On July 8th, 2019, the New Democracy government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis assumed power in Greece, after campaigning on a promise to ‘clean up’ the central Athens neighbourhood of Exarcheia, and ‘take it back’ from the anarchists. Since then, the Greek state has launched a renewed attack against the anarchist and self-organized migrant movements, targeting squats and promising future raids. Against this threat, Greek anarchists have responded with characteristic resolve and determination.
Featuring interview with Pangiotis Varthalis of the squat Lelas Karagiannis 37
Translated by Boubouras (Act For Freedom Now) [Read More]
Athens: Hands off Exarcheia. New Democracy’s War on Anarchists
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]
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: 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]
Greece: New Democracy, the new face of state violence
A view from Exarchia as the showdown looms. Interview with an anarchist in Athens about current situation.
he neighborhood of Exarchia in Athens, Greece is known worldwide as an epicenter of combative anarchism. For many years, anarchists and refugees have worked together to occupy buildings, establishing housing collectives and social centers that provide a variety of services outside the control of the state. Starting in August, the new government has carried out a series of massive raids targeting immigrants, anarchists, and other rebels, while revoking the autonomy previously granted to universities and introducing a wide range of new repressive measures and technologies. Now the government has given all the remaining occupations in Greece two weeks to conclude lease agreements with the owners or face the same fate. This deadline coincides with December 6, a day that anarchists have observed for ten years as the anniversary of the police murder of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos and the uprising that followed it.
The new governing party of Greece, aptly named New Democracy, is described by some media outlets as “center right,” in contrast to outright fascist parties like Golden Dawn; in fact, New Democracy has adopted much of its repressive and xenophobic agenda directly from the fascist right, while pursuing a neoliberal agenda in service of international finance capital. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mytsotakis, a hereditary representative of the capitalist class whose father was also prime minister, exemplifies the political caste that seeks to destroy the last safeguards protecting workers and poor people while scapegoating those who resist. [Read More]
Athens (Greece): Notara26 issues ultimatum to Greek government
Notara 26 issues ultimatum to Greek government, answering back to the government’s ultimatum to evacuate all squats within 15 days.
From occupied Exarchia we give a 15 days deadline to resign tho all those who dream of the revival of the dictatorship along with their propaganda mechanisms, through beatings, virtual rapes, stripping of women, denial of legal rights, intimidations and surveillance of comrades, workers and students. These are only some of the practices of the increasing repression and onslaught towards the people’s struggle. Their excellence and normality consists of closed borders, closed camps, closed minds and then the smokestacks will follow.
We have been given a 15day deadline. 15 days…
Notara 26 has existed for 1500 days. It has sheltered more than 9000 people from 15 different countries of origin. Hundreds of solidarians from all over the planet have participated in the project. Thousands of different stories. One constant common struggle for solidarity, selforganisation of our lives, acceptance of difference and uniqueness. One struggle in our squat, our neighborhood, the street.
Ideas cannot be supressed. Notara 26 is here and will stay alive !
You cannot evict a movement. Not now, not ever ! [Read More]
Athens (Greece): The day after November 17, a taste of blood in the mouth
A tough night for those who like Exarcheia and revolutionnary struggle in Greece.
Many of our comrades spent the night between four walls after systematic beatings. Others were injured, three of whom were transferred to hospital by ambulance. Others had to hide for a good part of the evening, or all night, not to be picked up and beaten by police who seemed very excited, as if in a full war video game throughout the neighborhood.
In total, more than 5,000 policemen, a helicopter and drones permanently transmitting the position of insurgents resisting from rooftops. Anti-terrorist policemen, riot police, plainclothes policemen, mobile police, tanks with water cannons … The armada in uniform that converged on Exarcheia, during two successive demonstrations (1), was much too numerous and over-equipped for the solidarity of the defenders of the rebellious neighbourhood.
Exarcheia did not hold out long. Already partially occupied for weeks, it quickly tipped under the control of the soldiery, allegedly guardian of the peace. Few places within it are still safe. This morning, while the sun has not returned yet, Notara 26 is still standing, as well as the K * Vox and the Exarcheia self-managed health structure (ADYE). But these places and some others are but the last bastions in an exceptional neighborhood minutely devastated by the Greek state over the last weeks, in order to remove one of the sources of inspiration for social movements the world over. [Read More]
Athens (Greece): About the eviction of Bouboulinas 42
On May 2019, Bouboulinas 42 squat began as an answer to the operation of the state (governed by SYRIZA) to evict a series of squats, mostly migrant housing ones and throw hundreds of migrants to the streets or transfer them to concentration camps. It was an answer that came from occupied Gini, which said “we, locals, migrants, solidarians, squatters, realize that our answer must be given in common. That is why we decided to occupy the building of Gini in Polytechnio, as an immediate response to the evictions and to organize the resistance against the repression, the defense of the squats, the neighborhood and our lives.”
From then until its eviction, Bouboulinas squat became the house for hundreds of people that are constantly prosecuted, incarcerated and tortured by the Greek state. The same people who are stripped off of any right to exist, are stigmatized as criminals and scum by the media and a national body hungry for human meat and a cheap labor force. Bouboulinas 42 squat was and is the realization of the desire for a better life and the struggle for freedom and equality beyond nations, religions and gender differences. [Read More]
Greece: Why is the state attacking Exarcheia?
The Greek state’s long anticipated attack on the rebellious district of Exarcheia began with the eviction of four occupied spaces and a provocative and dangerous attack on the social centre K*Vox. Since the return to power of right-wing New Democracy in the July elections the move has been expected and a difficult struggle lies ahead for Exarcheia and the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space in Greece. The short-term fixations of New Democracy and the right explain the police operation but the attack on Exarcheia is part of a deeper desire by the state draw a line under its decade long crisis and declare total victory.
New Democracy have their own reasons for the attack on Exarcheia.1 While in opposition they raised the right’s traditional banner of ‘law and order’ and helped by a cooperative media painted a picture of a society spiralling into lawlessness. None of this was true, after all SYRIZA evicted occupied centres and refugee solidarity projects as well as sending the riot police into the neighbourhood and against demonstrations countless times while one of SYRIZA’s final campaign rallies for the July elections was attended by prominent police officials. Still the new Prime Minister Mitsotakis repeatedly threatened to ‘end’ Exarcheia while in opposition. That the refugee and migrant occupations were targeted first along with other announcements that the government will speed up deportations demonstrates that an anti-immigration agenda will be a priority. This reaffirms New Democracy’s connections with the far-right despite the liberal ‘centrist’ presentation of Mitsotakis. [Read More]
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