English

This is a text taken from the Athens Indymedia website. It is a catalogue almost only as you will see about murders inflicted by policemen since 1996, it doesn't include all the killings from 1974 when Greece became a democracy in her modern history (in previous greek democracies through the 20th century, apart from the dictatorships of course, communists were illegal so I can not accept the constitutions as democratic). It doesn't include also the everyday insults that some people receive in their contacts with the police or the extended abuses, vocal or physical, that riot police men systematically inflict towards demonstrators or unlucky passers-by. This bloody catalogue proves the opposite of what the present government of greece has named “individual events”. This was an unlucky statement that the events of police violence are individual and disconnected between each other. Of course it has to be reminded that whatever the government (of the right wing Nea Democratia now or the so-called socialists PA.SO.K/Greek Socialist Party before them) the greek police remained all these years violent and in these respects illegal, which shows in my opinion the degree of democracy that this country has managed to achieve in real terms.

A wave of repression against immigrants during the riots in Greece

In the last few days, there has been an explosion of violence and racism against immigrants by the police and the courts. In Athens only, over 50 immigrants have been sent to trial in flagrante delicto, with ridiculously insignificant accusations. This is the general picture: Express trials, no legal representation, no interpreters and a pre-decided charge of 18 months in prison followed by deportation. Most immigrants were arrested on the streets and not inside shops. Some were found carrying looted wares, some weren’t. In one characteristic case, an immigrant was charged with robbery while he insisted that the single cellphone he was found carrying was actually his own! He was imprisoned and is awaiting deportation. In another incident, an immigrant was incarcerated for carrying a cellphone charging device! He was also sent to prison. He will be deported too.

Plan B Bureau

Thesis 1

We define the metropolis as the compact group of territories and heterogeneous devices crossed in every point by a disjunctive synthesis; there is not any
point of the metropolis, in fact, where command and resistance, dominion and
sabotage are not present at the same time. An antagonistic process between two
parts, whose relation consists in enmity, totally innervates the metropolis. On
one side, it consists, true to it’s etymology, in the exercising of a command
that is irradiated on all the other territories – so everywhere is of the
metropolis.[1] It is the space in which and from which the intensity and the
concentration of devices of oppression, exploitation and dominion express
themselves in their maximum degree and extension. In the metropolis, the city
and the country, modernity and second natures collapse and end. In the
metropolis where industry, communication and spectacle make a productive whole,
the government’s required job consists in connecting and controlling the social
cooperation which is at the base to then be able to extract surplus value using
biopolitical instruments. On the other side, it is a whole of the territories in
which a heterogeneous mix of subversive forces – singular, Common, collective –
are able to express the tendentiously more organized and horizontal level of
antagonism against command. There are not places and non- places in the
metropolis: there are territories occupied militarily by the imperial forces,
territories controlled by biopower and territories that enter into resistance.
Sometimes, very often, these three types of territories cross one another,
other times the latter separates itself from the other two and, in yet other
occasions, the last enters into war against the first two. The Banlieue is
emblematic of this “third” territory: but if everywhere is of the metropolis,
then its also true that everywhere is of the Banlieue.[2] In the metropolitan
extension of Common life, the intensity of the revolutionary imagination of
communism-to-come lives.

13 December was the demo in Katowice in solidarity with struggle in Greece. More than 50 people came - big for Katowice. Demo also had the anti-police character. Anarchists went to police station, carried the portraits of other victims of police violence and banner for Alex. Below tekst are few pictures.

1. The current world economic crisis marks the end of the neoliberal
phase of capitalism. ‘Business as usual’ (financialisation,
deregulation, privatisation...) is thus no longer an option: new spaces
of accumulation and types of political regulation will need to be found
by governments and corporations to keep capitalism going

2. Alongside the economic and political as well as energy crises, there
is another crisis rocking the world: the biocrisis, the result of a
suicidal mismatch between the ecological life support system that
guarantees our collective human survival and capital’s need for constant
growth.

Today (Friday), the assembly of the occupied Athens Polytechnic decided to make a callout for European and global-wide actions of resistance in the memory of all assassinated youth, migrants and all those who were struggling against the lackeys of the state. Carlo Juliani; the French suburb youths; Alexandros Grigoropoulos and the countless others, all around the world. Our lives do not belong to the states and their assassins! The memory of the assassinated brothers and sisters, friends and comrades stays alive through our struggles! We do not forget our brothers and sisters, we do not forgive their murderers. Please translate and spread around this message for a common day of coordinated actions of resistance in as many places around the world as possible.

Friday 12th December 2008

THEIR DEMOCRACY MURDERS…

On Saturday December 6, 2008, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year old comrade, was murdered in cold blood, with a bullet in the chest by the cop Epaminondas Korkoneas of the special guards` police force in the area of Exarchia.

Contrary to the statements of politicians and journalists who are accomplices to the murder, this was not an “isolated incident”, but an explosion of the state repression which systematically and in an organised manner targets those who resist, those who revolt, the anarchists and antiauthoritarians.
It is the peak of state terrorism which is expressed with the upgrading of the role of repressive mechanisms, their continuous armament, the increasing levels of violence they use, with the doctrine of “zero tolerance”, with the slandering media propaganda that criminalises those who are fighting against authority.

Greek Embassy Picket
9th December Dublin
WE DON’T FORGET WE DON’T BACK DOWN

A good crowd gathered at the top of Grafton Street at about 5.15pm on the cold dark Tuesday evening in December. We moved off towards St. Stephens Green, about 25 of us heading towards Lesson street and the Greek Embassy. We went against the flow of people escaping work and rushing towards the illuminated beacon of the shopping centre.

On Tuesday, 9th of December, approximately at 6:30 pm on Main Square, Bratislava, Slovak Republic, about 40 people came to express their protest and anger against the murder of Alexandros and to memorialize this young boy. There was a transparence laying on the stairs of The Embassy of Greece saying “6.12.2008, Athens, 16-years-old Alexandros Andreas Grigoropoulos, murdered by a cop! R.I.P./A.C.A.B.“ Two activists have attached a banner with a slogan “Punishment for the assassin“ in Greek on the entrance door. We also put a wreath and have lighted tenths of candles together neer the stairs and the photography of young Alexandros.

Alexandros - We will never forget!
http://belzebubmedia.blogspot.com/2008/12/pietna-akcia-v-bratislave-na-p...

Today, 11 December 2008, at 11am an action took place in front of the Greek Consulate in Bucharest, Romania. Participants decided to make a fast action, flash mob style, in order to avoid any contact with authorities as well as not have to ask for a protest permit (Romanian activsts & ngo's have been having a very hard time actually obtaining permits for the last year or so).

Around 20 people showed up, some of which were lying on the ground playing dead while others were making chalk outlines of their bodies and someone spray painted "your hands are stained with blood!"

DAYS OF DEMOCRACY 2008 EITHER WITH THE GUNS OF THE POLICE - OR WITH THE STRUGGLES OF SOCIETY

No insurrection in history could ever be controlled, manipulated, or submitted to ideologies or political parties and mechanisms, it could never be merely political in content. Every riot, every insurrection has always been a social affair and has thus been deeply political in the broadest sense. After the murder in cold blood of 15-year-old Alexandros, a tumult of rage and discontent has come to the surface. A wave of excluded, disappointed, repressed, desperate people flooded the streets, of diverse cultural background, education, experience and class and were united in a spontaneous cry of a society that is being suppressed, deprived of its future, that is watching its dreams being crushed.

This is a generation that has been systematically excluded from any means of expression, deprived of any possibility to decide for itself at school, at university or at work, through its growing alienation. This generation is choosing destruction as its own expression of rage and creativity. Rage is not just a feeling. It is a struggle for social justice. As long as there is no justice, there will be no social peace. We are out on the streets as part of this society but also as part of this social rage. We do not seek to be the leaders of this discontent, we are not experts in violence. We are out on the streets because we are on Alexandros' side.

Any one of us could have been in his position. We know well, from our everyday experience in social and labour struggles, in the struggles of immigrants for dignity, in the struggles of the marginalized and the prisoners for a glimpse of freedom, that the State and the institutions of power have always confronted us with the finger on the trigger. We do not just feel hurt, outraged and revolted by the unjust death of a young person. We are also fully aware that, whether we are friends, parents or relatives, for each one of us and each of our beloved ones, there is a police bullet waiting for its fatal call. Guilty are the State and its uniformed murderers. It is they who are the true specialists and actual managers of violence. They started it.

They are the ones who are responsible for this wave of violence and insurrection that broke out with the murder of Alexandros. There was never justice for the murders of Koumis, Kanellopoulou, Kaltezas, Temboneras, Boulatovic, and of so many more immigrants...Social rage grows with State violence, chemical warfare on the streets (teargas cartidges shot directly at demonstrators), rubber bullets, beatings and hooded plainclothes policemen arresting demonstrators. The explosive social situation these days could -and should- create the conditions and the consciences for a better future. But it could also create the conditions for accepting and legitimizing the use of firearms by the police.

How else could we interpret the riot policeman in Athens waving a revolver against demonstrators during the demo on Sunday? How else could we interpret the numerous firings in the air by special-force policemen right after Alexandros' funeral? How else could we interpret knife-flogging fascists helping out the police during their attack against demonstrators in Patras on Tuesday evening? However hidden from the majority, all the above-mentioned incidents are true.

NO MORE HYPOCRICY - THESE ARE NO "ISOLATED INCIDENTS", THIS IS THE REALITY OF STATE VIOLENCE COPS SHOOT TO KILL - WE ARE AT WAR

Whoever pretends nothing is happening has already chosen which side they are on

Thessaloniki (Greece) December 9 2008 Occupied School of Theatre

Today, 10th December 2008, around 20:30 bulgarian time (EET) a
solidarity protest in commemoration of the killed by a policeman 15-years old Alex Grigoropoulos took place in front of the greek embassy in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Around 40 people from the Federation of the Anarchists in Bulgaria (FAB), autonomous anti-authoritarian group "AnarchoResistance", movement for resistance "23rd of September" and movement for students rights "Priziv" gathered.

Representatives from FAB and "23rd of September" read declarations to
speak out our anger with the killing of Alexandros. The activists
shouted slogans like "Solidarity between the people is our weapon against the state", "Cops, pigs, killers" and "Freedom" in bulgarian and greek and waved anarchist's flad and transparents with slogans "Enough with the killings and the police terror!", "He, who falls for freedom, does not die!". The protest ended with candles and portraits of Alex, put in front of the main entrance of the embassy.

On December 9 Warsaw anarchists organized solidarity pickets at the Greek and the French embassies. The first took place in front of the Greek Embassy. The protestors held pictures of Alexandros-Andreas Grigoropoulos, killed by police a few days ago. The anarchists, besides condemning the murder also expressed their support for protestors in Greece, for the planned general strike and the stuggle against capitalism and neoliberal reforms in Greece. The chanted different slogans such as "Murderers", "That's what your "democracy" is like", "Solidarity is our Weapon", "Bourgeoisie your end is near" and "No justice, no peace". Embassy employees refused to speak to the protestors.

After some time, the protest moved up the block to the French Embassy. Passing the Parliament, just next to the Embassy, a siren was sounded and anarchists yelled "Watch out! Anarchists are coming!". At the French Embassy the protestors expressed their solidarity for the Tarnac 9. They also criticized the politics of Sarkozy.

To the people of Oaxaca
To the people of Mexico
To Section 22
To the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca
To the media

In the early morning of Monday, December 8, 2008, murderer Ulises Ruiz's Oaxacan state government, through its Preventative and Municipal police, onboard various police pickup trucks and motorcycles, violently attacked those who live and work in the political and cultural space of the house located at 408 Crespo Street in the historic center of Oaxaca, "Oaxacan Autonomous Solidarity House of Self-Sustaining (Autogestive) Work" (Casa Autonoma Solidaria Oaxaquena de Trabajo Autogestivo - CASOTA).

Solidarity with the Greek anarchist movement and with the victims of repression, international solidarity with all social struggles, in Greece and in the rest of Europe!

While Greece was preparing for its general strike on Thursday 10 December against the Karamanlis government and against the economic crisis, and with the grassroots mobilisation in schools and universities growing for some time against proposed reforms, Alexandros Grigoropolous, only 16 years old, was the unlucky choice to become victim and scapegoat of the police apparatus and was killed in cold blood by the State's forces of repression.
The economic crisis sparked off by international capitalism against the exploited of the whole world, which is being managed with measures imposing general impoverishment by the States, is damaging the fragile equilibriums and the precarious alliances of power between groups of power and both right-wing and centre-left parties, enabling us to see the true anti-democratic, subversive vocation of the State and its apparatus of (in)security): alienation, criminalisation and the elimination of social opposition.