From Act for Freedom Now!
The anarchist comrade and prisoner of the Greek prisons, Giannis Michailidis, is on a new hunger strike since 12.05.2023. Exactly one year ago, on May 25, 2022, he had announced the start of another hunger strike demanding his release, which after 68 days of hard strike, last July, he decided to end, with his health condition reaching a critical point, awaiting the fulfilment of the commitments of senior judges for meeting his demands. A year later, the mockery of the comrade by the scum of the judiciary is ongoing, with his requests for leave or release being rejected one after another and a whole backdrop of interventions by senior judges and other high ranking officials of the Greek state to prolong Giannis’ captivity. Thus, with his health still burdened by the previous strike, the comrade is currently back in the position of using his own body as a barricade in the face of state machinations.
The comrade’s strike last year showed with certainty that there was a central strategy on the part of the state mechanisms to conceal the struggle for his release and to force the comrade into physical and psychological extermination; a dead end in order to lead to a retreat and not to release the comrade. The solidarity actions, the strike itself, were well concealed for most of its duration, thus seeking to have any state response taking place in a shadowy setting of silencing, behind-the-scenes mockery of the comrade and his legal defence by the judicial mafia, which stretched the timeframe for holding any relevant meetings to the limit.
Similarly, the also recent experience of the hunger strike of the captured member of the revolutionary organization 17th of November, Dimitris Koufontinas, which preceded that of Giannis (8 January-14 March 2021), highlighted on the one hand the state’s callousness towards a hunger-striking combative prisoner, and on the other hand showed how the escalation of repression against the solidarity movement, brought the opposite results and that zero-tolerance strategy brought more people on the streets, more stubbornness, more attacks on state and capitalist targets, social exposure and, ultimately, it was catalytic in creating explosive situations where the state’s omnipotence was shattered, as in the Nea Smirni uprising. And this is something that the state murderers have probably “read”. That is why the strategy in the immediate aftermath of last year’s strike of Giannis Michailidis was more akin to a posture of marginalization, targeted non-escalation and silencing, with callousness remaining a common feature. In order to prevent Giannis’ struggle from becoming a social event.
By the time this text is written, the current strike of Giannis Michailidis, already in its 3rd week, is being completely silenced.
Transferred just west of Greece and in another similar experience of struggle, in Italy, from October ’22 to April ’23, for 6 months, the imprisoned anarchist Alfredo Cospito conducted a very long and difficult hunger strike, being together with comrades outside the prisons in a very hard struggle demanding the transfer of the comrade out of the torturous 41bis solitary confinement regime. The common characteristic of this struggle for the first 1.5 months of its conduct, with those mentioned from the Greek prisons, is its total silencing by the propaganda mechanisms of the Italian state and the media.
However, there was a key moment that changed the social correlations and brought the comrade’s struggle to the forefront, making it a key point of public debate in Italy for months, resulting in the exposure of the attitude of the Italian state and, more generally, of the conditions under which the prisoners of the 41bis regime are tortured on a daily basis, making the extermination of the comrade under shadowy conditions impossible and the whole management of the case more “sensitive”. The key moment, therefore, was three very close attacks that took place outside Italy, targeting the Italian diplomacy. One was in Athens, where there was an arson attack on a vehicle belonging to the diplomat, an employee of the Italian embassy in Athens, Susana Slain, which was in the garage of her house. At the same time, in Berlin, an attack was carried out on the Italian diplomatic car belonging to the embassy official Luigi Estero, while that evening the façade of the Italian consulate in Barcelona was smashed and slogans were written in solidarity with Alfredo… From that point onwards, the comrade’s struggle managed to invade the news, shedding light on the multiform solidarity actions of anarchist comrades, and thus constituting a now open blackmail on the façade of Italian democracy. To such an extent that in an Italian television programme, a representative of the ROS (the “anti-terrorist” police department) openly states that their attempt to isolate comrade Alfredo and his ideas has had the opposite effect, since the diffusion of his speech and anarchist actions has escalated rapidly, causing great social polarisation and threatening social peace.
With these in mind, to set it shortly, this call is mainly addressed towards comrades who don’t live in Greece. It’s a call for immediate escallation of the solidarity actions, by mainly targeting directly the Greek State and branches of the Greek capital. It is a call to the comrades to act by any means, contributing in this way to the destruction of the silencing strategy and of the exhaustion of the comrade. Direct gatherings and attacks at embassies, at the houses of diplomats and consuls, at companies of Greek interests, interventions at the airport desks of Greek airlines or during events taking place abroad, related to Greek institutions, as well as whichever other action each one can imagine in this direction, could contribute to the destruction of the state’s strategy, by causing internal issues to it’s mechanisms and disrupt the international image of the Greek government. Let’s not wait for the worsening of the health condition of the comrade, let’s act directly and spread the threat of the anarchist solidarity.
The comrade Giannis Michailidis is struggling in order to break the captivity regime which is imposed on him. He is not begging, he is instead attacking the image of democracy with the means he has under the condition of incarceration. He is struggling to regain his freedom. We want our comrade alive, healthy and free. We hope that this call can be a contribution to the formation of these conditions, so that we, out there in the streets, can take over all this effort of this struggle, without letting anymore the state murderers driving our comrade to the direction they want.
SOLIDARITY MEANS ATTACK
DIRECT RELEASE OF THE ANARCHIST COMRADE
HUNGER STRIKER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS
Add new comment