No Gold, No Masters: Press release of the 1st “Beyond Europe” Camp in Halkidiki #skouries

August 27th, 2015

On Sun­day, the 23^rd August 2015, about 2000 peo­ple attend­ed on a demon­stra­tion in the moun­tains of Skouries. Dur­ing this heavy clash­es between demon­stra­tors and the police took place, with police mak­ing mas­sive use of tear­gas and shock grenades. 78 per­sons were detained, of which four are still being held in cus­tody.

The demon­stra­tion was organ­ised by the anti-author­i­tar­i­an plat­form against cap­i­tal­ism, Beyond Europe, togeth­er with activist com­mit­tees of the local vil­lages in the area of Skouries. This protest march was the prac­ti­cal cul­mi­na­tion of the inter­na­tion­al Beyond Europe camp, which has been tak­ing place at the beach of Ieris­sos close to the area of Skouries. At this camp, 400–500 anti-author­i­tar­i­ans from all over Europe came togeth­er in order to exchange ideas with each oth­er and dis­cuss polit­i­cal analy­ses and prac­tices. The loca­tion was cho­sen very con­scious­ly in order to sup­port the ongo­ing eco­log­i­cal-social strug­gles against the extrac­tion of gold and oth­er heavy met­als in Skouries. and of course we are not only active on behalf of but along­side the local activists. For a long time now, Beyond Europe activists have been engaged in prac­ti­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port for this strug­gle. It has a strong impact for social move­ments in Greece and the whole of Europe as an impor­tant front­line in the strug­gle against the recon­fig­u­ra­tion of Euro­pean cap­i­tal­ism through the Troi­ka on the back of the many.

For us, the camp and espe­cial­ly the demon­stra­tion is a polit­i­cal suc­cess, by being set in the right place at the right time. In Jan­u­ary 2015 the left par­ty Syriza took over pow­er and evoked hope in many Left­ists. Con­cern­ing the issue of Skouries, Syriza played the role of the par­ty of the move­ment dur­ing oppo­si­tion, but has act­ed very dif­fer­ent since it has been in pow­er. Short­ly before the march the Alex­is Tsipras’ gov­ern­ment resigned, only two days after the start of the Beyond Europe camp and since Syriza had learned about our demon­stra­tion. Mean­while the ener­gy min­is­ter Panos Skourletis ordered to sus­pend the min­ing oper­a­tions in Chalkidi­ki on 19^th August, claim­ing the com­pa­ny vio­lat­ed envi­ron­men­tal con­tract terms. We attribute the announce­ment to close the mine as a result of us choos­ing to organ­ise a camp here, but we did not rely on the government’s announce­ment as being the end of the strug­gle– which we have seen to be jus­ti­fied. One day after the announce­ment, dur­ing our walk from the camp to the moun­tain by the vil­lage Mega­li Pana­gia we could see that the works at the mines were con­tin­u­ing. This was just one more expres­sion of the most basic but impor­tant les­son in the ques­tions of rela­tion between par­ties and the move­ments: although they may improve tiny things with­in their lim­it­ed capac­i­ty, the pos­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate real progress and eman­ci­pa­tion lies in our hands. Del­e­gat­ing desires for change towards par­ties will always be a dead end, since par­ties in pow­er will always need to work to enact nation­al inter­est. We agree with Syriza that the mines in Skouries need to be closed, but it is up to us to ful­fill this task. Our action sent this mes­sage to any par­ty which will take pow­er in the Greek re-elec­tions in Sep­tem­ber.

Sunday’s demon­stra­tion put the impor­tant and vital strug­gle of Skouries back on the table. Its impact was felt deeply all over Greece and beyond. We see this as a polit­i­cal suc­cess as now, since the first time after the huge gen­er­al strike of 2012, a new polit­i­cal dynam­ic from below is being cre­at­ed in Greece. After a drought of social move­ments since that year, Syriza’s seizure of pow­er seemed to have par­a­lyzed large parts of it due to a posi­tion of grant­i­ng the Tsipras’ gov­ern­ment time. Our camp and demon­stra­tion was an effort to put an end to this drought and rely on our strongest weapon – self-organ­i­sa­tion and social strug­gles.

As always when social strug­gles are effec­tive, the state’s repres­sion also con­tin­ued yes­ter­day. In the sev­er­al years in the ongo­ing issue of Skouries, police and secret ser­vices have been heav­i­ly try­ing to oppress the local move­ment by harass­ment, arrests and juridi­cal pros­e­cu­tion. Yes­ter­day again, the police vio­lent­ly dis­persed the demon­stra­tion, arrest­ed 78 peo­ple and injured sev­er­al. One per­son suf­fered a bro­ken leg while being arrest­ed by the cops. Our wish­es for a quick recov­ery are with her and with every­one else suf­fer­ing beat­ing or gas injuries. And of course we are in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the four still detained, as well as all the oth­er activists being pros­e­cut­ed in the last years. This might only have been a small step towards an anti-author­i­tar­i­an organ­i­sa­tion beyond bor­ders and against the sad­ness of real exist­ing cap­i­tal­ism, but it was a step nonethe­less. And there is more to come.

from beyondeurope.net