Athens: Matrozou 45 and Panaitoliou 21 resquatted et again evicted

We are tearing down walls for freedom

The recapture of Matrozou 45 and Panaitoliou 21 is an act against the fear imposed by state repression. It is a signal of resistance and a rallying cry for escalation. Let us not leave our neighborhoods and nature in the heat of development plunder. Do not accept the displacement of our lives. Keep the parks, squares and hills free. Let us oppose the mercenaries of the state. Let us intensify the struggles against the exploitation of labor. Let us completely take up the struggle for survival and freedom. The struggle is neither legal nor illegal.

Together with dozens of anarchist / antisocial companions, we are taking back the community’s homes in order to meet housing needs that would not have been possible without this occupation, to re-open solidarity structures and re-establish free-living relationships without hierarchy, reopen homes in the neighborhood and in the movement with events, celebrations and organization. [Read More]

Greece: Repression, eviction and dispossession in New Democracy’s Greece

The latest attack on the squatting movement in Greece is the preamble for a massive operation of housing dispossession by the right-wing government.

Dimitris Indares was still in his pyjamas when the police knocked on his door in the neighborhood of Koukaki, in Athens, in the early hours of Wednesday, December 18. Not long after that, he was lying down on the floor of his home’s terrace, with a Special Operations policeman’s boot on his head. He and his two adult sons were beaten up, handcuffed, blindfolded and taken under police custody. What was Indares’ crime? He had refused to let the police go through his home without a warrant in its operation to evict the squat that was right next door. [Read More]

Athens: Counterculture events on Exarchia square

On Sunday, December 22nd, we organised a day-long event at Exarchia square, in answer to the pre-announced municipal event–front for oppression that was to take place at noon of the same day.

The municipality of Athens under Bakoyannis plays a central part in selling out our neighbourhoods and answers every attempt of resistance with more and more repression. In Exarchia, it tries to camouflage the repression and gentrification of the neighbourhood that translates into shops, the metro, raises in rent, a sterilised and controlled environment, with superficial events and actions accompanied by the media twisting the story and armed goons. It wants to impose its superiority by cleaning the square, where it removes our posters and our speech from the neighbourhood and as a symbol of its domination it pins down a tree, like in a conquered space. We view this event as one more aggressive act of political and cultural distortion of the ground of Exarchia, one that we had to answer by cancelling it through our active presence throughout the day. We couldn’t allow this fiesta of hypocrisy, where there wouldn’t have been space for us, anyway. [Read More]

Greece: Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear

Repression and resistance in Greece, december 2019.

Continuing our coverage of the struggle in Greece between the new repressive New Democracy government and the longstanding anarchist movement, we present the following report, drawing on eyewitness accounts from street mobilizations and the defense of several squats. The Greek state continues to throw its full weight behind an all-out assault on refugees, anarchists, and student movements, encouraging gratuitous police brutality against both human beings and their animal companions while seeking to exonerate right-wing murderers including members of the Neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn who faced conspiracy charges in the murder of Pavlos Fyssas and the police officer who murdered the 15-year-old anarchist Alexis Grigoropoulos 11 years ago this month.

We hope to inspire international solidarity actions with the movement in Greece and to equip readers for action and analysis in other contexts in an era in which state violence and grassroots resistance are escalating worldwide. The struggle continues. [Read More]

Athens: Refugees return back the lost European Values for Christmas!

In the afternoon of the 24th of December, the community of the refugee housing squat Notara26 moved along towards the Christmas tree in Syntagma square in order to bring back the European values to the European people. 18 big parcels according to the 18 articles of the European convention of human rights were brought to the Christmas tree to remind what is written on paper. In contrast there were pictures how this ‘rights’ function in reality. In their statement the European states claim to honor these values, but the people are wondering where to find them.

“We are not three and we are not kings and we didn’t come to iconize a new born person. We are thousands, we refuse kingdoms and idols, and we are craving for a society with respect and equal rights for everybody. Even if we are coming from same regions than the mythological three guys 2019 years ago, the reasons for our journeys are totally different. We escaped wars, authoritarian dictatorships, torture, ethnic or gender-based discrimination and famine. We came here in order to find worth living conditions. [Read More]

Athens: Banner at Patissia, ‘Hands off of squats & migrants!’

From Marousi to Koukaki and from Exarchia to Kipseli and Patissia, the seeds of another world have already been sowed. A world against misery, exploitation, wage slavery, property and selfishness. And these seeds grow with blood instead of water, and with violence instead of sun. The more blood is spilled, the more fed are the seeds, and the more violence is used against the bodies of the damned ones, the more grown are the flowers of resistance. Every closed squat, every manhunt and beating against our bodies, makes us stubborn and more powerful.

On 23/12 we hung a banner at the basketball courts of Fitefti, in Kato Patissia neighbourhood, writing: “Hands off of squats & migrants – Antiauthoritarian, solidarian & self organized communities in every neighbourhood”. [Read More]

Athens: Villa Kouvelou resquatted

Today 22 december, Villa Kouvelou was resquatted with a lot of people. We left organized, we decided to make a demonstration in the streets of Marousi and at the shopping center in Marousi. After the demonstration, cops from OPKE and riot cops from MAT attacked without reason. They threw tear gas on the people doing their shopping at the shopping center. Most of the people left all together but there is no image nor picture of this moment.
More news will follow with a full translation of this communique.

The fire we started will never stop
Villa Kouvelou remains squatted
[Read More]

Athens : No Pasaran anarchists react to the evictions

The greek government has gone into war with anarchists and anti authoritarians, following the end of a 15 days ultimatum issued by the Ministry of Public Order, towards the dozens of political and refugee squats across Greece (some of them more than 30 years old), threatening them with violent evictions by the riot police and police special forces, if they did not evacuate within the deadline. The deadline ended on Thursday night on the 5th of December 2019, a political decision by the greek State aiming to agitate and create an “explosive atmosphere”.

Following the first wave of attacks and evictions, mainly against squats housing refugees during the fall, the second wave of attacks has just begun, this time against political squats and social centers. Coinciding with the arrest of antifascists and the proposed judicial acquittal of neonazi leaders in the Golden Dawn trial, the right wing greek government and its self proclaimed socialist Minister of Public Order have proceeded with the eviction of Villa Kouvelou in Marousi on tuesday 17 december, while another three squats (Matrozou 45, Panaitoliou 21 and Arvali 3) have been evicted today 18 december in Koukaki, following a massive police operation, that terrorized a whole neighborhood with police brutality, attacking people living in adjoining houses that were no squats. Brutal images of greek SWAT policemen having their boots on people’s heads on the ground and a mother bound on the floor of her terrace with a hood on her head, reminiscing of Abu Ghraib torture images, have been circulated in the media. [Read More]

Athens: Statement by the Koukaki Squat Community

We may have fallen, but we’ve fallen on their heads.

Statement of the squatters and comrades who defended Matrozou 45 and escaped from the MAT, OPKE, and EKAM police forces of repression. While facing a police raid, we were informed to the fate of the other houses in our squatted community.

We immediately barricaded the house and entered conflict with the forces of repression. Furniture, electrical appliances, boilers, paint, fire extinguishers, everything and anything in the house fell upon their heads. They responded by shooting and injuring us with plastic bullets as well as with stun grenades thrown directly into our home. We shouted “Here we live, here is our home, here we will die!”—”Fuck your development and Airbnb.” [Read More]

Athens: Solidarity call with the Koukaki Squat Community

The state’s spectacular repression made another show this morning with the eviction of three living spaces, squats of housing and struggle, those of the Koukaki Squat Community (*). Armed to the teeth state guards, using all their gadgets, broke down doors, shot tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets into the houses and the bodies of those living inside, in order to “return the buildings to their rightful owners”, in other words, to the desert of private ownership and capitalism. During the operation, they even tortured and arrested neighbours who dared question their all mightiness.

The message carried out by the bastard torturers and murderers, those bodyguards of fat cats and their politicians, was one of sweeping state terrorism against the social body.

The Koukaki squat community 3 years ago, opened up a space that kept growing, for the needs of the struggle for social self organization, against capitalist and state oppression. The community has defended its ground combatively whenever this was called for. This morning’s battle returned a bit of the violence to its institutional beares, proving in deed that the only lost battle is the one not fought for. [Read More]

Athens: Evictions in Marousi and Koukaki

Today in the early morning hours, Villa Kouvelos in Marousi (northern part of Athens) was evicted by a strong state anti-terrorist police force.
The empty and dilapidated building was squatted by anarchists in April 2010 and quickly developed into a nationally known social center, providing the district with concerts, lectures, discussions, political events, etc.
The villa has also been the target of attacks by right-wing groups such as the Golden Dawn. In the north of Athens, Villa Kouvelos was an institution and its eviction is a catastrophe for the neighborhood in cultural terms alone, leaving behind – similar to the eviction of the Villa Zografou – a socio-cultural desert. As far as is known, there is also no special reason for the eviction, there are no plans to use the building or sell the land. The eviction is therefore a purely populist act. [Read More]

Athens: From Theory to Practice – An Initial Response – 15 buildings liberated

The entire state machinery of the Mitsotakis government, spearheaded by its repressive forces, is opposed to anything that challenges its impositions of normality. It uses the doctrine of “law and order” and the rhetoric of zero tolerance as a veil to cover and distract from its endless inconsistencies. It feeds its constituents the rhetoric of nation, security, legitimacy, and development while adopting models of polarization and paradigms of bygone eras. The purpose is clear: the attempted eradication of the structures of struggle and the destruction of the revolutionary movement, which stands against its development plans and any model of so-called urban gentrification. At the same time, there is a systematic effort to massively displace populations that do not “fit” into the increasing needs of capital and the bosses of the metropolis. The effort to create an ideal consumer environment of both a passive and easily controlled population that serves the private interest is high on their agenda. On the one hand, airbnb, entertainment hotspots, shop windows, and hotels aim at the spectacle-ization of neighborhoods and the profitability of the few, while, on the other hand, cameras, drones, enforcement of all kinds, and the ceding of control of every [public and private] space to the police state for consumer control, surveillance, and commerce.
[Read More]