Residents clash with riot police (Kozani power plant, Greece, 2/6/2008)

5:00 in the dawn and brigades of riot-police­men attacked the occu­pa­tion of the ash and coal belt con­vey­ors of the Agios Dim­itrios pow­er plant by res­i­dents of Ria­ki and Agios Dim­itrios (Kozani), arrest­ing 6 per­sons, mem­bers of the local Asso­ci­a­tion on unem­ploy­ment and for the envi­ron­ment. Next thing, tech­ni­cians of the PPC (pub­lic pow­er com­pa­ny) set in charge the aux­il­iary belt con­vey­or, putting away the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a black-out and the polit­i­cal pres­sure it would bring. The police re-occu­pied the plant gate with riot police bus­es.

Same after­noon, res­i­dents of the area gath­ered out­side the cour­t­house of Kozani, where the 6 arrestees were pros­e­cut­ed, hav­ing their mobile phones tak­en away so as not to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with a lawyer or a fel­low fight­er. The res­i­dents clash­es face to face with the police­men out­side the cour­t­house, but were repelled with exces­sive tear gas use.

The same time, 8 riot police brigades attacked against res­i­dents gath­ered near the fac­to­ry, arrest­ing 3 per­sons, the one of them they had pre­vi­ous­ly injured and dri­ven to the hos­pi­tal.

These last mobi­liza­tions of the res­i­dents have start­ed 3 years ago, under their demand for employ­ment of local res­i­dents in the PPC plants and the imme­di­ate tak­ing of mea­sures against the pol­lu­tion caused by the plants. The area of Kozani has sev­er­al pow­er plants, because of its coal resources, pro­duc­ing the largest part of Greece’s elec­tric pow­er, with the cor­rel­a­tive effects on the res­i­dents health and life con­di­tions and on the envi­ron­ment and its wildlife.

Sources-Pho­tos:
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=874556
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=874093
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=874075
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=873959
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from libcom.org

After 23 days of blockad­ing the input and out­put con­va­y­or belts of one of the major pow­er-plants of Greece by the Union against Unem­ploy­ment, demand­ing re-employ­ment, envi­ron­men­tal reform and with­draw­al of charges against rebel work­ers, riot police evict­ed the Agios Dim­itrios Pow­er-Plant occu­pa­tion. Seri­ous clash­es have ensued in efforts to release the arrest­ed Union mem­bers.

In the morn­ing of the 10th of May 2008, the res­i­dents of Agios Dimitris,a town near the north-Greek city of Kozani, where the Nation­al Elec­tric Com­pa­ny (DEH) holds its majors units, employ­ing the vast major­i­ty of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion, hav­ing formed a local Union against Unem­ploy­ment occu­pied the north gate of the Agios Dim­itrios Pow­er-Plant, inter­rupt­ing the func­tion of the feed-belts car­ry­ing lig­nite, as well as the ash-belts from the fac­to­ry to the dis­pos­al area. The block­ade was manned in shifts by all the res­i­dents of the town­ship, includ­ing chil­dren, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the indus­tri­al action.The Union demand­ed the reem­ploy­ment of sacked work­ers at DEH units in the region, mea­sures for the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment, and an imme­di­ate with­draw­al of charged pressed against 70 res­i­dents of the area for sim­i­lar mobil­i­sa­tions last year.

In response, on the 18th day of the occu­pa­tion, the Nation­al Elec­tric Com­pa­ny pressed charges against the Union argu­ing its action is caus­ing it enor­mous los­es, for which it claimed one mil­lion euros com­pen­sa­tion per day (the min­i­mum salary in Greece is 650E per month). Aim­ing to put pub­lic pres­sure on the squat­ters, DEH claimed the occu­pa­tion was threat­en­ing to put on hold all four units of the Agios Dim­itrios Plant, one of the biggest in the coun­try, thus putting the elec­tric sup­ply of the entire coun­try in dan­ger. In real­i­ty the indus­tri­al action was decreas­ing aver­all elec­tric pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty only by 500 megawatt. Nev­er­the­less, in the fol­low­ing days the DEH monop­oly waged a media cam­paign warn­ing of the neces­si­ty of black outs in response of the cri­sis.

Some days lat­er, the squat­ters refused to hold talks with the local author­i­ties and the min­is­ter of devel­op­ment when they demand­ed the unblock­ing of the con­vey­or belts as a guar­an­tee of the nego­ti­a­tions.

On Mon­day the 2nd of June 2008, 5 am, riot-police forces vio­lent­ly end­ed the 23 day long block­ade of the Elec­tric Pow­er-Plant at Agios Dim­itris. The police warned the squat­ters to clear the DEH premis­es, and when the lat­ter refused, the riot-police attacked arrest­ing 6 men: the pres­i­dent and four mem­bers of the Union. Dur­ing the con­se­quent protest march in the indus­tri­al city of Kozani three more peo­ple were arest­ed dur­ing major clash­es with the police, with one pro­tes­tor seri­ous­ly wound­ed. After the eco­nom­ic sec­re­tary of the Union warned the police to release the 6 arrest­ed or “face a gen­er­al upris­ing; we shall torch the pow­er-plant with crude oil and explo­sives, and get rid of this night­mare for ever”, the author­i­ties agreed to release the arrest­ed mem­bers of the Union who will stand tri­al next Sep­tem­ber.

The Union and the total­i­ty of Agios Dim­itris res­i­dents pledge to con­tin­ue their strug­gle.