Reactions to the arrest of the 6 anarchists in Athens

Update: Bourgeois media claim that the false story involving the supposed phonecall at spot of the bomb that killed the 15 year old Afghan boy in March was directly orchestrated by the anti-terrorist bureau.

What follows is a translation of the announcement of the ESIEA occupation earlier today:

NOT ONE STEP BACKWARDS!

Six of our comrades have been arrested and accused as terrorists. A comedy rehearsed a thousand times is once again staged on the theatre of 'public opinion'. The 'busting of terrorism' is a play that has been performed so many times that even the shortest of memories can accurately predict every single act of it. A play with famous well known producers, with known sold-out theatre critics, with a known public which watches passively and with the side balconies which are struggling to ruin the performance. And as always the usual victims. Why now, why in this way? Why did they choose this moment? There are no elections ahead of us. There are no Olympic Games. Nor government reshuffles, nor (at this moment) any new anti-terrorist laws. We have something far more substantial: the practical failure of the model of exploitation of the last decades. We have the total revelation of the lie of capitalist prosperity. We have the end of the myth that subordination and consent "pay off". How retarded do they think we are, so that they expect us not to notice that the premier of the "busting" play was only a few hours away from the completion of the deal of greek power with its international siblings for the management of their new attack against society? For many months now the communication campaign that advertises the need of the poor becoming voluntarily poorer is running parallel with another campaign: repression is spreading its tentacles everywhere. From the judiciary orgy of the Chalandri case, to the Wild West of money warrants, to the attacks on open political spaces, to the preventive detentions of thousands of people, to the attacks against self-organised projects, to the activation of the fascist stay-behinds...A campaign based on more local campaigns of terror for its realisation and its salvation every time it failed. From the "sanctuary of Exarcheia" to the "university asylum" and the "anniversary of December" we have ended up in the last month in the minutely detailed pre-announcement of targeting specific struggling people, until their final arrest. Thei first but not most significant target is to muddy up the waters, to divert the attention of the TV-watchers. They are hitting the anarchists not only to shift the communications agenda, nor only to respond to their revolutionary challenges. The receptor of this message is society. If the lies and the false promises of the system are at last apparent, if all the mechanisms of securing social peace (the parties, the regime syndicalism, the ngos, the social partners...) are not convincing anybody anymore, the possibility that the oppressed will ally with their own selves, challenge the social contract, self-organise and reclaim the wealth they produce and the lives they live, is a possibility that causes terror to power and its lackeys. The 'busting of terrorism' has its eyes fixed on the coming battles, not on the battles already given. It attempts, along side other terror-campaigns, to break the teeth of the struggle of the oppressed, before it stops moaning and considers to bite. Supposing that they could exploit the "numbness" of the breaking news, that they would have, as in the case of the 17 of november, a "charity period" so that they could direct the scene, they attacked. But they are deluded. 2010 is no 2002. And if they are hoping for the law-abiding whimpering of the regime bound left and of the "progressive eponymous world", they are placing their hopes on an empty cell. Today they will not get a second of foreground, Our comrades are not alone. They shall not be alone for a single minute. Because, on the one hand, as anarchists we do not accept their social contract, nor do we recognise in their democratic legality anything more than the perpetuation of exploitation and heteronomy. And on the other hand, because as the exploited and the oppressed we know what struggles we must engage in, we know who is "ours" and who is an "other". Solidarity is our weapon. A very powerful weapon. All those "others" should rethink their error. Yes, our comrades will be hit. They are being dragged in court, libeled against and imprisoned. But the cops will find us outside the homes of the persecuted. They will find us in the courts, on the streets, in the squares. The judges will confornt us in their court rooms and will confess out of them. The Chrisochoidis men will realise that in the race of political climbing, they have mounted a lame horse. The journalists that the lies about their "vocation" is over and that the revelation of their being under police orders has started. We have occupied ESIEA, that trade-unionist lair of journalistic aristocracy, so as to make clear to all that we see and understand and will fight against the holy alliance of power. The tentacle called media sometimes comes to play an even more elevated role. The arrested MUST be condemned, the evidence MUST be enough, the case MUST be conclusive. They are no longer even pretending in their evening news in their angst to perform the job asigned to them. It is we who first called them "snitching scum", in a totalising and levelling way, and today not even a dozen of them can be found to be able to claim we have done wrong to their trade. It is we who never crawled to beg for their TV time, who based ourselves on our one means to project our positions and struggles. It is we who never became just one more flower in their flower-pot, and it is for this that our roots are so strong. It is we who have resisted to the 'sirens' of talking to the 'public opinion' and have insisted on talking with society. I is we whose existence in the last 35 years is the sole proof of their weakness. It is us they cannot blackmail. Te eponymous parrots of the security will be abandoned to ridicule and disvaluation. In our eyes there is no begging, but knowledge and rage. And if some feel we have wronged them, if some journalists fantasise that in this barrel of rotten apples they can remain fresh and honest, what can we say, hic Rodus hic salta. If they manage to perform their self-criticism before they rot, the better for them. This struggle is only beginning. We know what comes next. We shall stand on the side of our comrades unwaveringly, as we shall stand on the front line of the social war, on all its fronts and in all the coming struggles. To the final victory.

FREEDOM TO THE IMPRISONED COMRADES
ALL TO THE COURTS ON 14&15 APRIL TO SHOW OUR SOLIDARITY TO THE 6 ARRESTED COMRADES
ALL TO THE PROTEST MARCH ON THE 15/4 19:00 FOR THE LIBERATION OF MARIOS Z.
ALL TO THE PROTEST MARCH ON 27/4 18:00 FOR SOLIDARITY TO YANNIS DIMITRAKIS

anarchists/ antiauthoritarians

Update-2: As doubts on the validity of the evidence and on the ethics of the anti-terror media spectacle are growing even amongst the bourgeois means of mass deception, a letter from some of the striking egyptian fishermen in Michaniona underlines the essence of proletarian solidarity:

We base what we are going to say on the word of honour given to us by some of the people who stood by our side in our struggle. Some of them are anarchists like the six people arrested on Saturday in Athens as terrorists. We are no judges to say if they are innocent or guilty. Judging however from the people we met in Michaniona and in Salonica an on their word of honour we say that if our strike took place in Peireaus, the six anarchist would be on our side and would do for us all that their brothers did for us here. We might not agree with all their ideas, we believe however that these people are on the side of the workers who are struggling for justice like their brothers who me met in our struggle. And this does not change whatever might come.

Long live Justice and Truth!

Some of the egyptian fishermen

Update-3: I translate below the announcement of the "Network of Civil and Social Rights" [Diktyo], a long established left group of lawyers and civil rights workers in greece, on the arrest of the 6:

Arbitrariness and Terror-lust in the Service of Order and Security

Based on the arrests of [names of the arrested] with the accusation that they are members of the Revolutionary Struggle, an operation is unfolding reminding us of the darkest times of all the similar cases of the last decades: the criminalisation of personal relations and the the presentation of people's involvement in the movement as incriminating evidence, as we lived it before in the cases of Kalogreza, of Balafas and Lesperoglou; the terror-lust and utter sycophancy against people and political milieus furing the terror-summer of 2002; the police-judicial mania and the generalised repression of the anarchist milieu as we see it in the case of Chalandri.

Police leaks, total or by choice, estimations and expectations of the Anti-terrorist bureau, references to ideas and to the action of the arrested (all of them very well known to the wider movement) are mingled with unbelievable reportage and an unbearable televised discourse-diarrhea creating a climate of incrimination and devaluation of the accused without any evidence. On the contrary, they lift to the status of 'evidence' facts like for example that [name of an accused] is the No.1 "usual suspect" for the lat decade and is being constantly watched, or that [name of another accused] was a friend of the (under unclear conditions killed by the police) Lambros Foundas, trying to convince us that being persecuted by the police or one's comradely relations are evidence of guilt. Thus they formulate a 'virtual reality' which presents as an unquestionable reality the police allegations and the screams of the TV-persecutors. All these, of course, spiced up with "exclusive information" about...target shooting in Mt Imitus, and phone conversations with people already in custody, which, although it is certain will never be presented officially in the court, are worsening the negative climate against the arrested.

Because many 'police truths' have been proved operations of cold interest, often by means of engrossing or constructing evidence, because we are at a period of a climax and generalisation of state repression (police brutality against immigrants and the youth, incontrolable phone surveillances, televised house invasions, 'operations virtue' like the one in the Navarinou park on the 12th of April, are hust a few examples), because the government and the political personnel of the state have every reason to obscure their anti-popular attack against the rights of the workers and the plebean layers of the population through a show of "security" (whose security we wonder), because the TV when it does not corrupt, it simply lies (who is really worse, the ridiculous puppets commenting on the latest porn scandal or the ridiculous ones who discover...bamboo groves in the homes of 'terrorists'?), because in Greece being an anarchist or sympathising with the armed action is not a penal offense (yet), and even less "a terrorist one", because, finally, especially in periods like the one we experience, we must be especially suspicious against the state and the archons, we advise soberness in judging and in evaluating, determination against state arbitrariness, and solidarity to whoever is a victim of it, for whatever reason that might be so.

Network for Civil and Social Rights
Athens, April 14 2010

Update-4: As a reaction to the anti-anarchist pogrom, comrades in Heraclion Crete stormed Creta Channel during its main evening news bulletin and broadcasted a long passage in solidarity to the arrested. At the same time anarchists in Volos occupied the offices of the daily Taxydromos, demanding the immediate release of the arrested.

It must be finally noted that Lidia Sofianou, one more of the people targeted by the anti-terrorist scum via the media has published a letter which attacks the terror-lust campaign and clarifies:

Regarding the "leaking" of my name regarding fingerprints supposedly found on a book in the house of the murdered comrade Lambros Foundas, I have to declare the following:

First, it is not my everyday habit to go around in gloves! and second, the memory of the assassinated struggler fills me with feelings of honour and emotion for him, and rage against his murderers.

Finally, I express my solidarity to the arrested and to all the persecuted strugglers

I will be back with more if needed.

SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON

Lida Sofianou 14/4/2010