Communiqué in Greek via Athens IMC.
English translation received March 12th 2016:
On March the 2nd we attacked the French Institute in Athens with molotov bombs. With this action we send a message of class solidarity to the persecuted migrants and fighters who struggle against the French state. The French Institute portrays the hypocrisy of the French Republic where behind the unfulfilled revolutionary slogan Freedom-Equality-Fraternity lurks the brutality of capitalist domination.
In the region of Calais, next to the border between Britain and France, migrants who arrive there hoping to cross over to the UK or who have been evacuated and persecuted from other refugee camps, have built a self-organized shanty town. The story of the so-called Jungle, as this favela of the downtrodden has been named, begins in 2002. Migrants who have been persecuted from their homes either due to war or to poverty, their persecution knows no end when arriving in the E.U. Hunted by border patrols, cops and fascists, many of them having passed through prisons and concentration camps, the new residents of Calais take a piece of their lives into their own hands. Despite the numerous attempts of the state in the past years to crush it, this huge community of migrants is resisting and self organizing life with perseverance in the most adverse circumstances of sheer poverty and constant repression. Makeshift restaurants, schools, kid spaces, art spaces and places of worship have been set up and are run by residents together with people in solidarity inside the Jungle.
On the one hand, the Jungle reflects the brutality of the regime which traps and isolated migrants into urban ghettos and concentration camps condemning them to a permanent life on the borderline. The imposition of total control is how the rulers attempts to deal with all those who defy them and who self-organize. Whatever doesn’t fall in line with capitalist “development” is attacked and subject to repression. The cops and Civil Guard often raid the Jungle gassing and brutalizing residents destroying homes and communal infrastructure, displacing and imprisoning migrants. On the other hand the Jungle is a declaration of struggle of the oppressed, struggle for survival against the plans of state domination. The existence of the Jungle and the determined resistance against eviction is a characteristic example of the struggle against persecution and imprisonment.
Last month the French state announced the evacuation of the south part of the Jungle, home to around 3,000 migrants, on the pretext of a sanitary risk to the area. The state in order to curb the resistance of the migrant residents initially attempted to lend humanitarian motives to the evacuation, by stating that the people will be moved to heated containers, while those who don’t fit will be moved to other concentration camps throughout France, not by force but by the”force of argument”. Finally the latest eviction attempt begun this week and bears the familiar face of state violence and terrorism. Those who will be confined in concentration camps will be separated from people with whom they have built a community, they will be registered (fingerprints, photos, e.t.c.) and will descend to state of totalitarian control, dependence and exploitation by the state.
The evacuation of the Jungle is a straightforward attack against migrants’ self determination. Consequently it is an attempt to crush the self-organisation of the oppressed. The strategy of the French state is part of the common European “management of the refugee flows” which whether it is invested with right wing or humanitarian rhetoric aims to control the oppressed and to fill the pool of debased human resources to be exploited by capital. The resistance against the attempt to demolish the Jungle is a struggle against the worst conditions of class subjugation.
In the clashes taking place in Calais, what comes to the surface is the colonialist history of France and its imperialist interventions such as today in North Africa; what is revealed is the inherent fascism of bourgeois democracy and its hypocritical humanitarians. We bring to mind once again Remi Fraisse who was murdered in October 2014, fighting for the Siven forest, murdered by the same bastards in uniform who are now attacking the Jungle.
RESISTANCE AND SELF ORGANISATION OF THE OPPRESSED EVERYWHERE
COPS OUT OF THE COMMUNITIES OF THE PRESECUTED
LETS TEAR DOWN PRISONS AND CONCENTRATION CAMPS
VICTORY TO THE STRUGGLE OF THE JUNGLE
SABOTAGE THE FRENCH STATE AND THE EUROPEAN FORTRESS
From the neighborhoods of Athens
Council of Anarchist Action “Gracchus Babeuf”