NO MILITANT HOSTAGE OF THE STATE!

At the Summit of the 25 E.U. criminals, Chalkidiki and Thessaloniki are infested with thousands of cops guarding Europe’s political bosses resulting in the military occupation of the city.
Before the summit started, State propaganda, reproduced by the media, was intensified with a number of scenarios concerning the forthcoming devastation and slander of anarchists in order to extract social consensus for police repression during the mobilization, and to isolate the most radical part of demonstrators, cultivating a feeling of fear in the local people so that they won’t participate in the demonstrations.
At the same time, they emphasize the large numbers of cops and the police plans for immediately confronting any move that goes beyond the limits of a peaceful march. All the preceding days, police have been making controls in the streets and ID controls in police stations.
During the week of the summit, anarchist collectives and comrades have discussions, open assemblies, film shows, exhibitions of posters and publications inside the university campus, in order to promote the struggle against the globalization of domination. A self-organized kitchen, medical and legal groups also settled inside. Aiming to break down the terrorist atmosphere created by state propaganda, there were initiatives from inside the university to make counter-information actions in the city, with posters and flyers against the bosses’ summit. All these activities created a common ground for encounter and communication between comrades from many Greek cities and abroad who met in the place.
While the 25 leaders prepare to ratify decisions for the consolidation of Fortress-Europe, the development of the “anti”terrorist campaign”, the capitalist looting of territories in the western peripheries and the murderous confrontation of immigrants, in Thessaloniki 4000 anarchists and anti-authoritarians demonstrate in solidarity with the immigrants, passing through poor neighborhoods and the city centre on June 19. This demonstration was very dynamic, with people shouting slogans and distributing flyers.
On the 20th of June, when the summit began, a number of international anarchists and anti-authoritarians did a solidarity demo at the Greek-Macedonian border, where 700 Roma gypsies from Kosovo were being held in miserable conditions in a camp on the border guarded by border cops as the Greek state won’t allow them into the country. Another group of demonstrators attempted to attack the red zone in Chalkidiki. The police blockades stopped them far from the Porto Caras hotel where the summit is taking place and cops charged them with a rain of tear gas, other chemicals and plastic bullets.
Saturday, June 21. Thessaloniki is completely occupied by police. Banks and big stores were boarded up days ago and the city centre looks “sterilized”. Stalinist and reformist parties and organizations delay the beginning of their marches and search for alternative routes so as to avoid any contact with the black bloc. They want to isolate it from the rest of the demo in order to facilitate the work of the police and not risk the pacifist character of the march, thus giving a guarantee of legality to the state.
The black bloc, numbering 2500 persons, begins from the university campus and marches towards the city centre. Wild clashes with the police and attacks against State and capitalist targets break out. The bloc is “bombarded” with tear-gas and other chemicals, plastic bullets are used also, demonstrators get arrested and beaten by riot police (MAT).
The State’s reply to the confrontations taking place in the streets of Thessaloniki unveils the democratic mask of the modern dictatorship. Many demonstrators reach the university, where already a number of people have retreated, and the clashes with the police continue until the campus is surrounded by dozens of riot police squads.
The arrested were taken to ‘concentration camps’ created especially for that purpose in Thermi and Diavata and there they suffered humiliation and torture (beaten and deprived of water) by varieties of forces of repression. As a result of the violence and pressure exercised upon them, many of the arrested were forced to sign fabricated confessions. Finally, 29 of them were indicted on various charges. Riot police attacked a solidarity concentration by anarchists and anti-authoritarians outside the courthouse the next day, injuring some comrades who were taken to hospital. 22 of the 29 people facing charges were released on bail or parole and 7 are imprisoned until trial. The climate of State terrorism Thessaloniki continues for the next days, with ID controls in the streets and beatings, while two more comrades arrested were convicted by the court and got released until the appeal trial.
Cooperating excellently with the police, the Media attempt a complete distortion of the events in Thessaloniki, aiming to de-politicize them and the people who took action and to criminalize social resistance, while suppressing the reason for the confrontation: the provocative summit of the 25 European bosses.
The fascist nature of the state, in a period where the Greek version of the “antiterrorist crusade” has unfolded, was overtly revealed in Thessaloniki: repression, torture, arrests, imprisonment. But the clashes with the paid State-murderers and attacks on banks and multinationals were actions of resistance to the plans of the bosses of Europe, to the world of order, submission and death. It was a moment of the militant resistance expressed in Seattle, Prague, Genoa, Barcelona, Evian. Against all illusions for Capitalism’s humanization, against any conciliation with the bosses or any mediation, the actions in Thessaloniki were, as much as possible, an answer to the State watchdogs, to local and international bosses and a message of solidarity for all people fighting anywhere in the world. Solidarity with those who are now hostages of the State is part of that same struggle against the State and the borders, the struggle for a free society.
Anarchist Synpraxis - Anarchists in Solidarity
July 2003

FREE THE 7 IMPRISONED FIGHTERS

SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE PERSECUTED
for the actions of resistance
against the E.U. summit
in Thessaloniki