DEMOCRACY DID NOT WIN

5th – last – announcement from the occupation of Athens University Administration, November 27.

On the 26th November, the seven Thessaloniki prisoners were released after five months in prison.
The State didn’t succeed either in the physical extermination of the hunger strikers, in prolonging their confinement, in breaking the strength of solidarity and resistance, or exacting consensus for their continued imprisonment which would have meant a death sentence.
The repressive methods used upon the seven (torture at time of arrest and in hospital, 5 months’ prison without trial, were one more operation for the consolidation of State which is escalating in sight of the Olympic games’ capitalist fiest court-martial style, isolation ‘white’ cells, persecution, extradition agreements, ‘zero tolerance’, surveillance and social control.
We have good reason to celebrate the liberation of our comrades since it was their own determination and the multiple solidarity of thousands of people in many different countries that managed to plans of the State mechanisms. They proved that solidarity and freedom are capable of sabotaging the progress of the modernised storm and of obstructing its rooting in society.
Nothing was gratuitous. A battle was won, and has become experience for keeping up the struggle on every front of the State and against aggression. And now we have every reason to continue this struggle with more strength than before.
The occupation of Athens university administration building was the growing resistance. It started on November 20 to function as convergence, counter-information, self-organisation and action for the seven prisoners and the hunger strike of five of them. Occupation that was initiated by an assembly of anarchistsand anti-authoritarians became a point of reference for hundreds of people who supported and participated in it. From the first day there were assemblies, film shows, solidarity concentrations, street blocks with thousands of fliers distributed. All day (and night) there was music from loudspeakers and comrades read the communiques occupation, letters from the prisoners and solidarity statements, there were initiatives such as a self-organised kitchen and pirate radios.
In the course of the following days a wave of solidarity occupations took place in the University Annex ‘Parartima’ in Patras, the Administration of the Polytechnic School, the university department of Communication and the Architecture School in Athens, the Theological School in Thessaloniki, the University Administration of Chania Polytechnic and the Administration of the Polytechnic in Xanthi.
After yesterday’s demonstration with motorbikes and cars to Nikai hospital and Koridallos prison to salute the hunger-strikers, and after and at the occupation where we welcomed comrades Michalis T. and who had just been released from Avlona juvenile prison, today we the end of the occupation.
We continue the struggle for a free world, globalised from below prisons and borders, without States and bosses, oppression and exploitation.
RESISTANCE – SELF-ORGANISATION-SOLIDARITY
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

The Occupation of Athens University
Administration

Saloniki 2003