Greece: Letter of anarchist prisoner Giorgos Kalaitzidis from prison
AK (Assembly of Salonika) | 28.10.2005 10:43 | Repression | Social Struggles
At the 7th of July G. Kalaitzidis and P. Karasarinis were arrested, having in possession broken pieces of police shields, taken away after an attack to a riot-patrol wagon. A few days later, P. Aspiotis was also arrested. Having exceeded the time limit of the "manifested guilt status" for 12hrs, the public prosecutor and the investigator overcharged them, by applying the harsh anti-terrorist law. Thus, through a procedure of juridical alchemy, the detainees stand as the scapegoats of 200 molotov blasts (specified as "explosive" instead of "inflammatory" material), as many as the total of the ones shot in Athens since 1998! The three detainees are kept in separate prisons (Koridalos, Amfissa, Nafplio).
http://athens.indymedia.org/display.php?articleId=3200
The recent arrests and detentions-until-trial of Giorgos Kalaitzidis, Panagiotis Aspiotis and Petros Karasarinis according to the law for organized crime (terrorlaw) is an attempt of the repressive authorities to encircle the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space by legal means and to exterminate it by practical means. This will be a beginning of a generalised attack against everyone who resists, in society in general and among the workers more specifically. That's why this case doesn't concern only the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space but everyone who resists and criticizes the brutal enforcement of the dominance of the state, the crushing of individual and social rights, the rights of workers and immigrants.
The antiauthoritarian practices of extra-institutional action which attain rights and even more freedom for the social resistance in general, are criminalised through institutional adjustments and changes in legislation in order for the state to define the way of struggle of either the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space or the general antiglobalisation movement or even the workers.
Comrades, right now the environment of dominance in Europe wishes to demolish any kind of threat or potential threat. This is confirmed by the wave of arrests and raids in Italy and Spain. This fact together with the arrest of the three renders the space a target of multinational repression (which is already institutionalized) and the discussion about combating the new reality has to begin.
http://www.resistance2003.gr/en/texts/text.php?id=83
[please forward as widely as possible! the comrades are still imprisoned]
http://athens.indymedia.org/display.php?articleId=3200 The recent arrests and detentions-until-trial of Giorgos Kalaitzidis, Panagiotis Aspiotis and Petros Karasarinis according to the law for organized crime (terrorlaw) is an attempt of the repressive authorities to encircle the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space by legal means and to exterminate it by practical means. This will be a beginning of a generalised attack against everyone who resists, in society in general and among the workers more specifically. That's why this case doesn't concern only the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space but everyone who resists and criticizes the brutal enforcement of the dominance of the state, the crushing of individual and social rights, the rights of workers and immigrants.
The antiauthoritarian practices of extra-institutional action which attain rights and even more freedom for the social resistance in general, are criminalised through institutional adjustments and changes in legislation in order for the state to define the way of struggle of either the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space or the general antiglobalisation movement or even the workers.
Comrades, right now the environment of dominance in Europe wishes to demolish any kind of threat or potential threat. This is confirmed by the wave of arrests and raids in Italy and Spain. This fact together with the arrest of the three renders the space a target of multinational repression (which is already institutionalized) and the discussion about combating the new reality has to begin.
http://www.resistance2003.gr/en/texts/text.php?id=83 [please forward as widely as possible! the comrades are still imprisoned]
Against the terrorlaw! Freedom to G.Kalaitzidis, P.Karasarinis, P.Aspiotis!
Against the terrorlaw! Freedom to G.Kalaitzidis, P.Karasarinis, P.Aspiotis!
Letter of anarchist prisoner Giorgos Kalaitzidis from the prison of Koridallos (Athens)
THE "ANTITERRORIST" LAW No 187 IN FULL EFFECT
Following our arrest, Wednesday 7 of July, some mass media began a campaign of disinformation with various tactics like lick of "scenarios" and allegedly "reliable information" whose "main menu" was dens, firearms, robberies, "new generation of terrorists" etc. Known mouthpieces of the General Police Quarters of Athens, scum "police reporters" and editors attempted in this way to create an explosive climate against us. This, of course, is not something unprecedented. We have seen this scenery in tenths of arrests of anarchist comrades. As it is not unprecedented nor our investigative detention in the civil police quarters, with the expected "pressures", a detention that lasted more than the legal time limit (in this occasion it lasted for one week), neither the "investigation" in my house, from which the police "evidence" was drawn in a totally arbitrarily way, distorted "evidence" that are reaching the limits of science fiction.
What was really unprecedented was the transformation and the "improvement" of the indictment by the court authorities: the misdemeanors which we were accused by the civil police, turned into capital offences by the public prosecutor. Then the capital offences were "magnified" with the enforcement of the No 187 "antiterrorist" law by the court authority. So we found ourselves with half the criminal bill on our backs and imprisoned with summary procedures in three different prisons and waiting trial.
My choice to help in the removal of police equipment, which came from actions of anarchist comrades, was something that enraged the authorities, so mass media, judges and police in full cooperation are making an attempt to attack for one more time the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space, with the clear objective to criminalise it.
They attempt to begin a new witch-hunt by using their enhanced "law armoury" (the notorious terror-law). Already in Italy and Spain individuals and political spaces are prosecuted and criminalised with similar tactics. By enforcing the new terrorlaw they attempt to exterminate every voice of resistance, especially if this is coming from the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space that is for many years now on the frontline against the dictates of each authority. That's why immediately after our arrest they began "inconspicuous" surveillance of even more comrades, theoretically "suspicious" for the sick brains of the police and court cadres.
Furthermore other events had already taken place before our arrest: the police gunshots that injured seriously a comrade on the leg in the National Technical University of Athens, the pogrom and the mass arrests in the area of Exarhia - even inside cafeterias, the assaults of fascist thugs against political spaces and the stabbings of comrades, the generalised police presence in the city-center of Athens.
Now the assault on political spaces and practices, even the criminalisation of friendly or political relationships is continuing with its spearhead the terrorlaw. We are the first victims, and probably not the only ones if this repressive tornado of the authority continues without being answered.
But the anarchist space has proven in the past that when it is attacked brutally and systematically, it has the ability to unite and resist with dignity against every kind of state schemes. But aside from if the solidarity will manage to give an adequate answer to the attacks of the mechanisms of authority this time, I have to declare the following:
I am proud to be an anarchist.
All these days of our struggle I have felt the grandeur of solidarity and comradeship through a thousand-and-two different ways.
They are stamped inside me the eye looks and the voices of the anarchist comrades, and these enabled me to ignore both our presence inside the inferno of the General Police Quarters of Athens and our enlacement in the papers of the terrorlaw with heavy charges and our imprisonment.
Such solidarity is never going to be felt by the pigs of authority (cops, judges, journalists).
No terrorlaw, no arrest, no imprisonment, no extermination will ever stop our struggle in all places and with all means.
The struggle continues, in the streets, in the amphitheatres, in the barricades, in the prisons.
The struggle adapts itself in the circumstances and evolves in every place and time.
Solidarity to the Spanish and Italian comrades.
Like there the same happened here, the mass media, the police and the judges have spoken.
Now is the time for the solidarity movement to speak.
With militant greetings to all comrades,
Giorgos Kalaitzidis, cell 62, wing A, prisons of Koridallos
(for contact you can send letters on the above address)
THE "ANTITERRORIST" LAW No 187 IN FULL EFFECT
Following our arrest, Wednesday 7 of July, some mass media began a campaign of disinformation with various tactics like lick of "scenarios" and allegedly "reliable information" whose "main menu" was dens, firearms, robberies, "new generation of terrorists" etc. Known mouthpieces of the General Police Quarters of Athens, scum "police reporters" and editors attempted in this way to create an explosive climate against us. This, of course, is not something unprecedented. We have seen this scenery in tenths of arrests of anarchist comrades. As it is not unprecedented nor our investigative detention in the civil police quarters, with the expected "pressures", a detention that lasted more than the legal time limit (in this occasion it lasted for one week), neither the "investigation" in my house, from which the police "evidence" was drawn in a totally arbitrarily way, distorted "evidence" that are reaching the limits of science fiction.
What was really unprecedented was the transformation and the "improvement" of the indictment by the court authorities: the misdemeanors which we were accused by the civil police, turned into capital offences by the public prosecutor. Then the capital offences were "magnified" with the enforcement of the No 187 "antiterrorist" law by the court authority. So we found ourselves with half the criminal bill on our backs and imprisoned with summary procedures in three different prisons and waiting trial.
My choice to help in the removal of police equipment, which came from actions of anarchist comrades, was something that enraged the authorities, so mass media, judges and police in full cooperation are making an attempt to attack for one more time the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space, with the clear objective to criminalise it.
They attempt to begin a new witch-hunt by using their enhanced "law armoury" (the notorious terror-law). Already in Italy and Spain individuals and political spaces are prosecuted and criminalised with similar tactics. By enforcing the new terrorlaw they attempt to exterminate every voice of resistance, especially if this is coming from the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space that is for many years now on the frontline against the dictates of each authority. That's why immediately after our arrest they began "inconspicuous" surveillance of even more comrades, theoretically "suspicious" for the sick brains of the police and court cadres.
Furthermore other events had already taken place before our arrest: the police gunshots that injured seriously a comrade on the leg in the National Technical University of Athens, the pogrom and the mass arrests in the area of Exarhia - even inside cafeterias, the assaults of fascist thugs against political spaces and the stabbings of comrades, the generalised police presence in the city-center of Athens.
Now the assault on political spaces and practices, even the criminalisation of friendly or political relationships is continuing with its spearhead the terrorlaw. We are the first victims, and probably not the only ones if this repressive tornado of the authority continues without being answered.
But the anarchist space has proven in the past that when it is attacked brutally and systematically, it has the ability to unite and resist with dignity against every kind of state schemes. But aside from if the solidarity will manage to give an adequate answer to the attacks of the mechanisms of authority this time, I have to declare the following:
I am proud to be an anarchist.
All these days of our struggle I have felt the grandeur of solidarity and comradeship through a thousand-and-two different ways.
They are stamped inside me the eye looks and the voices of the anarchist comrades, and these enabled me to ignore both our presence inside the inferno of the General Police Quarters of Athens and our enlacement in the papers of the terrorlaw with heavy charges and our imprisonment.
Such solidarity is never going to be felt by the pigs of authority (cops, judges, journalists).
No terrorlaw, no arrest, no imprisonment, no extermination will ever stop our struggle in all places and with all means.
The struggle continues, in the streets, in the amphitheatres, in the barricades, in the prisons.
The struggle adapts itself in the circumstances and evolves in every place and time.
Solidarity to the Spanish and Italian comrades.
Like there the same happened here, the mass media, the police and the judges have spoken.
Now is the time for the solidarity movement to speak.
With militant greetings to all comrades,
Giorgos Kalaitzidis, cell 62, wing A, prisons of Koridallos
(for contact you can send letters on the above address)
AK (Assembly of Salonika)
e-mail:
ita_gr@yahoo.co.uk
Homepage:
http://www.resistance2003.gr