Solidarity with B6 - Letter from Thessaloniki

The following letter was read in Belgrade, February 17 (the date of the trial):

We are here to express our solidarity with the Belgrade 6.

In the recent past we have experienced similar cases of arbitrary charges and persecutions by the State and its judicial system. Ever since the fall of the colonels' junta in 1974, the Greek State has been using the pretext of "terrorism" to repress and control political movements and strikes. In most (though not in all) cases, the accused have been anarchists who had been active in the movement in the 1980s.

In all cases the accused were not found guilty of terrorism or of any other serious charge in the end, often after they had spent a long time in prison awaiting trial: In the separate cases of Yannis Serifis,
Vaggelio Vogiatzi, Yannis Bouketsidis, Kyriakos Mazokopos and Epaminondas Skyftoulis, a nascent but strong solidarity movement managed to reveal and expose for all to see, in all its ridiculousness, the false accusations, manufactured evidence and the whole fraud of a trial that the State had tried to set up.

Those early "anti-terrorist" conspiracies had been designed under heavy pressure exercised by the CIA upon the Greek government: New, flexible anti-terrorist laws were needed so that the Greek State, a good student of the Western capitalist power bloc, could respond to growing social unrest in a country that was developing at a high rate and at the same time was under the "protective surveillance" of NATO and the European Union. Consequently, the anti-terrorist bills that were passed in order to confront "organized armed groups" were then used against the workers' and the students' movement. The most obvious example is the arrest and incarceration of underage students in Larisa during the
generalized riots in December 2008. In other words, while the anti-terrorist laws were allegedly designed to "bash the terrorists", they were actually used to terrify kids.

The Belgrade 6 case presents many similarities with those early Greek cases. Serbia has been through a long and evastating war, the regime has changed, the State is now persevering to enter the European Union.

More than 1800 businesses have been privatized in the last years, land and productive factories have been sold off and workers have been fired or left unpaid for months and years...The State is promising Free Trade Zones, where work is cheap and no workers' unions are allowed, in order
to attract foreign investors.

Free trade zones need a safe, dissent-free atmosphere to operate. This State, which needs to show off as a well-behaved servant to powerful US, Russian and European interests, cannot afford huge social unrest, strikes and occupations throughout the country, and especially not in the capital. Belgrade must look shiny, happy and cheap for the tourists. That is why demonstrations can only be held in secondary streets, where the police can control them, and not at the power-centre
of decision making, even the gay pride parade is not considered safe enough, and people are being arrested for selling DVDs, in a country where most of the economy is unregistered anyway - (in Greece, the
black market is even bigger than Serbia's within its official economy, and most of the real work anyway -construction, fruit picking, agricultural work, cleaning, homecare of patients, children and elderly, is being done unofficially by lowly-paid immigrants and disgustingly mistreated refugees).

It is true that even minor policemen would laugh at the charge of "international terrorism for a broken window", but indeed the ideology and practice of anti-terrorism is an important weapon of the security
state. This is the story of all authoritarian states in the East and
the West in the 20th century, and after 9/11 2001, the US-Australian and European "war against terror" showed its teeth across the world in a quite uniform way.

But this is exactly what is happening now. The Belgrade 6 are indeed being charged with international terrorism for a broken window. They are being held in dire, humiliating conditions, they are being kept
completely isolated, they do not see each other, or their friends and the people who want to help them, we hear they are being beaten up...
In other words, they are being denied their basic human rights!

We have followed the case as closely as was possible under these conditions, we have read the important letters and announcements of support here in Serbia, we have tried to make the case known where we
live (by hosting discussions and organizing protest actions outside the consulates and embassies in Greece - there is one going on while we are speaking)...And today we can only join our voice with you, wishing that
we could have done more. This is an unprecedented case, and it is all the more important for that reason that we do not let the State (bragging to its audience of multinational corporations) have its way.

After the 6 were arrested, there was a preposterous effort by the police and the State to associate whatever they considered to be an "international terrorist act" with the committee that organized the 5th Balkan Anarchist Bookfair. We openly state that our relationship with the libertarian, anti-authoritarian and autonomous social movement in the Balkans goes back to 2002, when we, alongside some of the Belgrade 6 who are in prison right now, and many others, organized the Anarchist Initiative Against the War in Iraq. As it was our duty to protest against the invasion in the Middle East, against the "smart" bombing of former Yugoslavia, so it is our duty now to
protest the new round of raw repression and conspiracy against the Belgrade 6 - and social movements in Serbia.

For Solidarity and Dignity,

Anti-Authoritarian Movement and comrades from the Solidarity Initiative for the B6,

16 February 2010, Thessaloniki