"Response to my targeting by the police and the media", by 60 year old antiauthoritarian in Athens

As rumors of more imminent detentions or arrests in Athens today are spreading, one of the people targeted, the 60 year old Manolis Barahas, veteran social struggle and antiauthoritarian published an open letter to the authorities.

Response to my targeting by the police and the media

I am the “intellectual”, the “leader”, the “citizen of Magnesia”, the one “who performs often excursions to Athens and Ikaria”, the one “with an organisational role in anti-autoritarian mobilisations” – one wonders, does your list have an end?

Am I good enough for the “profile” you know so well how to construct, in cases of creating “terrorist organisations”?

Is perhaps something missing from your zig-saw and I fit for the job?

• Yes, then, I am 60 year old (although in the mileu I belong there are no leaders, let alone middle-aged ones!)
• Yes, I am the inhabitant of the house you searched on Sunday 11 2010 in Kypseli (21 Sporadon street), without any results of course.
• Yes, I am the father of the wife of Kostas Gournas (he is my son in law!)
• Yes, I am the granfather of their two 16 month old children, and finally
• Yes, I am an anti-authoritarian.

I confess that I took part since the 1970s in social-class struggles, that are being performed by the opressed against the state and capital. And because my list is big, I will refer to the recent past. I took part and I take part energetically in the “coordinating assembly for refugees and immigrants”, in movements of solidairty to the insurgent Zapatistas of Mexico, to movements of solidarity to prisoners, in the “solidarity assembly to K. Kouneva”, in the “People’s Assembly of Petralona-Thisio-Koukaki”, and in the “PIKPA squat” by locals of these areas.

And in order to facilitate your researches, I announce to you that these days (ever since your amazing arrests and searches began) I am next to my daughter, in her house, whuch you searched on Sunday 11 April 2010.

It appears that the Holywood super-spectaclt of busting the ‘Revolutionary Struggle’ has been the best pill for you to muddy up the waters. In order to pass your anti-social anti-worker measures, as well as the supervision of the country by the IMF.

It is beyond doubt that the solidarity to the people persecuted for their participation in the ‘Revolutionary Struggle’ is self-evident and massive. I am part of the people in solidarity and shall be until their liberation.

The criminalisation of family and friendly relation of those who resist is a well known tactic of yours, and I stand coscientiously against it.

Athens, Tuesday 13 April 2010
Manolis Berahas

P.S. Regarding the space in Kypseli, it is not the home, as it has been misleadingly written in the official search report, of my son in law Kostas Gournas, but the professional space of myself and my brother.