Direct Action Greece: 17th — 22nd May

Appelate Court’s expan­sion works sab­o­taged with fire (ATHENS)
Attack against the munic­i­pal police of Ilioupoli (ATHENS)
Bank fire­bombed (LOANNINA)
Uni­ver­si­ty rec­tors elec­tions sab­o­taged (ATHENS-PIRAEUS)
Sur­veil­lance cam­eras destroyed dur­ing squaters sol­i­dar­i­ty march (ATHENS)
Fenc­ing bars around the poly­tech­nic school dis­man­tled (ATHENS)
Arson­ists hit a bank (THESSALONIKI)

Appelate Court’s expan­sion works sab­o­taged with fire (Athens, 22/5/2008)
This is a trans­la­tion of a claim sent to directactiongr@yahoo.gr:

“In the dawn of Thurs­day, MAy 22, we invad­ed the con­struc­tion site of the appelate court on Loukare­os street and moved into burn­ing up three machin­ery-vehi­cles, sab­o­tag­ing the con­struc­tion of the new court build­ings. With this inva­sion we dis­man­tled the pres­tige of the ene­my, strik­ing in one of the most for­mi­da­ble occu­pied spots of the city. Our action is wil­ful, to set the jus­tice itself on fire. Its nature, its ide­ol­o­gy, its insti­tu­tions.

It isn’t just the arro­gance and venge­ful­ness of the judges, the des­o­la­tion and anger in the faces of the accused, the agony to find the mon­ey, the fear of fac­ing prison. They are all part of this, that’s for sure. Jus­tice lies in the core of democ­ra­cy. It defends with a deci­sive vio­lence, direct­ly all inter­ests of this world. It has con­science of its role, its mean­ing today. It is clothed with all the demo­c­ra­t­ic ali­bis. The rules of courts, the high-court’s opin­ions, the laws, do not sim­ply safe­guard the regime. They are unceas­ing attacks with the aim to con­trol and man­age, to sub­or­di­nate every moment of our lives. The 10.000 pris­on­ers [note: the num­ber of the greek state’s pris­on­ers], the cam­eras that got legal­ized, the strik­ers sum­moned, the asy­lum bro­ken, indi­cate them. These are not mis­takes, we don’t talk about a few judges that don’t do their job well. We talk of the mod­ern mar­tial courts that safe­guard the dom­i­nant order. We speak of judges that dis­trib­ute 50 years in prison, every day, and then watch watch Lazopou­los on their TVs [note: a greek pop­ulist come­di­an com­ment­ing on the sys­tem’s faults]. And all of these, under the wrap­per of inde­pen­dance and unselfish­ness. In order to shut up the ques­tions, to blur crit­ics, to enforce as truth, inside every­one’s con­science this truth that is revealed in the threats and guilty silences.

That’s because jus­tice, apart from a mech­a­nism of sub­or­do­na­tion, is a tool to rearrange the social rela­tions. Dis­ci­pline, a sense of fair­ness, fear, are fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of inte­gra­tion of pro­hi­bi­tions on the total­i­ty of the social body. The civ­i­liza­tion of law­full and out­law, of fair and injust, of good and evil, is a civ­i­liza­tion that muti­lates social rela­tions. Is a civ­i­liza­tion of depen­den­cy from a venge­ful jus­tice sys­tem. Its val­ues end up to sys­tem­atize jus­tice to a machin­ery of indi­vid­u­als super­vis­ing each oth­er. Inse­cu­ri­ty, snitch­ing and fear for the oth­er, con­sti­tute behav­iours of the per­fec­tion of the mod­ern pat­tern of social orga­ni­za­tion. This sys­tem is n’t applied only inside the court hous­es but also in every expres­sion of our every­day life.

The new cour­t­house halls, the new high-sevu­ri­ty pris­ons, the pro­hi­bi­tions that pro­lif­er­ate, pave the way for the future offen­sives. Against the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, we take vengeance on this world of author­i­ties untill its total over­throw.

Coman­do “Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis”

PS. Our every hit is a beat of our heart. And our heart beats fierce­ly close to the hearts of our cap­tive com­rades. This action is ded­i­cat­ed to Gior­gos Vout­sis-Vogiatzis, impris­oned for rob­bing the ETE bank in Gizi.

Few notes: There is an old­er action claimed for “Coman­do Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis” in Thes­sa­loni­ki, 2007: “On Tues­day 15 May, 22 years after the assas­si­na­tion of the armed guer­ril­la Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis by cops, and at 4:30 in the morn­ing, the Rair­Road sta­tion local orga­ni­za­tion of New Democ­ra­cy (right-wing rul­ing par­ty), was tipped with a small token of our rage (1 petrol can and 3 home gas can­is­ters were enough to nudge them reface their offices), on the last repres­sive oper­a­tions against the rebels of the whole coun­try’s pris­ons.”
Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis was an urban guer­ril­la, mem­ber of ELA (Peo­ple’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Strug­gle) and Anti­s­tate Fight. He was mur­dered on 15 May 1985 by under­cov­er police­men in Gizi, Athens after a shootout, suc­ceed­ing though to exe­cute three of them.

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Attack against the munic­i­pal police of Ilioupoli (Athens, 22/5/2008)
From the mass-media:

“Mess and pan­ic were caused Thurs­day night, when a group of around 20 per­sons attacked the city hall of Ilioupoli. The masked-up group suprised the police­men, throw­ing red paints and broke with stones the glass win­dows of the city hall. Then, they destroyed with batons, sticks and knifes the per­son­al car of Ilioupoli’s may­or and two patrol cars of the munic­i­pal police. Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion, the attack of these young peo­ple was a form of protest and of sup­port to two detained anar­chists. The activists left on foot, towards the cen­tral square of Ilioupoli, throw­ing behind them com­mu­niques against the munic­i­pal author­i­ty. The police forces realised a man­hunt to find and arrest any”…

Fol­low­ing is a trans­la­tion of a com­mu­nique sent to directactiongr@yahoo.gr

“We select­ed to attack on the 22th of May, against the munic­i­pal police and the city hall of Ilioupoli, as a sig­nal of sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained anar­chists M. Tsoura­pas and Chr. Kon­tore­vithakis, accused for attempt­ing to burn up a car of the munic­i­pal police in P. Faliro, and fac­ing a jury on July, 11.

The munic­i­pal police is anoth­er repres­sive mech­a­nism in duty bound to keep the nor­mal flow of con­sump­tion and hunt­ing the so-called black mar­ket and the street-sales­men, safe­guard­ing the prof­its of lux­u­rius shops, while it con­sti­tutes yet one insti­tu­tion of polic­ing in the mitrop­o­lis, against every­day petit-delin­quent behav­iours. The per­cep­tions that con­tributed to its for­ma­tion will be always a tar­get for us, and so will be their car­ri­ers. This spe­cif­ic attack against the city hall of Ilioupo­lis is not blind at all, since this munic­i­pal­i­ty through the for­mer munic­i­pal coun­sel­lor Athana­sios Kouret­sis invest­ed in the pilot project “The neigh­bor­hood’s munic­i­pal police­man” in the foot­steps of the failed police project “The neigh­bor­hood’s police­man”. This ex-cop that par­tic­i­pat­ed in Ilioupo­lis’ city coun­sil want­ed sim­ply to con­tribute in the strenghen­ing of the cit­i­zen’s sense of secu­ri­ty, as his pro­pos­al sug­gests. We will always stand opposed and choose the offen­sive way against the dog­ma of “Secu­ri­ty, law and order” based on a total sys­tem of insti­tu­tions and per­cep­tions that eter­nal­ize the mod­ern real­i­ty. Their effort to sharp­en repres­sion and con­trol over our dig­ni­ties and our lives, will now meet with the cli­max of our attacks.

FREEDOM FOR THE DETAINED ANARCHISTS
MARIOS TSOURAPAS AND CHRISSOSTOMOS KONTOREVITHAKIS”

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Bank fire­bombed (Ioan­ni­na, 22/5/2008)
This is a trans­la­tion of the claim post­ed on http://athens.indymedia.org

“Today dur­ing the dawn, 22/5/08, we attacked a sub­sidiary of Piraeus bank on Dodo­nis street, close to the tech­ni­cal col­lege. We hurled 4 molo­tov cock­tails at the bank’s ATM, the cam­era, and the main entrance. This attack was under­tak­en despite the con­stat patrols of the cops, who even passed by a few min­ut­ed before the attack. Mate­r­i­al dam­ages were realised against the ATM and the entrance, break­ing a piece of the glass-win­dow. This attack was clear­ly sym­bol­ic, so a total destruc­tion of the bank was not an issue. We oppose every form of polic­ing and author­i­ty and we trust in vio­lent actions to over­throw the state. Sol­i­dar­i­ty to the actions that pre­ced­ed and to those that will fol­low.

COMRADES FROM THE STREETS OF EVERYDAY STRUGGLE.”

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Uni­ver­si­ty rec­tors elec­tions sab­o­taged (Athens-Piraeus, 22/5/2008)

Stu­dents invad­ed halls where the rec­tors elec­tions were held accord­ing to the new “frame”-law con­cern­ing uni­ver­si­ties, in the tech­ni­cal insti­tutes of Athens and Piraeus, destroy­ing vot­ing papers, tak­ing away bal­lot box­es, break­ing them or throw­ing them to garbage. Stu­dents of DAP-NDFK (rul­ing par­ty right-wing stu­dent youth) that were present, tried to guard the elec­tions process but were repelled.

In the same time, over 35 fac­ul­ties are occu­pied by stu­dent assem­blies, against the new “frame”-law appli­ca­tion.

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Sur­veil­lance cam­eras destroyed dur­ing squaters sol­i­dar­i­ty march (Athens, 20/5/2008)
Pho­tos of the march: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=868546

Sur­veil­lance cam­eras were bro­ken, dur­ing the march in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Vil­la Amalias squat. The march was organ­ised on the occa­sion of an arson attack against the squat two days ear­li­er, and hun­dreds of peo­ple demon­strat­ed in cen­tral Athens.

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Fenc­ing bars around the poly­tech­nic school dis­man­tled (Athens, 17/5/2008)

Pho­tos: http://athens.indymedia.org/

Accord­ing to a report from athens.indymedia.org:

“After 12 in the morn­ing, peo­ple from the poly­tech­nic school self-man­aged infos­hop left­ists, stu­dents and oth­ers, gath­ered around Zografou gate and destroyed all the extra fenc­ing bars placed by the dead to pre­vent peo­ple from enter­ing the uni­ver­si­ty late at night and dur­ing week­ends. An oth­er door was also tak­en, so peo­ple wan’t both­er to jump over fences to enter the uni­ver­si­ty when it clos­es. Lat­er on, some threw the bars at the door of the dean hall and at the dean’s office.

While this action took place, three under­cov­er police­men gath­ered out­side the gates, but left when they became noticed. A riot police brigade was set out­side the near­by police sta­tion of Zografou, and a per­son was tak­ing pho­tos of the peo­ple gath­ered from a near­by build­ing, but left when peo­ple approached the build­ing.”

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Arson­ists hit a bank (Thes­sa­loni­ki, 17/5/2008)
Respon­si­bil­i­ty claim at http://athens.indymedia.org/

“Ear­ly in the morn­ing of Sat­ur­day, we attacked the nation­al bank at Trian­dria. This action is sym­bol­ic, a sign of sol­i­dar­i­ty to the anar­chist V. Botzatzis and our three fugi­tive com­rades. No cap­tiv­i­ty can stop the war with the Exis­tent. Our rage will set their peace­ful nights on fire..”