Parnitha fire & protests

Protest fol­low­ing ear­li­er march­es:

The morn­ing of Sun­day 29 July, an inter­ven­tion was made in Mont Parnes (a casi­no in ‚Mount Par­nitha which was recent­ly burned, the same casi­no which tries to expand to the burned grounds of the moun­tain): ban­ners where opened , some slo­gans where shout­ed and red paint was thrown.

The mov­ing of the state mech­a­nisms was con­stant, many-sided and long, dif­fer­ent than the days the moun­tain was burn­ing. Riot police, under cov­er police and heli­copters where “guard­ing” the burned for­est of Par­nitha , the “nat­ur­al” source of prof­it. The pro­tec­tion of prof­it and the unblocked work of gam­blers seems to have greater impor­tance than the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment.

26 peo­ple (of the approx­i­mate­ly 35–40 that orig­i­nal­ly went there) were arrest­ed with the help of the casi­no work­ers and the may­or of Thrako­make­dones munic­i­pal­i­ty , Themis Oikodomou. The arrest­ed where beat­en up while they where hand-cuffed and then held in the GADA (Cen­tral Police Con­trol Athens) with­out med­ical help and even with­out water. It is also remark­able that when they com­plained about the con­di­tions of their arrest they where bru­tal­ly attacked inside the police head­quar­ters by a squat of riot police.

Imme­di­ate­ly after their move in GADA a group of peo­ple met in front of the head­quar­ters to express their sol­i­dar­i­ty. They stayed there until late in the night when charges where announced . Dis­tur­bance of peace and unpro­voked dam­ages. The charges where announced after the com­plaint of the Casi­no.

After the holo­caust of Par­nitha and the anx­ious res­cue of the casi­no (while the for­est was indif­fer­ent), the com­pa­ny Regency Εnter­tain­ment, few days before showed it’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal “eco­log­i­cal” feel­ings announc­ing that it will spon­sor the re-forest­ing of the area, after though the bestow­al of 62.5 acres for the expan­sion of Mont Parnes.

Athens, Greece

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Some his­tor­i­cal back­ground on the ‘pro­tect­ed’ forests of Par­nitha:

Par­nitha, with its mar­velous forests, a place with rich raw flo­ra, includ­ing a thou­sand species of plants and also some rich wild life (such as deers, chamoi­ses, fox­es, coy­otes, bun­nies, bad­gers, hedge­hogs, squir­rels, rep­tiles, amphib­ians and lots of fly­ing crea­tures, includ­ing rap­tors such as hawks and eagles, as well as lit­tle twit­ting birds, such as red­caps , goldfinch­es and pick­locks) was our favourite moun­tain, the one that host­ed many of our walks around the hills, the tops, the rivers and the canyons.

It has­n’t been more than one year since we last referred to the dan­ger of Par­nitha being destroyed, which, despite being accred­it­ed as a pro­tect­ed nat­ur­al for­est since decades, has the tops of its hills spot­ted by mil­i­tary bases, the broad­cast­ing cen­tre, the tourist shel­ters which work in cor­po­rate inter­est and the well-known Mont Par­ness Hotel/Casino, built by the Nation­al Organ­i­sa­tion of Tourism in 1958 on Mavrovouni top and giv­en to the Hyatt Cor­po­ra­tion in 2002 (and to the BC Part­ners in 2006), the rea­son for a lot of envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion in a wider area where extend­ed con­struc­tions are about to take place.

“Very close to Athens, there is the for­est group of Par­nitha, full of forests, which, not pro­tect­ed at all by the plans of the sta­tists and the hunger of the cap­i­tal­ists, is wait­ing its destruc­tion” (…) ” Giv­en the momen­tum of the cap­i­tal­ists, if the care­less­ness and the apa­thy against their plans keep up, Par­nitha will fol­low the rest of the Atti­ca moun­tains which have had and keep on hav­ing lots of irre­versible destruc­tions (Anar­chist Report, num 41, Octo­ber 2006).

This is why hun­dreds friends of the for­est, held a demon­stra­tion in Par­nitha, against the deci­sion for giv­ing 3 mil­lion square meters of for­est, in the heart of the pro­tect­ed for­est, for build­ing things as hos­tels, restau­rants, shop­ping cen­ters, result­ing to an envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter. (4th March 2002)

Though, there was a more seri­ous dis­as­ter; a real holo­caust was about to hapen in Par­nitha, before the real plans of the Hel­lenic Tourist Estates co. and the BC Part­ners would be imple­ment­ed.

It was a fire that result­ed from sparkles in a high-volt­age pylon of the Elec­tric­i­ty Com­pa­ny, in the vil­lage Stephani in Der­veno­cho­ria, due to the over­load on the net­work, that lead to a fire hur­ri­cane that burnt all over Par­nitha. The crim­i­nal delay in fac­ing the fire, in order to avoid an elec­tric­i­ty black-out in Athens, let the fire climb up the moun­tain and go giant, swal­low­ing the for­est. More than 25 mil­lion square meters of forests, out of the 38 mil­lion square meters of the ker­nel of the Pro­tect­ed for­est were burnt, along with some mil­lions of sq meters on the sur­round­ing area.

Although it was not the first time the fire hit Par­nitha, even if it had been expect­ed since years, as all the sur­round­ing moun­tain forests have been burnt, there was nei­ther an imme­di­ate response, nor a prepa­ra­tion, a basic orga­ni­za­tion and co-ordi­na­tion in order to avoid the worst case and have the nation­al park saved.

The for­est of Par­nitha, along with the rich wild life that lived there, are lost; they became a huge cloud of smoke and ash­es above Athens, spread­ing a dark­some and misty light of apoc­a­lypse. Mil­lions of met­ro­pol­i­tan res­i­dents were watch­ing the ter­ror, pas­sive, in their des­tiny, wor­thy of their future, while the min­is­ter of civ­il order Poly­do­ras was in a ridicu­lous tri­umph for sav­ing the Casi­no.

Final­ly, the unprece­dent­ed eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter in Par­nitha is not a result just of the stu­pid­i­ty and the inca­pa­bil­i­ty of the ones respon­si­ble. It is a result of the war that the Pow­er has declared against the human and the nature. It is a dis­as­ter with count­less social and cul­tur­al aspects, while the first envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences will be imme­di­ate­ly notice­able in the fol­low­ing years, includ­ing the dis­as­trous increase of the tem­per­a­ture, dry-outs and floods in Atti­ca val­ley.

The ancient fir­ry for­est of Par­nitha will nev­er be the same, not even in 100 years; it will stay alive, as it used to be, only in our dreams and mem­o­ries. An amaz­ing­ly beau­ti­ful moun­tain­ous par­adise, a school of nature which offered end­less moments of joy, recre­ation, game, adven­ture and emo­tion, turned into an cal­vary place in one night.

As for the ques­tion on who is respon­si­ble for this crime, in this case, as in any sim­i­lar case, it is no-one apart from the sys­tem of the state and the cap­i­tal­ist organ­i­sa­tion of the soci­ety, where all the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal author­i­ties attack the human­i­ty and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, destroy­ing and lut­ing, in an effort to max­i­mize prof­i­teer­ing and social con­trol. We are as guilty, for the destruc­tion and lut­ing which leave behind a burnt ground (both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly) in the soci­ety and the nature, as long as we bend in apa­thy just watch­ing.

Ora Nihil 30.6.2007
For the anar­chist report “Black Flag”