Τρίτη, 5 Φεβρουαρίου 2013
The abuse suffered
by four young anarchists, arrested for a bank robbery, at the hands of
the police proves it’s time to call Greece’s coalition government what
it is – a far-right authoritarian group.
Earlier this year,
the Greek Minister of Citizen Protection declared he would take up
initiatives to restore law and order in the capital of the
crisis-stricken country. Nikos Dendias spearheads an attempt by the
coalition government produced in last June’s elections to show that
while the public coffers are empty and people are seeing their quality
of life reduced to shambles, the state is present and it can still
provide them with a sense of safety at the very least. Xenios Zeus was
one of those initiatives, a crackdown on “illegal immigrants”, its
failure (from 73,100 people arrested, only 4,352 were charged with
anything) a big problem for the government. The coalition is also now
dealing with accusations of tolerating an increasingly authoritarian
police force that is torturing people and colluding with the neo-Nazi
Golden Dawn, alongside the Lagarde list scandal taking its toll and two
very difficult parliamentary votes looming. The first is a new tax code
that will find many Greeks unable to pay their tax bills in 2013 and the
second an investigation into the names included in the Lagarde list
(the list of around 2,000 potential Greek tax evaders with undeclared
Swiss HSBC accounts passed to the Greek government by Christine Lagarde
in 2010), with at least two senior members of the government involved in
an attempt to bury the files before they were published three months
ago.
Since the crackdown
on immigration didn’t work as the ministry had expected, their next
move was to attack occupations and spaces associated with the anarchist
movement. This should not come as a surprise since it is exactly these
political spaces that have moved to organise in many neighborhoods and
stand against the neo-Nazi gangs now roaming the streets of Athens,
often with very high cost. But the manner in which this agenda is
pursued has revealed something more: this government now sees the
anarchists, as well as SYRIZA, as its opponent on the political stage.
By cracking down on squats like that of Villa Amalias a month ago, the
government is doing a favour for the Golden Dawn thugs who attack people
openly with no repercussions – it was squats like that which
traditionally stood as an obstacle to the ever expanding activities of
the neo-Nazis and which as many locals have stated, helped keep the area
around it safe. The spin is to baptise anarchists as the tools of
SYRIZA, terrorists who enjoy the support they get from the opposition
party. They have gone on the record with this many times.
But it’s the arrest
of four young anarchists (aged between 20 and 25) this weekend after a
failed bank robbery that brings back the political nature of Dendias’
agenda and of the police’s fascist tendencies. Two of them already
wanted as suspects in the “conspiracy of the cells of fire” terrorist
group, they were arrested in Kozani after trying to flee the bank while
chased by the police. Witnesses of the incident claim that when they
realised they couldn't get away, they exited the car and surrendered
peacefully. However, the pictures published by the police show them to
have been extensively abused, their faces swollen to the point where the
mother of one didn’t recognise her son when she was allowed to see him.
His own testimony leaves no doubt as to what transpired. He claims they
were fitted with hoods, tied up and beaten for hours after their
arrest. That the police tried to crudely photoshop the bruises “to make
them recognisable” as Dendias himself stated points to the extent of the
abuse. The use of torture is straightforwardly forbidden by the Greek
constitution and violates human rights, while reminding the Greeks of
the Colonel’s Junta and their systematic torture of dissidents.
A video showing the
four being transferred leaves no doubt as to their political alignment.
In front of the cameras, they shouted defiance at a country that has
pushed its youth to extremes with the apathy that now runs deep in our
lives, making us afraid of losing the few things we have left. “We only
lost a battle, not the war” and “Long live anarchy”, they shouted, not
to the cameras, but to the faces of those who stand by idle. Dendias
didn’t even bother to launch an inquiry into the conditions under which
they were tortured despite stating that “there is no desire to cover up
anyone or anything”. The government’s spokesman and advisor to the prime
minister, Failos Kranidiotis, in an exchange we had on Twitter sided
with the police and spoke of injuries that were caused during the
arrest, despite the absence of evidence backing his claims. How could
anyone disarm a “terrorist armed like a lobster” with his punches? That
is his claim and that of Dendias. He said “the monopoly of violence
belongs to the state” and spends more time being sarcastic towards
journalists who called him out on his statements than actually providing
a factual basis for them. The New Democracy government is trying to
condemn an entire ideology and along with it, all righteous outrage.
But this is the
sort of policy line the government currently walks. Thin on arguments,
strong on propaganda, full of venom and revenge against all those who
oppose their totalitarian plans in any way. That the four kids were
arrested for armed robbery does not justify torture, because that only
brings us one step away from legitimising the torturing of the fifteen
anti-fascists last October. All this wears only one colour, and it’s the
colour of hate against those who will not stand for members of
far-right groups and think-tanks (as Dendias and Kranidiotis were in the
Nineties) to crack down on their lives and their dreams.
One of the four
arrestees was a friend and present in the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos
by a police officer in 2008, which sparked two weeks of unrest in the
Greek capital. That we already see a revisionist line in operation in
the mainstream media that suggests Grigoropoulos would become a
terrorist himself is indicative of the intentions of this government. It
is our duty and Europe’s to expose and stop co-operating with those who
won’t hesitate to ignore human rights, refuse to reform a clearly
fascist police force, and who don’t see racist motives when supporters
of the Golden Dawn murder immigrants in the street. It is time to ask
for the resignation of Nikos Dendias and any like-minded cabinet
members. If we don’t want to see more kids boiling with anger, taking up
arms against a system intent on turning them into drones working for
scraps, torturing them when they refuse to conform, then it is time to
speak out and call this government what it is: a far-right authoritarian
group, dressed in a thin-veil of pro-European liberalism. Refusing to
recognise them as anything but that is now an obligation for each and
every one of us.
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