. How many such boys has the Greek Army assassinated in Afghanistan? This is an interesting survey that unfortunately never took place, since a missile to the U.S. embassy in Greece is a terrorist act and is punishable with decades in prison, unlike the murderous Greek troops in Afghanistan who are portrayed as "humanitarian assistance" and are decorated by their bosses.
.ExternalClass ecx_filtered #ecxyiv91090919
{;}
.ExternalClass #ecxyiv91090919 P
{margin-bottom:0.21cm;}
All this time I remain consciously away from any kind denouncing of revolutionary action and continue to defend the substance and scope of the practice of which im prosecuted for. The captors are not only interested about your imprisonment, they are especially interested when you are a political subject, in a statement of renouncement or repentance. The capitulation to the oppressors and the admission to a futile struggle are elements that do not suit us. I came out untouched from their penitentiaries and the factories of manufacturing repentants . I belong to the proud generation that does not apologize in the courts, does not speak to security forces and does not bow the head in the prison courtyards. In the generation that knows how to honor their dead and punish their enemies.
- According to police leaks, you belong to the "Bandits in Black No. 2” What is your answer?
That i belong to the "Bandits in Black No. 3” But do not tell anyone ...
- Couldn't the reaction of the youth be expressed within the official Left parties? What is your opinion on this specific ideological movement?
The leftist regime can no longer inspire the larger sections of the youth. For the same reasons as the official trade unions can no longer manipulate the workers. Pieces of the youth realize that the right to life, is not begged for with votes and peaceful protests or complaints and convictions. The message of the youth that rose up in December was clearer than any political doublespeak: "If you don't respect us, you will fear us." The role of the leftist regime will be proven particularly dangerous in the period that will follow. Because I believe that as an alternative apologist of the regime will help alleviate social contradictions, since the practices it choses are delineated within the framework of the existing legitimacy and the commitment to parliamentarianism.
-Your father is a member of SYRIZA. (greek left wing political party) What is your opinion about politicians?
Personally, I grew up in a warm environment, full of books, political files, a place infused with the values and traditions of the left political culture. My father to me is a benchmark in terms of morals and values as a man.
-Do you believe that your father is one of those responsible for the current situation of the country?
As grateful as I am to my father for the way he raised me, equally my political beliefs do not allow me to exclude him of the politically responsible for the current political situation of the country. The leftist regime has its own responsibilities for what we are experiencing today.
-What message would you send him from inside prison?
With my father i have a very strong relationship, a strong personal contact and see each other regularly on visiting hours.
-Michalis Chrisohoidis (minister of protection of the citizen, ex ministry of public order) is considered a very successful minister. What is your opinion about him?
"We have war," he has declared. Beyond that, this war is not about a vendetta between cops and anti-authoritarians as deliberately presented by representatives of the regime, to spread confusion and to separate the whole of society from a war that eventually involves them and touches them directly. Bosses and oppressed, dead workers in LARCO, in Corinth Pipework, in the ship repair zone of Perama, guards with bats and prisoners in the dungeons, torturing psychiatrists and human experiments in blue cells, sadistic prosecutors and convicts sentenced to a life of suffering. Police murderers, young people and immigrants packed into the cells and police vans. In democracy there are torturers, but its so smart that it gives other definitions to the crimes it commits. Because how else can you describe those who committed crimes for two months on the mind, body and soul of fighter Savvas Xiros (imprisoned for participation in the revolutionary group “17th November”) in "Evangelismos" hospital after the bomb exploded in his hands? If we consider success synonymous with effectiveness regardless of the methods used to reach the ultimate goal, then the minister to protect the snitches is a successful minister. The problem is that society should understand that nowadays success is synonymous with cannibalism, self-interest and personal ambition. That to be successful you should not have morals, you should be a liar, you should sell your soul to the devil, or rather the Americans.
-Tell us about your detention conditions, about your life in prison.
Life inside a prison is quite routinized. When I entered prison, I received a letter from a very good friend and comrade, former prisoner, stating that the prison is a revolutionary's monastery. Nervously and clumsy, I replied that prison is bullshit and that we should get out of here as quickly as possible. Three years after my imprisonment I understood the true meaning of his words. Prison is a place away from the mundane, which allows you to reconstruct yourself. It's a test that if you come out untouched you're a winner. The strengthening of personal faith in the struggle and boost of revolutionary self-esteem is a reward that cannot be earned even with all the money in the world. Deeper meanings for higher ideals.
- Your court of Appeals is on June 7th. If you got out today how would you choose to live?
While I've been here I haven't planned my life outside. I try to be vigilant every day, to be in a physical and mental alertness. I live the present as intense as possible and when the door opens, I will look at the future.
"I do not regret my action but i would not do it again because the personal weight for me, my family, friends and my comrades is enormous," you said. Is this a sign of remorse?
The appeal of the prosecutor on the existing sentence of eight years imprisonment imposed on me at the first trial is an order that was given by high ranks, police and judicial leadership. I am in prison for almost three years accused of bank robbery. Those who have the audacity to ask me to regret for the expropriation of stolen social wealth are the main responsible for the systematic terrorizing of the Greek society. Because for me, terrorism is the bank that seizes homes and the predatory interest rates. Terrorism is working all your life for the bosses and then they take your salary and pension. Terrorism is living with the stress of survival. Terrorism is trying to lie to convince the goodness of the dictatorship of the I.M.F. (international monetary fund) I do not regret my action, but the reason why I would not choose the practice of robbery has to do with my personal development as a person and the priorities I have from now on in my life.
George Voutsis-Vogiatzis
translation BoubourAs actforfreedomnow!
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Trikala - 500 prisoners on hunger strike
27/07/2010 - According to "eleutherotypia" newspaper : "For a ninth day prisoners in Trikala prisons are continuing their hunger strike, they are protesting the denial of a large majority of prisoner applications for days out by the prison authorities and the bad behaviour of the prison guards.
Today, as well the number of prisoners on hunger strike rose from 200 to 500" solidarity to the all prisoners!
Today, as well the number of prisoners on hunger strike rose from 200 to 500" solidarity to the all prisoners!
Hunger strike of Nikos Maziotis and prisoners in solidarity ends after Panagiota Roupa gives birth to a son without presence of cops.
from :actforfreedomnow!
25/07/2010, 17.42 - A couple of hours ago today, 25 July the hunger strike of comrades Nikos Maziotis and Kostas Gournas and the abstinence from prison food of about 90 prisoners across the country in solidarity with Nikos Maziotis to see his newborn child, all ended.
Nikos was transferred this morning to Alexandra hospital to see his partner Panagiota Roupa who gave birth to their son yesterday with PROPER CARE from their doctors and WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF ANTI-TERRORISM COPS AT ANY STAGE.
Almost certainly the second request, to visit Pola at Korydallos women's prison, is being considered.
The mobilization succeeded. The hunger strike and abstension from prison food has ended.
Our best wishes to the baby!!
Solidarity to all the comrades!
25/07/2010, 17.42 - A couple of hours ago today, 25 July the hunger strike of comrades Nikos Maziotis and Kostas Gournas and the abstinence from prison food of about 90 prisoners across the country in solidarity with Nikos Maziotis to see his newborn child, all ended.
Nikos was transferred this morning to Alexandra hospital to see his partner Panagiota Roupa who gave birth to their son yesterday with PROPER CARE from their doctors and WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF ANTI-TERRORISM COPS AT ANY STAGE.
Almost certainly the second request, to visit Pola at Korydallos women's prison, is being considered.
The mobilization succeeded. The hunger strike and abstension from prison food has ended.
Our best wishes to the baby!!
Solidarity to all the comrades!
Friday, 23 July 2010
Athens - Letter of comrade Pola Roupa of 9 July
I am in prison for involvement in Revolutionary Struggle, for which I assume political responsibility. I said in a joint letter with my comrades Nikos Maziotis and Kostas Gourna and I still say we will not stop struggling against the economic and political State even within the prison. I know that my political choice to join Revolutionary Struggle and my attitude from inside jail classifies me as a registered political enemy of the system, a fact which not only I don't deny but is my choice and honours me.
As it is known to my political opponents that no "special treatment" or form of pressure is going to bend me, the revenge is directed against the life of my unborn child, who suffers the consequences of this "special treatment" from the repressive mechanisms and is now treated as a political prisoner.
Let me explain:
From the first moment of my arrest I was not given the slightest careful treatment because of my pregnancy by the "anti-terrorists" and the E.K.A.M. (special forces) that held me and were in charge of my transport. I was subjected to the “special treatment” of total isolation in one of the airless cells 1 × 2,5 m on the 12th floor, (meaning G.A.D.A.'s 12th floor of the "antiterrorist" police) with the light on 24 hours (actually it is a method of psychological torture) for five days, transported to the prosecutor and investigator with my hands cuffed behind my back for hours, transported to jail in Thebes with my hands tied in the same way (no pregnant woman wears handcuffs when transported, let alone in the way they were put on me), and to violent treatment during my transport to the office of the investigating prosecutor, which ultimately resulted in my injury. After my insistence and after they feared I was going to lose the baby in the "anti-terrorist" office, they eventually took me to the hospital for tests.
During the two months I was held in the prison in Thebes, and while there was evidence from previous medical examinations that I might be suffering from severe complications of pregnancy which, if not treated immediately, could create very serious problems, my examination to confirm this complication was completed one and a half months late after I reacted strongly to the criminal indifference of the prison and bureaucracy concerning my health, and thus the health and life of my child.
It is, of course, a given that prisoners who need medical care are most often treated as prisoners first and as patients second. A characteristic phrase is that of the obstetrician in Thebes who said I cannot expect to do all the tests and with the frequency that I would if I was not in prison, a phrase that reveals the racist treatment that the prisoners-patients get in certain medical services of at least some prisons, which often puts their very lives at risk.
"Special security measures"
In my case, the "medical care" of the prison led to my staying for one and a half months with a health problem, not undergoing the necessary tests, which the doctor in charge considered to be of minor importance, constantly creating problems so I couldn't do them, although I myself asked for them several times. After finally being taken to the hospital in Livadia where this complication was confirmed, I still did not to have the opportunity to face the problem, waiting for minister of justice Kastanidis and Chrisochoïdis to decide when to transfer me to Korydallos prison where I could face the problems more effectively.
The first image of "special security measures" that would be imposed by the 'ministry to protect the regime'[*](former public order ministry) for each of my transfers to the hospital was in Livadia, which "took" several dozen uniformed and non-uniformed cops from various regions of Central Greece and Athens, involving of course the "antiterrorists" and the E.K.A.M., who were escorting me and were stationed everywhere at the hospital. Please note that during my transport to this hospital I was also handcuffed.
And if the delay in transferring me to the hospital in Livadia for the necessary tests was due to the indifference of the prison medical staff of Thebes and the bureaucracy, the delay in transferring me to Athens was merely the brutal revenge of Chrisochoïdis, which was covered up behind the "special security measures" which he imposed on every one of my transfers and transports. This finding is not merely an estimate, since from the moment it became known to the authorities of Thebes prison that
I face a serious complication in my pregnancy, which was by now threatened, they began to put pressure not only on the Ministry of Justice and Public Order but also on Kastanidis and Chrisochoïdis personally for my immediate transfer to Athens. Nevertheless, they delayed my transfer for one and a half weeks, without in the meanwhile providing any medical care for the problem that I faced, a delay thanks to the "special security measures".
Delays due to the measures ordered by Chrisochoïdis for me did not stop here. The day after my arrival in Korydallos, an emergency situation demanded my immediate transfer to the hospital. While in any other case, the transfer would be very fast, I had to wait hours for the "special forces" and E.K.A.M. to gather. Of course at Tzaneio hospital where they took me, I was constantly surrounded by armed E.K.A.M. who, naturally, caused panic in the corridors of the emergency rooms. The same image prevailed at Alexandra clinic, which I was referred to by the doctors of Tzaneio due to the jurisdiction of the hospital.
A key issue for me is that, because of these "special security measures" that are taken for each of my transfers to hospital, the danger for the health and life of my child is increasing.
"In Alexandra hospital"
But these pressures and the vindictiveness of my political opponents, did not stop here. This peculiar war continued with the conditions during my 5day stay at Alexandra Hospital. There I was in a stifling ring of cops and in a state of isolation. The guards outside the room-cell in which I was held constantly harassed me with continuous monitoring, - even at very private moments in which I was forced to yell and make gestures to make them leave.
This practice can only be described as brutal psychological warfare. Please note that I was alone and constantly locked in a small room on the 1st floor, with bars and without any contact with other people other than medical and nursing staff. This perverse practice that they were preforming, on the orders of their superiors, male and female cops, constantly watching me from the window of the locked door, stopped largely after my intense intervention and after adding additional forces outside the window of the room-cell where I was.
All the days I was hospitalized in Alexandra they forbade me to have relatives visit - other than one a week for about half an hour - and phone calls - but one phone call a day for a minute and just one person (relative or lawyer) -, minimized the time spent with lawyers, of whom they kept all personal belongings (bags, phones, etc.) and imposed the constant presence of the guard in any medical and hospital visit.
The consequence of this is that all medical and hospital visiting and examination was always under police supervision and was circumventing any notion of medical confidentiality as all the details of my medical history were known to any cop who happened to be there.
The continuous monitoring of each review, any discussion with doctors and nurses was no longer just about me but it was a blatant intrusion in the work of the doctors, which they treated as another "possible threat to security".
The presentation of the patient-doctor relationship in a regime of continuous monitoring by the repressive mechanisms and their political bosses, who are informed in detail about any medical development, undermines the special relationship and inevitably harrasses the smooth operation and medical treatment.
Eventually the whole process of treatment is converted into a perversion of control by organized power, which alienates it.
These "special conditions of detention", applied to me during my stay in hospital are not legalized by any law. The treatment of each patient-prisoner depends on the "risk" that he is for "security" and the "chances he has to escape". Therefore, every security measure (presence of cops during examinations, surgeries, etc.) is determined either by the political leaders of the cops or from the operationals and sometimes left to the discretion of those who form the prisoner's guard. Thus, we have cases where police attend a birth on the grounds that the prisoner can escape.
I have never called for and never will call for humanitarianism from my political opponent. I do not believe that any kind of authoritarian is interested in the survival or health of my child, let alone mine. Instead, I think if they could, without taking into account the political cost, I would be left in total abandonment and it's likely that I would - based on many factors and my high risk, according to the opinion of the doctors, pregnancy - not be able to make it and my child would not survive. It is no exaggeration to say that this would be the wish of my persecutors and would be the best revenge for them.
It is also true that whatever proper medical care I receive at this moment is due to the doctors of Alexandra Hospital, which because of the emergency that happened to me took the situation into their own hands, completed a full medical diagnosis and put in proper order the way my problems will be treated from now on.
"Natural right"
I do not believe in any de facto respect of human and political rights by the regime, since both are covered and defined by the conditions and intensity of the social and class war which in each historical period it is conducted.
For those who make up the economic and political elite, humanity and value of human life is not for anyone other than class peers and their families.
It does not concern the proletarians, the poor, those who have nothing, who get sick and die in the increasingly squalid and inhuman living conditions that apply to the low social and class backgrounds.
The poor are undernourished and have to eat poison, do not have basic medical care, have to die on the stretchers of the decaying public hospitals.
Concerning the above facts, over the last few decades the social conditions are becoming more brutal because of the deep economic crisis that the system has plunged into, resulting in a growing number of social groups going into the category of the excluded, being condemned to a slow death, while the -for years now- substandard public hospitals are collapsing under the weight of public spending cuts imposed by the government and the Troika (Eur.Committee, International Monetary Fund, European Social Fund) which completely controls the business operation of the country and public funds.
The natural right of every single human to nutrition, housing, health, life, is already being abused in increasingly large parts of the population, while the regime steals wages, pensions and public money in order to preserve the economic and political elite and to ensure the perpetuation of power.
Their humanitarianism does not concern the prisoners stacked in prison-soul warehouse, who are treated as third-class people by the regime and the value of their lives is priced according to the space their death will fill in a newspaper column.
Their humanitarianism does not concern the enemies of the system, which, in reality and despite the ridiculous assertions by the Government to respect human rights, wants their physical extermination. If anything prevents it, as I said, it is only the political cost.
The fighter Simos Seisidis, who the regime has classified, using a range of police scenarios and assumptions, in their list of enemies, is an example. Seisidis, after being seriously injured by a cop’s bullet and risked losing his life, faced throughout the duration of hospitalization all available means of psychological torture and revenge by his persecutors, and wannabe killers: isolation, presence of cops in the ICU, continuous harassment, obstruction of medical and nursing staff - which reached the point of police surveillance being imposed even during the amputation of his leg.
This brutal behavior of the mechanisms of repression against Simos Seisidis ended with the decision to remand him in custody while his health is in this very bad situation.
"They Seek revenge"
The invocation of any human and civil rights is an outdated practice and refers to the remains of an era in which a series of social and class compromises coordinate the balance between oppressor and oppressed, allowing the maintenance of the regimes normalcy and peace. These balances are of the past, the class and social compromises have been invalidated by the system itself, which is attacking society more and more viciously, while the regime's peace hangs by a thread.
Within the current historical period it is known that the system, political and economic power and those who compose it, are creating public outcry continuously at all levels. On the other hand, rebel forces, such as Revolutionary Struggle, are finding a wider and wider social base.
Despite the regime’s efforts to discredit us as political figures and discredit the activities of Revolutionary Struggle, our organization receives the political acceptance of a large segment of society, which will eventually turn into options and practices of rupture and violent conflict with the system of representative democracy, capitalism and market economy.
In this historical context, where the rulers are expressing extreme vindictive fury against those who are fighting the dilapidated system, the attitude of law enforcement mechanisms can be interpreted in political terms, and that of Chrisochoïdis personally, towards me, since after seeking revenge for Revolutionary Struggle and for my political stance they are constantly threatening the health and life of my child with every available means.
Because for all the time that I've been in prison nothing has been given to me and any medical care was granted by a struggle on my part, I declare I will continue to pursue the necessary medical and pharmaceutical care and I will fight for his life and health.
To do so, I demand:
-No repeat of delay in transferring me to hospital, whether for scheduled appointments for medical examinations or in an emergency, with the justification of the maintenance of "special security measures". Particularly in the latter case, any delay can in fact be crucial for the survival of my child.
I'd like to emphasize that I do not care how many and what kind of armed ones accompany me in my transport or my stay in hospital. What interests me is that the time that these forces take to assemble works against the life of my son which is continually compromised.
-There shall not be any interference by government entities and repressive mechanisms on where to nurse me again, for reasons of "security." It would be another brutal act of revenge.
-Not to repeat the petty status of isolation and continuous control that is imposed on me in Alexandra Hospital, which can only cause problems to the successful completion of my hospitalization, and can affect the birth in the most negative way as well.
-No guard shall attend my examinations, visits of doctors, the nurses' care and, of course, no cop - including a female cop - should be in the room where I deliver, a practice which is the greatest insult to the dignity of female prisoners. Also, not only will I not tolerate my medical history, my personal information associated with it and my body being under the perverse control of the repressive mechanisms, but I consider this whole process to be a practice of war, punishment and revenge by my political opponents imposing it on me.
-To also stop the vindictive regime of isolation, allow me to get visits and be able to communicate by telephone. Also, to have the 24-hour care of my relatives, which is absolutely necessary.
Because until now, since I've been taken over by the ministry of the regime and the anti-terrorists, I have constantly faced problems that have threatened the health and life of my son, i declare that, if they do not respect the above basic requirements to have a safe delivery, this would mean that not only my political opponents have no intention to stop targeting my child, but want to persist and intensify the war.
Any bad course of my pregnancy under these hostile and vengeful conditions, any new threat to the life of my son would be a blatant attempt to politically murder my unborn child, who of course is not a prisoner even if he is treated as a hostage of war. I charge this attempted assassination in advance to Chrisochoïdis personally.
But to blame will also be his political and operational officers, Papandreou and the entire government.
Pola Roupa
Koridallos Prisons
[*]it's actually now called 'the ministry for the protection of the citizen'
...boubourAs translations... actforfreedomnow...
As it is known to my political opponents that no "special treatment" or form of pressure is going to bend me, the revenge is directed against the life of my unborn child, who suffers the consequences of this "special treatment" from the repressive mechanisms and is now treated as a political prisoner.
Let me explain:
From the first moment of my arrest I was not given the slightest careful treatment because of my pregnancy by the "anti-terrorists" and the E.K.A.M. (special forces) that held me and were in charge of my transport. I was subjected to the “special treatment” of total isolation in one of the airless cells 1 × 2,5 m on the 12th floor, (meaning G.A.D.A.'s 12th floor of the "antiterrorist" police) with the light on 24 hours (actually it is a method of psychological torture) for five days, transported to the prosecutor and investigator with my hands cuffed behind my back for hours, transported to jail in Thebes with my hands tied in the same way (no pregnant woman wears handcuffs when transported, let alone in the way they were put on me), and to violent treatment during my transport to the office of the investigating prosecutor, which ultimately resulted in my injury. After my insistence and after they feared I was going to lose the baby in the "anti-terrorist" office, they eventually took me to the hospital for tests.
During the two months I was held in the prison in Thebes, and while there was evidence from previous medical examinations that I might be suffering from severe complications of pregnancy which, if not treated immediately, could create very serious problems, my examination to confirm this complication was completed one and a half months late after I reacted strongly to the criminal indifference of the prison and bureaucracy concerning my health, and thus the health and life of my child.
It is, of course, a given that prisoners who need medical care are most often treated as prisoners first and as patients second. A characteristic phrase is that of the obstetrician in Thebes who said I cannot expect to do all the tests and with the frequency that I would if I was not in prison, a phrase that reveals the racist treatment that the prisoners-patients get in certain medical services of at least some prisons, which often puts their very lives at risk.
"Special security measures"
In my case, the "medical care" of the prison led to my staying for one and a half months with a health problem, not undergoing the necessary tests, which the doctor in charge considered to be of minor importance, constantly creating problems so I couldn't do them, although I myself asked for them several times. After finally being taken to the hospital in Livadia where this complication was confirmed, I still did not to have the opportunity to face the problem, waiting for minister of justice Kastanidis and Chrisochoïdis to decide when to transfer me to Korydallos prison where I could face the problems more effectively.
The first image of "special security measures" that would be imposed by the 'ministry to protect the regime'[*](former public order ministry) for each of my transfers to the hospital was in Livadia, which "took" several dozen uniformed and non-uniformed cops from various regions of Central Greece and Athens, involving of course the "antiterrorists" and the E.K.A.M., who were escorting me and were stationed everywhere at the hospital. Please note that during my transport to this hospital I was also handcuffed.
And if the delay in transferring me to the hospital in Livadia for the necessary tests was due to the indifference of the prison medical staff of Thebes and the bureaucracy, the delay in transferring me to Athens was merely the brutal revenge of Chrisochoïdis, which was covered up behind the "special security measures" which he imposed on every one of my transfers and transports. This finding is not merely an estimate, since from the moment it became known to the authorities of Thebes prison that
I face a serious complication in my pregnancy, which was by now threatened, they began to put pressure not only on the Ministry of Justice and Public Order but also on Kastanidis and Chrisochoïdis personally for my immediate transfer to Athens. Nevertheless, they delayed my transfer for one and a half weeks, without in the meanwhile providing any medical care for the problem that I faced, a delay thanks to the "special security measures".
Delays due to the measures ordered by Chrisochoïdis for me did not stop here. The day after my arrival in Korydallos, an emergency situation demanded my immediate transfer to the hospital. While in any other case, the transfer would be very fast, I had to wait hours for the "special forces" and E.K.A.M. to gather. Of course at Tzaneio hospital where they took me, I was constantly surrounded by armed E.K.A.M. who, naturally, caused panic in the corridors of the emergency rooms. The same image prevailed at Alexandra clinic, which I was referred to by the doctors of Tzaneio due to the jurisdiction of the hospital.
A key issue for me is that, because of these "special security measures" that are taken for each of my transfers to hospital, the danger for the health and life of my child is increasing.
"In Alexandra hospital"
But these pressures and the vindictiveness of my political opponents, did not stop here. This peculiar war continued with the conditions during my 5day stay at Alexandra Hospital. There I was in a stifling ring of cops and in a state of isolation. The guards outside the room-cell in which I was held constantly harassed me with continuous monitoring, - even at very private moments in which I was forced to yell and make gestures to make them leave.
This practice can only be described as brutal psychological warfare. Please note that I was alone and constantly locked in a small room on the 1st floor, with bars and without any contact with other people other than medical and nursing staff. This perverse practice that they were preforming, on the orders of their superiors, male and female cops, constantly watching me from the window of the locked door, stopped largely after my intense intervention and after adding additional forces outside the window of the room-cell where I was.
All the days I was hospitalized in Alexandra they forbade me to have relatives visit - other than one a week for about half an hour - and phone calls - but one phone call a day for a minute and just one person (relative or lawyer) -, minimized the time spent with lawyers, of whom they kept all personal belongings (bags, phones, etc.) and imposed the constant presence of the guard in any medical and hospital visit.
The consequence of this is that all medical and hospital visiting and examination was always under police supervision and was circumventing any notion of medical confidentiality as all the details of my medical history were known to any cop who happened to be there.
The continuous monitoring of each review, any discussion with doctors and nurses was no longer just about me but it was a blatant intrusion in the work of the doctors, which they treated as another "possible threat to security".
The presentation of the patient-doctor relationship in a regime of continuous monitoring by the repressive mechanisms and their political bosses, who are informed in detail about any medical development, undermines the special relationship and inevitably harrasses the smooth operation and medical treatment.
Eventually the whole process of treatment is converted into a perversion of control by organized power, which alienates it.
These "special conditions of detention", applied to me during my stay in hospital are not legalized by any law. The treatment of each patient-prisoner depends on the "risk" that he is for "security" and the "chances he has to escape". Therefore, every security measure (presence of cops during examinations, surgeries, etc.) is determined either by the political leaders of the cops or from the operationals and sometimes left to the discretion of those who form the prisoner's guard. Thus, we have cases where police attend a birth on the grounds that the prisoner can escape.
I have never called for and never will call for humanitarianism from my political opponent. I do not believe that any kind of authoritarian is interested in the survival or health of my child, let alone mine. Instead, I think if they could, without taking into account the political cost, I would be left in total abandonment and it's likely that I would - based on many factors and my high risk, according to the opinion of the doctors, pregnancy - not be able to make it and my child would not survive. It is no exaggeration to say that this would be the wish of my persecutors and would be the best revenge for them.
It is also true that whatever proper medical care I receive at this moment is due to the doctors of Alexandra Hospital, which because of the emergency that happened to me took the situation into their own hands, completed a full medical diagnosis and put in proper order the way my problems will be treated from now on.
"Natural right"
I do not believe in any de facto respect of human and political rights by the regime, since both are covered and defined by the conditions and intensity of the social and class war which in each historical period it is conducted.
For those who make up the economic and political elite, humanity and value of human life is not for anyone other than class peers and their families.
It does not concern the proletarians, the poor, those who have nothing, who get sick and die in the increasingly squalid and inhuman living conditions that apply to the low social and class backgrounds.
The poor are undernourished and have to eat poison, do not have basic medical care, have to die on the stretchers of the decaying public hospitals.
Concerning the above facts, over the last few decades the social conditions are becoming more brutal because of the deep economic crisis that the system has plunged into, resulting in a growing number of social groups going into the category of the excluded, being condemned to a slow death, while the -for years now- substandard public hospitals are collapsing under the weight of public spending cuts imposed by the government and the Troika (Eur.Committee, International Monetary Fund, European Social Fund) which completely controls the business operation of the country and public funds.
The natural right of every single human to nutrition, housing, health, life, is already being abused in increasingly large parts of the population, while the regime steals wages, pensions and public money in order to preserve the economic and political elite and to ensure the perpetuation of power.
Their humanitarianism does not concern the prisoners stacked in prison-soul warehouse, who are treated as third-class people by the regime and the value of their lives is priced according to the space their death will fill in a newspaper column.
Their humanitarianism does not concern the enemies of the system, which, in reality and despite the ridiculous assertions by the Government to respect human rights, wants their physical extermination. If anything prevents it, as I said, it is only the political cost.
The fighter Simos Seisidis, who the regime has classified, using a range of police scenarios and assumptions, in their list of enemies, is an example. Seisidis, after being seriously injured by a cop’s bullet and risked losing his life, faced throughout the duration of hospitalization all available means of psychological torture and revenge by his persecutors, and wannabe killers: isolation, presence of cops in the ICU, continuous harassment, obstruction of medical and nursing staff - which reached the point of police surveillance being imposed even during the amputation of his leg.
This brutal behavior of the mechanisms of repression against Simos Seisidis ended with the decision to remand him in custody while his health is in this very bad situation.
"They Seek revenge"
The invocation of any human and civil rights is an outdated practice and refers to the remains of an era in which a series of social and class compromises coordinate the balance between oppressor and oppressed, allowing the maintenance of the regimes normalcy and peace. These balances are of the past, the class and social compromises have been invalidated by the system itself, which is attacking society more and more viciously, while the regime's peace hangs by a thread.
Within the current historical period it is known that the system, political and economic power and those who compose it, are creating public outcry continuously at all levels. On the other hand, rebel forces, such as Revolutionary Struggle, are finding a wider and wider social base.
Despite the regime’s efforts to discredit us as political figures and discredit the activities of Revolutionary Struggle, our organization receives the political acceptance of a large segment of society, which will eventually turn into options and practices of rupture and violent conflict with the system of representative democracy, capitalism and market economy.
In this historical context, where the rulers are expressing extreme vindictive fury against those who are fighting the dilapidated system, the attitude of law enforcement mechanisms can be interpreted in political terms, and that of Chrisochoïdis personally, towards me, since after seeking revenge for Revolutionary Struggle and for my political stance they are constantly threatening the health and life of my child with every available means.
Because for all the time that I've been in prison nothing has been given to me and any medical care was granted by a struggle on my part, I declare I will continue to pursue the necessary medical and pharmaceutical care and I will fight for his life and health.
To do so, I demand:
-No repeat of delay in transferring me to hospital, whether for scheduled appointments for medical examinations or in an emergency, with the justification of the maintenance of "special security measures". Particularly in the latter case, any delay can in fact be crucial for the survival of my child.
I'd like to emphasize that I do not care how many and what kind of armed ones accompany me in my transport or my stay in hospital. What interests me is that the time that these forces take to assemble works against the life of my son which is continually compromised.
-There shall not be any interference by government entities and repressive mechanisms on where to nurse me again, for reasons of "security." It would be another brutal act of revenge.
-Not to repeat the petty status of isolation and continuous control that is imposed on me in Alexandra Hospital, which can only cause problems to the successful completion of my hospitalization, and can affect the birth in the most negative way as well.
-No guard shall attend my examinations, visits of doctors, the nurses' care and, of course, no cop - including a female cop - should be in the room where I deliver, a practice which is the greatest insult to the dignity of female prisoners. Also, not only will I not tolerate my medical history, my personal information associated with it and my body being under the perverse control of the repressive mechanisms, but I consider this whole process to be a practice of war, punishment and revenge by my political opponents imposing it on me.
-To also stop the vindictive regime of isolation, allow me to get visits and be able to communicate by telephone. Also, to have the 24-hour care of my relatives, which is absolutely necessary.
Because until now, since I've been taken over by the ministry of the regime and the anti-terrorists, I have constantly faced problems that have threatened the health and life of my son, i declare that, if they do not respect the above basic requirements to have a safe delivery, this would mean that not only my political opponents have no intention to stop targeting my child, but want to persist and intensify the war.
Any bad course of my pregnancy under these hostile and vengeful conditions, any new threat to the life of my son would be a blatant attempt to politically murder my unborn child, who of course is not a prisoner even if he is treated as a hostage of war. I charge this attempted assassination in advance to Chrisochoïdis personally.
But to blame will also be his political and operational officers, Papandreou and the entire government.
Pola Roupa
Koridallos Prisons
[*]it's actually now called 'the ministry for the protection of the citizen'
...boubourAs translations... actforfreedomnow...
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Hamilton, Ontario: Demonstration in Solidarity with Hunger Strike
Infoshop News
July 19th, 2010 -- A noise demonstration took place outside of the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre (Barton Jail) in downtown Hamilton, Ontario. Around 25 people marched around the prison, chanting slogans (the passion for freedom is stronger than all prisons; no prisons, no borders, fuck law and order; they might take our lives away but not our dignity, our hearts will pound against their walls until we all are free; smash the borders, fuck the state, all these walls are going to break; no justice, no peace, fuck the police; etc), shooting off fireworks, and making speeches.
This demonstration was held to continue creating a visible presence and tension against prisons and the world that needs them, as well as to take direct action in solidarity with the insurgent spirit: with everyone who chooses the dignity of struggle above the servility of obedience.
The 19th of July marked the beginning of a hunger strike in Saint Paul’s Hospital (the infirmary ward of Korydallos prison near Athens, Greece). Below is a translation of a communication about this hunger strike. Solidarity with prisoners in revolt, inside and outside the jails of this prison-world!
“On Monday, July 19th, prisoners will start refusing food with a demand to address and solve the problem of prolonged detention of people with chronic and incurable diseases, who (due to their state of health) should have their sentences reduced.
The human ''dump", as the prisoners of this institution call it themselves, is simply tragic, as we have also heard from comrade Simos Seisidis presently being held there. People with disabilities, strokes, and fatal diseases are thrown into this vile, dirty environment full of shortcomings.
The Secretary for prison policy visited some time ago, and stated that a legislative bill would resolve the matter in February or March. Naturally, he was telling lies.
The prisoners themselves, in their statement to the Minister and the media say:
‘Powerless to react differently, and anyway lacking our health, we are offering what is left of our lives to sacrifice them to your inhuman indifference, not because we hope you will change, but because we refuse to live like beasts, like waste from a system and society without humanity, ethics, or honour.
So, from Monday, July 19th, all those who are able to will abstain from food and all medication and treatment, as a last sign of dignity and self-respect...’
Our comrade Simos Seisidis will participate in this mobilization.”
Until we are all free!
Destroy all prisons!
July 19th, 2010 -- A noise demonstration took place outside of the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre (Barton Jail) in downtown Hamilton, Ontario. Around 25 people marched around the prison, chanting slogans (the passion for freedom is stronger than all prisons; no prisons, no borders, fuck law and order; they might take our lives away but not our dignity, our hearts will pound against their walls until we all are free; smash the borders, fuck the state, all these walls are going to break; no justice, no peace, fuck the police; etc), shooting off fireworks, and making speeches.
This demonstration was held to continue creating a visible presence and tension against prisons and the world that needs them, as well as to take direct action in solidarity with the insurgent spirit: with everyone who chooses the dignity of struggle above the servility of obedience.
The 19th of July marked the beginning of a hunger strike in Saint Paul’s Hospital (the infirmary ward of Korydallos prison near Athens, Greece). Below is a translation of a communication about this hunger strike. Solidarity with prisoners in revolt, inside and outside the jails of this prison-world!
“On Monday, July 19th, prisoners will start refusing food with a demand to address and solve the problem of prolonged detention of people with chronic and incurable diseases, who (due to their state of health) should have their sentences reduced.
The human ''dump", as the prisoners of this institution call it themselves, is simply tragic, as we have also heard from comrade Simos Seisidis presently being held there. People with disabilities, strokes, and fatal diseases are thrown into this vile, dirty environment full of shortcomings.
The Secretary for prison policy visited some time ago, and stated that a legislative bill would resolve the matter in February or March. Naturally, he was telling lies.
The prisoners themselves, in their statement to the Minister and the media say:
‘Powerless to react differently, and anyway lacking our health, we are offering what is left of our lives to sacrifice them to your inhuman indifference, not because we hope you will change, but because we refuse to live like beasts, like waste from a system and society without humanity, ethics, or honour.
So, from Monday, July 19th, all those who are able to will abstain from food and all medication and treatment, as a last sign of dignity and self-respect...’
Our comrade Simos Seisidis will participate in this mobilization.”
Until we are all free!
Destroy all prisons!
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Athens - Korydallos prisoners abstain from prison food against conditions and in solidarity with Simos Seisidis, Nikos Maziotis and Pola Roupa
actforfreedomnow!
UPDATE FROM KORYDALLOS HOSPITAL ST PAULS PRISON 20/7
8th day of abstaining from prison food Korydallos prisoners with chronic illness*
From yesterday prisoners with chronic diseases began to abstain from prison food in protest against the continued torture of the comrade Simos Seisidis, the delays of the 'antiterrorism' for accompanying him to have an artificial leg fitted...
Also 60 prisoners of Korydallos prison are abstaining from prison food from yesterday for the above reasons and in solidarity with the demands of Nikos Maziotis and Panagiota Roupa
UPDATE FROM KORYDALLOS HOSPITAL ST PAULS PRISON 20/7
8th day of abstaining from prison food Korydallos prisoners with chronic illness*
From yesterday prisoners with chronic diseases began to abstain from prison food in protest against the continued torture of the comrade Simos Seisidis, the delays of the 'antiterrorism' for accompanying him to have an artificial leg fitted...
Also 60 prisoners of Korydallos prison are abstaining from prison food from yesterday for the above reasons and in solidarity with the demands of Nikos Maziotis and Panagiota Roupa
Trikala, Greece - prisoners on hungerstrike from today
actforfreedomnow!
Today, Tuesday, 20 July, about 200 prisoners of Trikala prison
have begun a hunger strike after 2 weeks of abstaining from prison food. The Members of the Initiative for Prisoners' Rights have made it known that “they are going on hunger strike for three particular demands:
That applications for authorisation for days out be granted, at the moment 97% are rejected. When granted, to be done without probation, or prison social workers because although their role is to defend the prisoners, they “have passed into the enemy camp”, that of repression. And concerning the serious conditions inside the prison.
Today, Tuesday, 20 July, about 200 prisoners of Trikala prison
have begun a hunger strike after 2 weeks of abstaining from prison food. The Members of the Initiative for Prisoners' Rights have made it known that “they are going on hunger strike for three particular demands:
That applications for authorisation for days out be granted, at the moment 97% are rejected. When granted, to be done without probation, or prison social workers because although their role is to defend the prisoners, they “have passed into the enemy camp”, that of repression. And concerning the serious conditions inside the prison.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
From Monday, July 19, prisoners in Saint Paul's hospital, Korydallos prison, will abstain from prison food
actforfreedomnow!
On Monday, July 19, prisoners will start refusing food with a demand to address and solve the problem of prolonged detention of people with chronic and incurable diseases who, due to their state of health, should have their sentences reduced.
The human ''dump", as the prisoners of this institution call it themselves, is simply tragic, as we have also heard from comrade Simos Seisidis presently being held there. People with disabilities, strokes, fatal diseases are thrown into this vile, dirty environment full of shortcomings.
The Secretary for prison policy visited some time ago, and stated that the matter would be resolved by a legislative bill in February or March. Naturally, he was telling lies.
The prisoners themselves, in their statement to the Minister and the media say:''powerless to react differently, anyway lacking our health, we are offering what is left of our lives to sacrifice them to your inhuman indifference, not because we hope you will change, but because we refuse to live like beasts, like waste from a system and society without humanity, ethics or honour.
So, from Monday, July 19, all those who are able to will abstain from food and all medication and treatment, as a last sign of dignity and self-respect. ..''
Our comrade Simos Seisidis will participate in this mobilization.
On Monday, July 19, prisoners will start refusing food with a demand to address and solve the problem of prolonged detention of people with chronic and incurable diseases who, due to their state of health, should have their sentences reduced.
The human ''dump", as the prisoners of this institution call it themselves, is simply tragic, as we have also heard from comrade Simos Seisidis presently being held there. People with disabilities, strokes, fatal diseases are thrown into this vile, dirty environment full of shortcomings.
The Secretary for prison policy visited some time ago, and stated that the matter would be resolved by a legislative bill in February or March. Naturally, he was telling lies.
The prisoners themselves, in their statement to the Minister and the media say:''powerless to react differently, anyway lacking our health, we are offering what is left of our lives to sacrifice them to your inhuman indifference, not because we hope you will change, but because we refuse to live like beasts, like waste from a system and society without humanity, ethics or honour.
So, from Monday, July 19, all those who are able to will abstain from food and all medication and treatment, as a last sign of dignity and self-respect. ..''
Our comrade Simos Seisidis will participate in this mobilization.
Letter from the comrade Pola Roupa of July 9, 2010
In a letter published on blognonserviam.wordpress.com, the comrade Pola Roupa (Πόλα Ρούπα) describes her treatment as a prisoner while heavily pregnant.
Both her conditions of arrest and her transferral from one prison to another have been excessively severe, often resulting in her remaining handcuffed behind her back for hours. Both in jail and in hospital, police are constantly present for 'security reasons' even during medical examinations.
She is currently confined in Korydallos prison.
The letter is under translation.
Both her conditions of arrest and her transferral from one prison to another have been excessively severe, often resulting in her remaining handcuffed behind her back for hours. Both in jail and in hospital, police are constantly present for 'security reasons' even during medical examinations.
She is currently confined in Korydallos prison.
The letter is under translation.
Athens, Koridallos prison - comrade Nikos Maziotis' declaration of hunger strike in the face of the revenge of the State against his unborn child
actforfreedomnow! / From the Greek Streets
July 19, 2010 -
Hunger strike against vengeance.
The treatment that the state reserves for imprisoned revolutionaries and its political enemies is a given. Vengeance, sadism, physical and psychological violence, disrespect for human dignity, indifference about their health, their physical wellbeing, for human life itself.
For the security of the state and power, the denial of freedom is above everything, above life itself and "human rights".
For state officials, the political and financial elite and the rich, "human rights" only concern themselves and those of the same class.
They do not concern the people, the poor, the workers, the unemployed, the veterans of work, the immigrants, those who search in the garbage of the local markets to eat.
Neither do they concern prisoners - social prisoners, of which the overwhelming majority come from the poor social strata and whose life is worth absolutely nothing for the system.
And they do not concern, of course, revolutionaries and political prisoners, for which the system has always pursued their physical and ethical annihilation.
In this framework, my partner, comrade and co-fighter Panagiota Roupa and myself, who are members of Revolutionary Struggle, are denied the right of prison visits thanks to the attorney of Koridallos prison, who has rejected for "reasons of security" my transfer to the maternity clinic "Alexandra" in order to visit my partner, who will bring our son into the world, the youngest political prisoner of Greek "democracy".
She has also rejected, for the same "security reasons", my application to visit the female section of Koridallos because, due to her condition, my comrade is unable to visit the male prison as would normally happen.
Demanding, therefore, the "obvious" as a partner and as a father to visit my partner-cofighter and our son, I am going on hunger strike from the 15th of July in order for my two following demands to be met:
1. To be transferred for a visit to the maternity clinic "Alexandra" on July 25th in order to visit my partner Panagiota Roupa and our son, since the birth has been planned by Caesarean section for July 24th and she will remain in the clinic for a few days and
2. That I be transferred for visits to the female prison for the first period after the birth because my partner and our son will inevitably be too weak to be moved.
If the repressive mechanisms believe that by imprisoning us they’ll get done with us, they are wrong.
Either outside or inside the prisons the struggle for us is a question of honour and dignity; it will continue.
Revolutionary struggle continues.
NIKOS MAZIOTIS
July 19, 2010 -
Hunger strike against vengeance.
The treatment that the state reserves for imprisoned revolutionaries and its political enemies is a given. Vengeance, sadism, physical and psychological violence, disrespect for human dignity, indifference about their health, their physical wellbeing, for human life itself.
For the security of the state and power, the denial of freedom is above everything, above life itself and "human rights".
For state officials, the political and financial elite and the rich, "human rights" only concern themselves and those of the same class.
They do not concern the people, the poor, the workers, the unemployed, the veterans of work, the immigrants, those who search in the garbage of the local markets to eat.
Neither do they concern prisoners - social prisoners, of which the overwhelming majority come from the poor social strata and whose life is worth absolutely nothing for the system.
And they do not concern, of course, revolutionaries and political prisoners, for which the system has always pursued their physical and ethical annihilation.
In this framework, my partner, comrade and co-fighter Panagiota Roupa and myself, who are members of Revolutionary Struggle, are denied the right of prison visits thanks to the attorney of Koridallos prison, who has rejected for "reasons of security" my transfer to the maternity clinic "Alexandra" in order to visit my partner, who will bring our son into the world, the youngest political prisoner of Greek "democracy".
She has also rejected, for the same "security reasons", my application to visit the female section of Koridallos because, due to her condition, my comrade is unable to visit the male prison as would normally happen.
Demanding, therefore, the "obvious" as a partner and as a father to visit my partner-cofighter and our son, I am going on hunger strike from the 15th of July in order for my two following demands to be met:
1. To be transferred for a visit to the maternity clinic "Alexandra" on July 25th in order to visit my partner Panagiota Roupa and our son, since the birth has been planned by Caesarean section for July 24th and she will remain in the clinic for a few days and
2. That I be transferred for visits to the female prison for the first period after the birth because my partner and our son will inevitably be too weak to be moved.
If the repressive mechanisms believe that by imprisoning us they’ll get done with us, they are wrong.
Either outside or inside the prisons the struggle for us is a question of honour and dignity; it will continue.
Revolutionary struggle continues.
NIKOS MAZIOTIS
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Letter from Vaggelis Stathopoulos
Since the 10-04-2010 I find myself accused, together with comrades I know through my journey in social struggles, by the infamous anti-terrorist squad under a regime of terror and psychological warfare. My arrest took place in a cinematic fashion in the area of Victoria square by 10 to 15 persons with guns aimed while in fear of my any reaction EKAM (Special Antiterrorist Unit) forces from around the area were also mobilized. Armed to the teeth against one unarmed. Of course it wasn’t hard for me to immediately be aware of their presence due to the experience I have amassed over the years from the usual surveillance and harassment I had at my parents’ house in Nikaia as well as at the house I lived in, in Peukakia.
As a consequence I didn’t give much notice considering the event as one of the usual intimidation tactics used by the authorities with the aim of deterring the anti-establishment actions of people in struggle. A tactic used always by the repressive mechanisms of the dominant class, especially in times of social upheaval. Of course I didn’t know what the authorities had yet again cooked up in order to frame me. I have found myself on numerous occasions, as many other comrades have as well, in the dock of ridiculous courts by the humanoids of power without any evidence against me or with fabricated and orchestrated accusations. In all these cases I have been acquitted since even the cops couldn’t support their own tales. I remained accused pending trial and under constant control from the authorities for seven whole years. Seven years of continuous surveillance in an attempt to target my action criminalizing my personal relationships, my ideas and my political viewpoint which at times I have expressed loud and clear. And here it is one more time!
I am an anarchist and I struggle with all my powers for the social revolution.
Continuing with the events around my arrest, soon after my acquaintance with the “tough” guys of the anti-terrorist squad I was taken to the “stupidity kitchen” the 12th floor of Police Headquarters, there were you enter one office for an ID verification and you leave from the other one next door with fabricated serious charges. So these “tough” guys, having been taught obviously by their colleagues, torturers during the dictatorship, started beating me and the other comrades while we were handcuffed with their swearing and threatening keeping the beat. Following this I experienced a simple processing from the inquisitors and prosecutors of the orchestrations set up by the cops and that’s how my life got wrapped up in a piece of official paper, how my case got tied up tight and I now find myself in prison awaiting trial at Trikala. Of course the choice of Wing E’ for my “stay” here is not at all coincidental, as it is the most controlled wing. I don’t think I even need to mention with precision the hideous living conditions in these “modern” hellholes of democracy. It is enough to say that water cuts are a more than usual occurrence (compliments to Themis Construction [Construction company belonging to the Ministry of Justice and in charge of building prisons])!!!
Power with the mass media as an ally uses the standard tactic of slander and criminalization of social struggles and of personal relations of people in struggle. It is not the first time something like this has happened but it is the first time I had to personally deal with this incredible brutality which has as an aim to defame my life, throwing piles of mud on myself and my acts as well as on my comrades, my friends and my family and the wider subversive movement in which I actively take part. In this attempt my home is characterized and named as a safe-house and a wattle fence, which by the way I found there when I rented the house, was enough to transform my personal space into a dangerous base of operations. That nothing was found in this house is probably of no importance! The continuous false leaks and the vulgar disinformation came to be added to the whole cannibalism taking place, revealing yet again the mechanisms’ and journalists’ vindictive craze against any one who resists. And this is only one version of the organized violence carried out by the mechanisms of power and of the legal crimes perpetrated by the state and the bosses against our lives.
Of course the criminalization of struggles and of those who negate the status quo is not something new or unusual. Those who struggle know this well by now. Besides, even if someone is arrested for postering they are prosecuted for littering rather than their ideas and subversive words which in reality constitute the essence of their prosecution. Against the fable of legality and the false boundaries of innocence or guilt, I declare myself an enemy of the regime and an unrepentant adversary of the state and capital.
Besides, my statement to the inquisitor that “I don’t denounce any form of struggle against the state and power” is the only reason I am in prison and not their unfounded bill of indictment. If they expected statements of conformity to the law and of repentance from me they did not calculate well. In my life I have not learned to grovel left and right as a denouncer, a snitch and a collaborator, I have not learned to betray friends and comrades, to abandon them, to accuse and denounce them in front of my prosecutors in order to save myself. In my life I have learned to hold my head up high, to live with pride and dignity and to not grovel even if there’s a price to pay. If there are some people that have learned to live groveling, I am truly ashamed on their behalf.
At this time, when the bankrupt Greek state under the umbrella of the IMF is attempting to terrorize and repress every subversive project in fear of the Decembers’ coming it is our duty to fight in order to overthrow it in its totality.
I will continue to fight against the policing and control over our lives and for the destruction of prisons. For social revolution and for freedom.
Because in this world freedom is not handed out to you, you have to claim her through battles and win her.
STATE AND CAPITAL ARE THE TERRORISTS, CRIMINALS AND THIEVES
HONOUR TO THE URBAN GUERILLA LAMBROS FOUNDAS
FREEDOM TO ALL THE COMRADES IN PRISON FOR THEIR SUBVERSIVE ACTIONS
Vaggelis Stathopoulos
Trikala Prisons
10-5-2010
As a consequence I didn’t give much notice considering the event as one of the usual intimidation tactics used by the authorities with the aim of deterring the anti-establishment actions of people in struggle. A tactic used always by the repressive mechanisms of the dominant class, especially in times of social upheaval. Of course I didn’t know what the authorities had yet again cooked up in order to frame me. I have found myself on numerous occasions, as many other comrades have as well, in the dock of ridiculous courts by the humanoids of power without any evidence against me or with fabricated and orchestrated accusations. In all these cases I have been acquitted since even the cops couldn’t support their own tales. I remained accused pending trial and under constant control from the authorities for seven whole years. Seven years of continuous surveillance in an attempt to target my action criminalizing my personal relationships, my ideas and my political viewpoint which at times I have expressed loud and clear. And here it is one more time!
I am an anarchist and I struggle with all my powers for the social revolution.
Continuing with the events around my arrest, soon after my acquaintance with the “tough” guys of the anti-terrorist squad I was taken to the “stupidity kitchen” the 12th floor of Police Headquarters, there were you enter one office for an ID verification and you leave from the other one next door with fabricated serious charges. So these “tough” guys, having been taught obviously by their colleagues, torturers during the dictatorship, started beating me and the other comrades while we were handcuffed with their swearing and threatening keeping the beat. Following this I experienced a simple processing from the inquisitors and prosecutors of the orchestrations set up by the cops and that’s how my life got wrapped up in a piece of official paper, how my case got tied up tight and I now find myself in prison awaiting trial at Trikala. Of course the choice of Wing E’ for my “stay” here is not at all coincidental, as it is the most controlled wing. I don’t think I even need to mention with precision the hideous living conditions in these “modern” hellholes of democracy. It is enough to say that water cuts are a more than usual occurrence (compliments to Themis Construction [Construction company belonging to the Ministry of Justice and in charge of building prisons])!!!
Power with the mass media as an ally uses the standard tactic of slander and criminalization of social struggles and of personal relations of people in struggle. It is not the first time something like this has happened but it is the first time I had to personally deal with this incredible brutality which has as an aim to defame my life, throwing piles of mud on myself and my acts as well as on my comrades, my friends and my family and the wider subversive movement in which I actively take part. In this attempt my home is characterized and named as a safe-house and a wattle fence, which by the way I found there when I rented the house, was enough to transform my personal space into a dangerous base of operations. That nothing was found in this house is probably of no importance! The continuous false leaks and the vulgar disinformation came to be added to the whole cannibalism taking place, revealing yet again the mechanisms’ and journalists’ vindictive craze against any one who resists. And this is only one version of the organized violence carried out by the mechanisms of power and of the legal crimes perpetrated by the state and the bosses against our lives.
Of course the criminalization of struggles and of those who negate the status quo is not something new or unusual. Those who struggle know this well by now. Besides, even if someone is arrested for postering they are prosecuted for littering rather than their ideas and subversive words which in reality constitute the essence of their prosecution. Against the fable of legality and the false boundaries of innocence or guilt, I declare myself an enemy of the regime and an unrepentant adversary of the state and capital.
Besides, my statement to the inquisitor that “I don’t denounce any form of struggle against the state and power” is the only reason I am in prison and not their unfounded bill of indictment. If they expected statements of conformity to the law and of repentance from me they did not calculate well. In my life I have not learned to grovel left and right as a denouncer, a snitch and a collaborator, I have not learned to betray friends and comrades, to abandon them, to accuse and denounce them in front of my prosecutors in order to save myself. In my life I have learned to hold my head up high, to live with pride and dignity and to not grovel even if there’s a price to pay. If there are some people that have learned to live groveling, I am truly ashamed on their behalf.
At this time, when the bankrupt Greek state under the umbrella of the IMF is attempting to terrorize and repress every subversive project in fear of the Decembers’ coming it is our duty to fight in order to overthrow it in its totality.
I will continue to fight against the policing and control over our lives and for the destruction of prisons. For social revolution and for freedom.
Because in this world freedom is not handed out to you, you have to claim her through battles and win her.
STATE AND CAPITAL ARE THE TERRORISTS, CRIMINALS AND THIEVES
HONOUR TO THE URBAN GUERILLA LAMBROS FOUNDAS
FREEDOM TO ALL THE COMRADES IN PRISON FOR THEIR SUBVERSIVE ACTIONS
Vaggelis Stathopoulos
Trikala Prisons
10-5-2010
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