Solidarity text for the comrade Errol

via Athens Indymedia

IMMEDIATE DEPORTATION TO COPS, JUDGES, POLITICIANS

6th of December 2020

In the context of the gatherings called for the day of remembrance and struggle 12 years after the insurrection of ’08 for the state murder of anarchist Alexis Grigoropoulos by the armed hand of cops Korkoneas and Saraliotis, a new regime of state management with clear totalitarian characteristics is set in motion. Greece enforces its total ban on gatherings and demonstrations, voted a few months before under the pretext of the management of the Covid19 pandemic. The neighbourhood of Exarchia is under siege by the uniformed forces of the state, which have their aim set on eradicating any possibility for gatherings and demonstrations to happen. The governmental political decision is to completely forbid access to the spot of the memorial of murdered Alexis for collectives, political groups and assemblies that have called for gatherings as well as for any individual who wants to approach. Meanwhile, since the dawn of this very day the neighbourhood is turned into a military zone as a result of the ban and its enforcement.Police in every corner Static police forces (undercovers, special guards and riot cops) check with extreme scrutiny the personal information of whoever finds themselves in the area. At the same time, mobile units of DELTA (cops on bikes) make frequent raids trying to create a scene and aiming to apprehend individuals that are not obeying the ban by refusing to leave the greater area of Exarchia. A ban that is imposed by the regime and which suppresses the political choice of each individual to protest and to exist in a public space as well as the meaning of social use of the public space itself. In one of these raids, the anarchist comrade Errol (of French nationality) is arrested and taken to GADA (Athens’ main police headquarters). After many hours of detention and whilst all other detainees have been let go with a fine - in compliance with the new state corporation-esque profit-seeking strategy put in place “due to” covid19 - he is told about his impending deportation decision and transferred to the hellhole of Petrou Ralli (Athens’ central detention centre).The prisons of Petrou Ralli and AmygdalezaThe impunity and vindictiveness of the state and its mechanisms lead anew and within minimum time to the transfer of the comrade to the detention centre of Amygdaleza, only one day after a solidarity intervention and his strong protest about the overall conditions of detention. From the hellhole of Petrou Ralli to the one of Amygdaleza, the state continues to build and administer human storages that daily deprive people of even the most self-explanatory needs such as access to food, medical treatment, information and contact with the outside world. In these brutal purgatories with long history of physical and psychological abuses towards the detainees, the inhuman conditions people find themselves in have long been the starting point of struggles and demands inside and outside the prison walls. The detainees have many times demanded their dignity through collective struggles, insurrections, and hunger strikes. This should remind us that they, the oppressed, will always find ways to fight and answer the totalitarian degradation of their political and social status.

The deportation decision of comrade Errol is outrightly political…and is to be included as part of a consistent vindictive tactic that the governmental mechanisms of each regime impose against anarchist fighters and all those who struggle against any kind of repression. Each political enemy of power will have to be distanced and imprisoned as to incapacitate and disarm them. In fluid continuation of the state repression, the detention of the comrade in Petrou Ralli is immediately turned political and executed under special terms. Predictably, he ends up being detained in isolation in order to separate him from the rest of the detainees and brutally transferred to another place, the camp of Amydgaleza, where he remains in isolation. This way, the state aspires to prevent him from stirring any political activity inside and to force as much his political and physical isolation as his psychological extermination.A couple of days later the direction of Petrou Ralli officially publishes the deportation decision of the comrade to a 7 year ban to enter the territory with a subsidiary deportation decision from the National Security. The case is set up with the argument that he poses a danger for the public order and national security.It is clear that this deportation is based on the political identity of the comrade as anarchist, his fighting stance and active participation in social and political struggles. and political struggles. This stands as yet another decision-conviction that is added to the long list of criminalisation of fighters; yet another attempt to exercise methods of political repression that the New Democracy government is enforcing as part of their “law-order-security” dogma - a doctrine that seeks to decimate and eradicate every fighting political subject. Through these methods, they look to convict whoever chooses to collectivise and participate actively in the resistances that rise up against state and capital, lighting the flame of insurrection and opening up the way to a free society.The arrest of Errol signifies a new repressive upgrade from the state by demonstrating that prosecution for misdemeanours can lead to the imprisonment and the deportation of political subjects. The state of paralysis and decimation of the social resistances must break and the struggle for the cessation of the prosecution of our comrade is another step towards this direction.

NO COMRADE ALONE IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE

FREEDOM TO ANARCHIST ERROL

FIRE TO PRISONS AND ALL CELL-CAGES

Solidarity assembly for anarchist comrade Errol

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