On 31/10 on the third floor of an apartment in Arcadia Street, during the processing of explosives by my comrade and insurgent Kyriakos Xymitiris, an explosion took place with tragic consequence of his death. Within a few minutes and while I happened to be in the next room, time froze, everything went black and I was unable to move. The condition incomprehensible, the development incomprehensible. Buried in the wreckage trying to figure out what happened. Asking for help, looking for my partner with my eyes. Slowly realizing that while the thread of my comrade’s action would be abruptly cut, his life and his choices of struggle would be a historic flash of determined resistance, consistency and dedication, a springboard and inspiration for struggle. Two figures appeared offering help while I showed them the spot where I last saw my comrade, the spot where our guilty gazes met, gazes full of anger at the world we live in, full of faith and appetite for moments of true freedom.
Within a few minutes I found myself in the hospital “Evangelismos”. I was immediately subjected to examinations and operations. A hematoma on my head and countless stitches on the upper part of my body. I remained intubated and completely unconscious for the next three days. Time enough for the “anti-“terrorist” bastards to rush to the hospital demanding a blood sample. On Monday, I regained consciousness and was transferred to the ICU where I remained immobilized for the next three days. The conditions there were decent with medical staff eager to assist in my recovery. However, the room was surrounded by police forces who entered the ICU room during the 5-minute visit from my family.
After two days I was transferred – for no apparent reason – to an isolation ward guarded by several static and as many moving cops in corridors and floors. The door to my room was constantly open leaving zero privacy even during medical examinations. Under the “watchful” gaze of every single cop I had to eat, be examined, and have my body cleaned. Following instructions, the majority of medical and nursing staff maintained a distant attitude, showing zero empathy even in the most basic things, such as conducting an examination without the presence of a male police officer.
The insistence of the 22nd interrogator of the Athens District Court on the conduct of the interrogation procedure despite my physical and mental weakness contributed to the vindictive atmosphere. After asking for a certificate of my sufficient ‘functionality’, which she read at her discretion, she finally gave me the arbitrary extension of 30 hours. She thus confirmed the fact that her priority was my predetermined pre-trial detention and prosecution under 187A.
On Friday 15/11 and just one day after the second operation I underwent, I was transferred to the women’s prison in Korydallos. My life, even under these conditions, was difficult. Under deplorable sanitary conditions and with unhealed wounds on my body and head, the repressive mechanism was playing with my health. Without the necessary medical care, without access to the necessary medication. A condition that all prisoners face as they are perceived as second-class citizens with no right to medical care, with superficial to non-existent medical examinations by prison doctors, with the prohibition of necessary medical procedures, with interruption of medication taken outside the walls, with long waits for months for emergency examinations in outpatient hospitals.
THE GEOMETRY OF THE ANTI-TERRORIST POLICE
Still unconscious, only a few hours after the explosion, the judicial apparatus is following the instructions of the anti-terrorist police and constructing an indictment of an abomination. The processing of (small amounts of) explosives and devices with only comrade Kyriakos and myself present and aware, was dubbed an organization. The apartment, to which we only had access for a few days, was christened a hideout. The legitimate objects found in the apartment where I lived with comrade Kyriakos and which were found on the eight people’s identity cards were dubbed suspicious. With these facts, the anti-terrorist police prosecuted me on the charge of “terrorism”. At this point, however, I will not focus on the legal part, nor will I speak in the context of innocence and guilt. I refuse to accept an indictment based on 187A especially when it instrumentalizes in the most vile way the death of my comrade. And I intend to deconstruct any repressive scenario. But I will defend to the end my choice to be in that apartment, I will defend the necessity of struggle by means not limited to the framework of civil law, I will defend my comrade’s choices, his memory and our relationship.
By carving concentric circles, the anti-terrorist police weaves its own repressive web. It places me and comrade Kyriakos in the centre and with a shaky geometry it places friends, comrades and strangers. In the first cycle it places the arrest of the anarchist comrade Dimitra (who presents herself voluntarily) in a Hollywood-style operation at the Athens airport where – in contrast to the femicide of Kyriaki Griva – the police car in the role of a taxi picks her up from the airport and takes her to the GADA. The only “clue” was the handing over of the keys of the apartment in Arkadia to me and Kyriakos under the pretext of hosting our acquaintances from abroad without knowing the purpose of its use. It is worth noting that on the day of the explosion she was abroad where she was living the last years of her life. She too is being prosecuted under 187A. In the second circle places the companion Dimitris who also presented himself voluntarily in the GADA handing over the pair of keys of the apartment in Arcadia to the owner which had been requested by Dimitra. With the only involvement of the delivery of the keys, without knowing anything more and being at work at the time of the explosion, he is also facing the aforementioned charges. Twenty days later, the anti-terrorist police secures the next cycle with the arrest of the anarchist comrade Nikos Romanos. In his case, the repressive mechanism unleashed its vengeance by using a melted fingerprint on a transportable object – a bag – found in the apartment in Arcadia. Two days later, the last cycle placed A.K. who was also arrested with the grey “clue” of the fingerprint on the same bag. Apparently the “efficiency” of the Greek police laboratories managed to implicate within 20 days two people with whom I have no connection by unearthing a fingerprint while the tons of xylene in the Tempi massacre have not been found for two years now. Both of the last two arrested are facing the same flimsy charge.
THE SKETCHES FROM THE MEDIA
The anti-terrorist line was followed not only by the investigator but also by the all-around media. From the very first moment they engaged in one of the familiar witch-hunts, targeting and vilifying. The snitch counters counted countless hours, reproducing and enriching the ill-conceived scenario of the anti-terrorism department, indulging in the familiar profiling of ‘guilty’. With legal acrobatics they connected cases without evidence, left hints, commented via tele-cops and tele-psychologists on our class origin, character, and psyche. The same snitches who talked about necessary sacrifices in the deadly Tempi murder, who unleash racist torrents at the first opportunity, who cover up rapists, pimps, cop-killers and who bow down to shipowners, industrialists and politicians throughout time.
THE CHARACTER OF THE JUDICIAL MECHANISM
The anti-terrorist police paved the way, the media paved the way and now the judicial mechanism is called upon to cement it. So the investigator is trying to interpret my intentions through cases. With legal alchemy, she is prosecuting me under terror law 187A which automatically makes any “illegal” act I committed a criminal charge. With this choice, the investigator not only skyrockets the penalty list but essentially recognizes the explosion as an organized intentional act which given the circumstances – an explosion within an apartment of a residential apartment building – could not be true. Anarchist ideas and values – in contrast to those of the state and the system of power – have demonstrated over the years a revolutionary ethic and opposition to the logic of collateral damage. The anarchists’ attacks are targeted, prioritising the safety of unrelated people. So it could never be my or my partner’s aim to explode inside the apartment and cause so many people suffering, no matter how much the state apparatus tries to label us with the label of “public danger”. The government had the audacity, apart from the repressive and political instrumentalization of the explosion, to shed crocodile tears for the damage of the building to entrust the repair of the damage to TERNA, a well-known company-partner of his with direct assignments, which is also involved in the scandal with the deficient embankments in Volos. So with all these methods the investigator is making one message clear: any anarchic act that exceeds the laws will be prosecuted with a 187A, anyone who refuses to submit to the law and order imposed by the system will be exemplarily exterminated.
We are thus called upon five people, four of whom have nothing to do with what happened on 31/10 in the Arcadia apartment, to respond to assumptions and fabricated scenarios. The borrowing and return of a pair of keys for hospitality and the missing fingerprints on a bag not only constitute for the investigating judge not only insufficient “evidence” for prosecution but are capable of attributing to all the accused the same degree of involvement in the indictment.
THE GEOMETRIC RULE OF ANY PROSECUTION 187A
Our case, however, is not some kind of exception. There are countless cases where militants are prosecuted under the “anti-terrorism” legislation. Prosecutions that invite the world of struggle to confront a judicial system willing to take on active political work by upgrading the charges using the terror law, the vagueness of which allows the judiciary to interpret it as it sees fit. Designed to control and intimidate its political opponents, to preventive repression, to eliminate the internal enemy and any manifestation of social and political violence, ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation is the main weapon of the state’s repressive policy. By placing armed manifestations of struggle and practices that challenge the laws at its centre, the terror law imposes a special regime both in terms of the judicial aspect and the imprisonment aspect. Stiffening of sentences, abolition of mixed juries, special compositions of judges, special chambers and a legal exception regime are some of its features. However, this attack is not limited to those who consciously choose to expand their activities by armed means, but does not hesitate to target – often with the same intensity – those close to them, seeking their social and political isolation. But the question is this: who will name who is a terrorist? Who will judge who? How can a judicial system that exists to serve and protect the interests of the rulers, the violence they unleash on a daily basis, the exploitation and oppression they impose, be in a position to try the people of the struggle? The subjects who exercise systematic terrorism are none other than the bosses and their political representatives, none other than those whom the legislative complex has been bailing out over time by persecuting those who challenge their domination by promoting a society of equality and solidarity. It imputes to militants the risk of international organisations when it is the international organisations themselves that send entire societies to genocide, it accuses militants of endangering charitable institutions when these institutions have been engaged for centuries in the predatory bleeding of the social base; it accuses militants of endangering populations when it is the States themselves that plunge populations into misery, wars and death. So how can a legislation that washes away those who have been staining their hands with blood over time put on trial those whose actions seek to change the fear stratagem?
THE CONTEXT OF THE PROSECUTION
It thus becomes clear that the essence of our persecution is not legal but political and can only be read within the specific context. A context in which the West, which in recent years has been trying tooth and nail to wash its hands of centuries of colonialism by selling inclusiveness and rightism, is now openly imposing its global strategy and ideological hegemony. Even in a climate of instability where the initiatives, ‘self-reliance’ and the demonstration of – rather hollow – power of the planetary ruler are spreading insecurity among its former European partners, the Western imperialist bloc is trying – in vain – to prove its cultural ‘superiority’ and ‘progressiveness’ and to dominate points of geopolitical interest. The EU is irreversibly stripping itself of its humanitarian mask by returning forcefully to the division of the global chessboard. It is playing a catalytic role in global developments, reinforcing Israel’s offensive against embattled Palestine financially and militarily, supporting Ukraine militarily, guarding its borders from millions of people whom its own policies have pushed into emigration.
Greece is obviously no exception. By turning the country into a huge NATO military base, the Greek state is actively allied with Israel (an alliance that also acquires economic interests). In a climate of instability, only a few years after the memoranda, the state apparatus chooses to focus on military spending, on strengthening its repressive apparatus and its borders, thus further burdening the social base. With privatisations, with inflation and impoverishment, with attacks on trade unionism, collective agreements, the National Health Service and the education system, the government, taking the baton from social democracy and the strategy of carrot and stick, is moving to a neoliberal extreme right that combines – rather sloppily – assimilated right-wingism with the doctrine of Law and Order. It tries to adapt to the necessities of modern, progressive neoliberalism that can only offer – after the bubble of class ascendancy, yuppism and golden boys – the illusion of the integration of identities where all good people fit into capitalism – like a well-planned Benetton advertisement. Long-excluded identities are finally getting a ‘voice’, as long as that voice does not challenge the system that excluded them in the first place. And because the righteousness it displays has short legs – and a small pool of voters – the law and its executive organs are called upon to do the “dirty” work – targeting another pool -. Criminal and penal codes are tightened, special repressive units are created, the already existing police forces are reinforced, water and land borders are equipped, patrols are intensified. For every ‘problem’ there is a new law, for every law there is a cop – perhaps trained, of course, for cases of domestic violence. The state is not only being armed, it is ready for battle.
A battle against “criminality” which, as they proclaim, threatens society as a whole. In every corner of the city there is a “crime” taking place by armed gangs of juveniles, adults, immigrants, natives, poor people, barons, followers, organized, disorganized, and the state as our self-appointed zoo keeper is obsessively proposing harsher sentences and more policing – which in the end is somehow always involved in all the “crimes” it suppresses. So at a time when the state apparatus has nothing to offer but repressive and punitive fury he turns the doctrine of “Law and Order” into a central governmental line.
Especially in such a line the internal enemy is found in any social group that disturbs the climate of “security”. Immigrants, drug addicts, “miserable”, struggling parts. And of course the anarchist movement could not be absent from this list. A movement that over time and proudly gives birth to fighters from within its ranks who act sharply and decisively against the state and power. It is these initiatives that challenge domination, that create dynamic conditions, that propose solutions in the here and now, that deconstruct the state monopoly on violence. Through the diversity of means of struggle, the anarchist movement has proven its place in the course of history. A place where logics of waiting do not fit, where the limits of bourgeois legitimacy seem insignificant in the face of years of state and capital violence, where the heavy veil of responsibility falls first and foremost on us. Where the vision of a world of equality and solidarity begins in the present, where compromise is not an option, where attacking the brutality of the system is a “voluntary decision of deep empathy” and the passage to revolutionary counter-violence a logical consequence and a necessary tool. To this internal enemy the message is clear: whoever is not assimilated is exterminated.
THE COMRADE THE JOINER AND THE BUILDER
Non omnis Moriar
(I will not die whole, something of me will remain alive)
Comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris was also a determined internal enemy. A man crystal clear and rebellious. A comrade who combined theory with practice, who poured himself into the struggle and lived his life to the fullest, taking responsibility for his historical project. Understanding his political identity in all its breadth, he did not compromise with logics of procrastination and inertia, he did not rest, he fought in spite of the times, he dreamed and took up a fighting position. In a route full of crossroads, comrade Kyriakos always chose the right path. Sometimes passable, sometimes rough, sometimes visible and sometimes invisible. Through his path of struggle, his non-negotiable participation in the entire width of the anarchist movement, the comrade is a consciously multidimensional anarchist militant who manages to encapsulate the particular mosaic of forms and manifestations of the struggle that anarchy encompasses. In carrying out his own individual transgression, he adapted his own life to the measures and needs of resistance, choosing a way of life synonymous with struggle. With sensitivity, empathy, self-criticism, militancy and determination he served the anarchist struggle. By participating in open processes, squats, picketing, trade union struggles, feminist and antifascist patrols, actions and conflicts, he wanted to contribute to the sharpness of anarchy. By doggedly and persistently seeking ways to confront everyday state-capitalist violence, he wanted to explore the armed edges of struggle, shifting the conflict to the core of domination and demystifying the violence of the oppressors. With his eyes always fixed on the Revolutionary Cause, he poured himself into the battle with all means at his disposal.
Murdered by the world of power he fought so hard to change, let his subversive memory be an invitation to struggle. Let his memory arm the minds and hands of fighters. Let us commemorate our dead away from the logic of condescension and defeatism, with a continuation and intensification of the struggle, with tenderness and honour.
Let 31/10 be remembered as a day of struggle, a day of responsibility, a moment of resistance. Because the struggle does not want discounts, it does not want barriers and egos. There is no room for laws, conventions and limits. Because the struggle needs determination and vision. It needs faith and dedication, it needs true and giving relationships. Because the struggle needs people who are humble and ready. People who are essentially rebellious and consistent. People like Kyriakos, this wonderful human
who filled the sky with his star
alongside so many comrades
who with their light – even behind bars
manage to light up our guiltiest nights
We are right, we will win
KYRIAKOS XIMITERIS IMMORTAL
STATE AND CAPITAL ARE THE ONLY TERRORISTS
STRENGTH AND SOLIDARITY TO ALL THE IMPRISONED COMRADES
SOLIDARITY IS THE WEAPON OF THE PEOPLE
Marianna M.
Source: athens.indymedia
Greece: ‘THAT WHICH GIVES MEANING TO LIFE GIVES MEANING TO DEATH’ – Marianna M.