Sahshad Lukman: Killed by fascists on the 17th of January at Petralona
Babacar Ndiaye: Killed by municipal police on the 1st of February at Thissio

Police and fascists attacks do not terrify us

Unity, Solidarity, Liberty

Common struggle of migrants and locals

We stand here against police and racist brutality

Microfoniki : Tuesday 12th of February, 17.00, Koliatsou Square
Demonstration : Thursday 14th of February, 17.00, Thissio train station

When cops and fascists murder…

On 1/2/2013 at around 9pm we are notified about a dead immigrant found on the railway tracks at Thiseio. The media call it a suicide. From the speakers of the stations is announced: “the train will end it’s course at Omonoia station due to an obstacle on the tracks”. Immigrants and people in solidarity begin to concentrate at the station. Little time after, the Mat arrive, attack the concentrated using tear gas and disperse them. They follow up with  chasing and detaining people in the  wider area, some of which were turned into arrests, whose names or number we still haven’t found out. According to an eyewitness who was with Babakar Ndiaye, they were selling their merchandise in Thiseio when they saw the municipal police approaching them. One of them was chased towards Monastiraki and Babakar chased by 2 policemen towards the station. While trying to escape he was cornered on a bridge above the rail tracks and during a conflict where the cops where trying to steal his merchandise he fell from 6-7 metres high, on the rails. The immigrant who was with him, was caught a bit later and was robbed of his merchandise. Then, when he returned to Thisio, looking for Babakar, he found him dead on the rails, the cops nowhere to be seen and his merchandise missing. After that, he went to the police station to testify, claiming that he remembers the 2 cops chasing Babakar and that he can identify them. Not surprisingly though, at the Police Headquarters, where all the cops of this shift were supposed to report, the two involved never did.

In the capitalistic brutality that we’re living, this death is not an accident nor a one-time incident. Bodies of immigrants are found on the Greek (among others) shores or seabeds, mass graves are discovered around the borders of the capitalistic developed states, workers are torn into pieces in factories- foundations of our economies, military expeditions with thousands of dead people, people of the struggle being shot, prisoners found “suicided” in their cells, suicides because of debts, murders of immigrants by fascists (like the stabbing to death of Shehzad Luqman at Petralona on 17/1).

A system that applies racial cleansings and dares to call them “The  welcoming Zeus”, that covers and promotes the everyday staying and attacks of cops and fascists in our homes and neighborhoods, seems way far from being human-centered… But, in any case, that’s something they admit themselves , they ‘re aiming in purging the cities, without people to resist, without immigrants, with the poverty and misery well hidden, physically and metaphorically.

With crisis as their pretense (in other words, the reasurance of the big-bosses’ profits), the capital and it’s states, re-set our terms of expoloitation. To disorient us, they promote our dividing and social canibalism, trying to persuade us that our enemies are the immigrants, the strikers, the self-organised structures, the squats, all the social parts that deny to submit to what is imposed, all who fight for equality, freedom and solidarity.

 …the threat is those who deny to see it.

The only solution for us is to find ways to co-exist and act in common against to what’s is coming. Together, natives and immigrants, with no hierarchies or discriminations due to race, sex or color, we unite against every kind of fascist racism and police brutality, for the world we want to create. This is why we choose to participate in the immigrants and solidarians assembly of ASOEE (every Thursday at 18:00), trying through common struggles of natives and immigrants to face down the attacks we are facing and those about to come.

We call to open conversation natives and immigrants on Monday at 17:00 at ASOEE (Patision 76) to communicate and organise actions.

 Initiative from the Assembly of immigrants and solidarians of ASOEE

In 28 of December the police attacked ASOEE for one more time. This time the excuse was the petty trade taking place outside of the university, so the state chose to get in the school, to search it, confiscate different things as well as 98 fm radio station. During the operation 16 people, mostly of us, and some pedestrians, were arrested just because of their color. During the transportation at the police station of Kypseli, we were hit by the policemen and on two of us you can see the bruises. It is not the first time that there are police outside the university or that they attack asoee, there are many incidents. At constant dues, policemen with civil clothes come and take the stuff that we sell. Also very often there are two units of riot police in the two corners of the school. They throw teargas and stangranates many times, also arrest us and take our stuff.

For us selling stuff in the streets is the only decent way to make a living, its the way for us to have some money to eat and pay our bills. Its our choice to work that makes us to come everyday outside of the university.

By this text we want to speak to the people, to thank those that support us and to inform more people about our everyday problems. We came to Europe from countries that are in a war or an economical destruction . We try to get papers, and for that we wait even for days outside of Petrou Rally (station alodapon) and it is almost impossible to get the papers we need to move free.

We live under a constrant state of hostage. But even in cases we manage to have some temporary papers there is always the danger that in some police control, they will be taken away or be destroyed. That can happen from policemen or people that pretend being policemen, mostly fascists. When they arrest us without papers we stay in prison from 3 months to a year.

We personally recognize our position. We know who wants us to be illegal, to be poor, and give the police orders to attack us, or allow the police brutality.

We also know that it is not a coincidence that they let the fascists hit us, bully us and murder people. We also know that the state takes money from the EU for our benefit and instead of helping us, it constructs walls in the greek borders (Evros) and prisons.

Some people see as a proper solution putting us in a bottle, with no oxygen and throw us away. But we make it clear that we are here, we exist.

At this point, we find it important to say that we are not the only ones who are being attacked in the area. During the last month the state attacked ASOEE, Villa Amalias squat, Patission 61 & Skaramaga squat and Lelas Karagianni squat (it was resquatted the same day), all of them places of resistance and solidarity to us immigrants. At the same time we continuously face the police operation known as Xenios Dias, and the racist attacks by fascists.( the last attack cost a 26 years old immigrant’s life at Petralona area). All these make it obvious that the government wants to “clear” the center of Athens.

At this time we are in the last wagon of the train, those who resist are next and then who follows?

The only solution is to find ways to live together and act united against what is happening and what will come. This is why we choose to participate in the immigrants and solidarians assembly of ASOEE. We try through common struggles of natives and immigrants with solidarity and equality to try to face the attacks we are facing and those about to come.

Natives and immigrants united, with no hierarchies, no discriminations due to race, sex or color make common efforts for a better world where we are all equal.

We oppose to every kind of fascist racism and police brutality.

TOGETHER WE CAN!

Immigrants and Solidarians Assembly of ASOEE

Every Thursday at 17.00 at ASOEE

For one more time, the last period, the region around Victoria square becomes a police-band zone with different kind of cops (MAT, DIAS, undercover cops and other state’s guards) camping on the square and the streets close to it. This time, after the squat “Villa Amalias, in their target is the Economical University of Athens.

So, on Friday, 28-12-2012 with a spectacular operation they invade the university. They arrest 16 people- all of them immigrants, as the university was empty of students because of the Xmas- who had entered the restaurant of the university trying to avoid the arrestment. Moreover, some of the arrested immigrants were just passing by when the police invaded the building. The police entering the university go straight to the basement of the building where different students’ political haunts are located and breaking their doors they enter finding articles, posters, brochures, libraries and the radio equipment of 98fm. Instantly out of the university solidarity peoples arrive but they are pushed back by the cops. During the transportation of the arrested immigrants to the Kipseli’s police station, inside the van and far from the media spotlight, the cops are terrifying and beating them denying transporting them to the hospital. Next morning they go to trial on charges for selling low value non-taxed items. The trial is postponed and 14 of them are set free until the new date of the trial while 2 remain detained because they don’t have legal papers.

With the usual tactic of anonymous complaint (!) for illicit goods, a court order is issued ordering the police forces to invade the university. It is not, as usual, one more brutal police operation against the immigrant peddlers who have their merchandise outside the university. This time a spectacular operation is staged in partnership with the police, the government, the local authorities (mayor Kaminis) and the rector of the university (Konstantinos Gatsios) where quick enough is proved that was not targeting exclusively the petty trade.

They are not targeting lawless enclaves, they are targeting resistance enclaves

They are targeting the social dimension of university asylum. But the university has a very specific history and it is something much more than classrooms. It is a place where political fermentations take place and resistances are built. It is a place that serves as a shelter for demonstrators and chased from state repression. And there is no law needed to confirm and support its existence. It istheacquis of countlessstruggles, violentornot, that renders it to the historical memory a place inhospitable to the police. Andallthesearenotdeletedbyanypoliceinvasion.

They are targeting the students’ political haunts, squatted places inside the university. Places that produce subversive speech and action, hospitalize political and cultural events, lending libraries, etc. Places where no tolerance to hierarchy, experts, racial hate, sex discrimination is accepted. Places where horizontal relationships against any kind of domination are being built. And all these are not evacuated by any police invasion

They are targeting structures built by the movement. In this occasion, a radio station that undermines the dominant propaganda, the lifestyle and the consumption. A radio station that the microphones are given to those who participate to the movement. A radio station that was made collectively producing subversive speech and action. And all these are not impounded by any police invasion

They are targeting the struggle of immigrant peddlers of ASOEE. People chased from their countries due to economical and war reasons, arriving here to face the marginalization, the racism and the exploitation, the police and fascists attacks. People who have quite limited livelihood opportunities, not because they chose it, but because of the condition obtruded on them. People who try through the petty trade to earn some money and live in dignity. Coexisting in harmony with us, they choose to break their fear and isolation, to resist, having common struggles with the natives, to build with students and solidarity people struggle communities through their participation in the assembly of “immigrants and solidarity of ASOEE”. Of course, the aggregation and the organization of those who suffer the state oppression is the number one danger for the authority, which reproduces itself by making artificial divisions. And all these are not repressed by any police invasion.

These are being built in the Economical University of Athens and the authority characterizes them as lawless enclaves.

And we ask ourselves : where is the real injustice, the real lack of logic ?

Is it when a law is passed to decrease the wages and pensions, to cut all the social services, to authorise dismissal without reasons, to make us work more for less money, while at the same time laws favorise in a scandaleous way banks, ship owners, big industrials and others bosses ?

Is it when laws lead more and more parts of society to poverty and misery, while they try to stop each effort to resist from the ones who struggle ?

Who are the ones who are threatened by laws and who are the ones who are threatened by the enclaves of lawlessnes ?

In which way the asylum, the political haunts and occupied places, the self-managed radios, the infrastructures of the movement, the migrants vendors, are all a threat for the ones at the below? Who can feel themselves in danger apart from authority et those who supports it ?

In a world where the law is made to oppress the poors et repress those who struggle, we choose to be illegals.

There is a direct link between the eviction of the squat Villa Amalias and the raid against ASOEE, who are both placed in the centre of Athens, in the heart of the metropole.

The center of Athens, where most of the social conflicts occur, where the developping social oppositions are demonstrated in the most obvious way, where survival and prosperity are separated by a thin line, where poverty and misery are side by side with over-consumerism, where the social struggles face the capitalist restructuration and developpement.

The centre of Athens, where the nazi practices of clean spaces has been established for the last years. This all began in the area of Agios Panteleimonas where Golden Dawn started to establish its presence in the political scene. By exploiting the social and economic circumstances, the rough situation of the locals and migrants living in the area, but especially with the excellent support of the State, Golden Dawn started to put intro practice the “cleaning” of the area. It’s obvious that the struggles that occured in ASOEE, Villa Amalias squat and all others hearths of resistance in the area are important ramparts against the spreading of their inhuman plannings.

This is the exact field where ASOEE and Villa Amalias are placed, and they made the clear choice to be side by side with those at the below of the social pyramid.

And us, we make a clear choice to stand up against the war that they have declared to us. We choose, us locals and migrants, the collective path of the struggle against the modern totalitarism that they are trying to impose to us. With solidarity, self-organisation and our horizontal structures, we create hearths of resistance and freedom.

NOTHING HAS ENDED, EVERYTHING STARTS NOW

NO PROSECUTION OF MIGRANTS VENDORS

SOLIDARITY WITH VILLA AMALIAS SQUAT AND EVERY SELF-MANAGED PLACE

 Initiative of the Assembly of Migrants and Solidarians of ASOEE

Firstly, we would like to greet all these people who help us live in freedom in Greece, since we face a difficult situation having the police on one side and fascists on the other, chasing us all the time. We come face to face with fascists every time we’re on the street. The same happens with the police who without any bother, is torturing us and taking our money. We don’t know what to do, we are scared and we’re suffering, Every immigrant is terrified with this situation.

Everyday we come up against a rising, aggressive racism, expressed from a part of society, but most­ly from the police. Cops intrude upon our houses, take our money and things. Along with the fascists, they are chasing us every moment. Especially in the night, fascists are wandering around the neigh­borhoods, looking for immigrants to beat up. Most of the times, they are presenting themselves as cops,«showing their civil identity, asking for our papers and after tearing them up, they begin to beat us. We fail to recognize, really, if the ones we face every time are fascists or cops.

Due to economic reasons or due to a war, we were forced to abandon our countries and come to live in Europe, particularly in Greece, so that we would be able to live in dignity, peace and freedom. Our only activity is peddlering, wandering off in the streets. This allows us to pay for our rent, our food, etc.

Therefore, we demand from the greek society and authorities to let us live with dignity, with freedom and respect. We thank all these people who understand us and stand next to us with solidarity.