In the text below, Nikos Maziotis, member of Revolutionary Struggle, suggests the creation of an assembly of solidarity for all political detainees and prisoners-fighters.
Text below from Nikos Maziotis, member of Revolutionary Struggle, to the open assembly of Anarchists / Anti-authoritarians against the specific Type C conditions of detention, Maziotis proposes the creation of a solidarity meeting for all political detainees and prisoners-fighters. At the same time it is an open call to all comrades and companions of the anarchist / anti-authoritarian domain to participate and support this endeavour.
In the short term the date and location where the first meeting to explore possibilities to set up the Solidarity Assembly will be announced.
The text is sent to all political detainees and imprisoned fighters.
Comrades – companions, this text addresses you concerning Type C prisons, and my proposal for the creation of a meeting as concerns the issue of solidarity.
Comrades – companions, the passing of legislation of the Type C prisons are an expected development in the repressive attack of the State against the armed Revolutionary Organizations and against armed direct action. Subsequently, the legislative changes and reforms that have been under way for about 14 years are directly linked to the political and economic conditions, applicable for years internationally, and none other than the “war on terror” and the neoliberal reforms intended to impose the dictatorship of the markets, and its doctorate of supranational capital.
As Revolutionary Struggle, since the beginning of our activities in 2003, I believe that we properly analyzed the political and economic conditions in the early nineties when we started our activities, conditions relating to the globalization of the capitalist system. Both the “war on terror” launched in 2001 following the attacks on the United States, and the neoliberal reforms that conduced and were designed by the dictatorship of transnational capital is not only the economic and civilian-relevant nature of globalization. The system, therefore, in order to impose the dictatorship of markets proceeds at an increasingly harder crackdown as it tends to become more and more totalitarian.
In Greece, the same year [of 2001] the Greek economy was opened up to transnational capital after the so-called scandal of 1999. The stock market integration in EMU, in the Eurozone in 2002. It is therefore no coincidence that at the same period, even to lag behind Western Europe and the US, the Greek State proceeding to legislate the first anti-terrorism law in 2001, the law drawn up by Stathopoulos [Minister of Justice]. The law was voted after pressure from the US and Britain and it targeted members of the armed Revolutionary Organizations and more specifically the 17 November (17N), which was the only guerilla organization active at that time. This law was named “law against organized crime” and it was done with an obvious purpose of serving the tactics of the state; trying to deconstruct the political characteristics of armed revolutionary organizations, to depoliticize and clean them of ideological language and action, to present them as a ordinary criminal offenders. Under this law are accused all who have been on trial for 17 November and ELA in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
Despite the fact, however, that this law targeted members of the armed Revolutionary Organizations, the State now uses it for the strengthening of control used be general law enforcement regarding illegal incriminations, as one can be condemned by an aggravating provision of “criminal organization”, or used to prove and condemn an incorrect “conspiracy”. And this has resulted in an increase of total sentences. But do not confuse cause and effect. The Stathopoulos law, the first anti-terrorism law, was made primarily for members of the armed revolutionary organizations, but the result has been generalized to apply to cases of organized delinquency.
Three years later, in 2004, the Papaligoura law, during the government of Karamanlis and New Democracy, the second anti-terrorism law, is to clarify things after talking about “setting up a terrorist organization” and “terrorist acts”, which “in a manner and to an extent circumstances, it is possible to harm the country and destroy the fundamental constitutional political and economic structures of the country.” Despite the fact that the system does not recognize political enemies, the Papaligoura law recognizes the existence and activity of armed organizations that threaten the fundamental constitutional, political and economic structures of the country thereby bringing political reality features in the action. The same law is also aggravating the device of “leading a terrorist organization” in order both to increase the penalty for those accused and convicted as directors or heads of “terrorist organizations” and to confirm the status that there is no other form of social organization apart from the existing hierarchical organization of today’s society, dominated by Capital and the State. Under the Papaligoura law, which was voted in after US pressure on the eve of the Olympic Games in 2004, were all the trials of armed Revolutionary Organizations in both the Revolutionary Struggle and the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.
The lawmaking thus for Type C prisons, is the coherence and consistency of the two anti-terrorism rules of 2001 and 2004, and the 2003 law that establishes international cooperation in police and judicial level in the field of counter-revolutionary armed action between Greece, the European Union and the US. This law fills a gap in Greek repressive policies and is made to align with the European Union and the US, as in Europe and the US apart from the anti-terror laws that are from the 70s and 80s, when many countries were facing serious problems due to the direct actions of armed Revolutionary Organizations, there are prisons with special detention regimes for members of these organizations.
The same happened in Turkey in the early 2000s prior, where prisons were built – F Type, primarily for members of the leftist Revolutionary Organizations engaged in armed struggle, and we all remember the struggle of imprisoned members of those organizations who were on hunger strike until death, or who set themselves on fire to prevent their transfer to F Type prisons.
We should make anarchist / anti-authoritarian spaces do the obvious thing and see things objectively. The C Type prisons are primarily for those accused of armed struggle, whether they assume political responsibility for their participation in those organizations they belong to or if they deny the allegations. And this does not detract from the fact that in these prisons they will keep convicts serving long sentences and other offenders who have been convicted with the law dealing with “criminal organization”. … The lawsuits are against comrades for participating in a “terrorist organization” for “terrorist acts”, which could harm fundamental constitutional, political and economic structures of the country, trials which are aimed at specifically sentencing armed revolutionary organizations at this time, and this is regardless of whether these trials are for comrades who deny the charges. Being an anarchist is not a sui generis at least for now.
However, both the anti-terrorism legislation and the [Domokos] prison in which they intend to isolate us, give a clear signal to the anarchist / anti-authoritarian space and to the general society from the side of the State. That, whoever chooses the armed struggle as a form of action will have a predatory criminal treatment, if arrested, and kept in a special status such as Type C prisons. That’s why the State is aware of the hazards of an armed struggle, especially in the conditions of the global economic crisis that has erupted since 2008, when the regime, the economic and political system, has lost the social consensus it enjoyed before the crisis, and because in these conditions the armed struggle is a subversive and destabilizing factor for the system. And this regime has confessed factors referring to the Revolutionary Struggle and when we were arrested in 2010 for the first time with the recent arrest of Anarchist Antonis Stamboulos, who was accused of participation in the Revolutionary Struggle. The Minister of Public Order Vassilis Kikilias connected direct action or the threatened hits of our organization with the destabilization of the system in a particularly sensitive time for it.
Legislating the C Type prisons is a consistency and continuity of the State repressive attack against militants who have opted for armed struggle, intending to break them through the isolation of members of the armed revolutionary organizations and those accused of involvement in these organizations, and are intended to degrade them as political entities and to elicit statements and renunciation of armed struggle
While in Greece the recent reforms of the C Type prisons, the changes in the penal code and criminal procedure relate to the armed struggle, there are no such rules in Italy other than the disclaimer of providing information to alleviate the position of the prisoner that would be pursued here in a more indirect way. Staying in C Type prisons, in addition to the minimum of four years under the law, will place the unrepentant before the prosecutor who will determine if they will continue or not inside for another four years, and they will decide on not only the importance of their actions but also of the character and personality of the imprisoned. It therefore goes without saying that anyone who is unrepentant and irreducible in the prison struggle would be considered a threat to public order and security, and they will be imprisoned indefinitely detained in C Type until the end of their sentence.
The action against the C Type prisons can only be part of solidarity with all political prisoners and imprisoned fighters in the Greek jails and C Type prisons. This is regardless on diversity of cases, whether the prisoners have taken political responsibility for their participation in the organizations they belong to, or accused of involvement in guerilla organizations and deny the charges, or whether they are anarchists accused of bank expropriations.
Companions, comrades, just because the action against C Type prisons can only be a part of solidarity with all political prisoners and prisoners fighters I propose the transformation of the Assembly for C Type prisons into a solidarity meeting for all political prisoners and prisoners-fighters, not only to those convicted or accused of involvement in armed rebel groups but also comrades and companions that faced State repression of other forms of struggle, demonstrations, sit-ins, street clashes with police.
It is contradictory and paradoxical to mobilize against a prison type, if one can not also show solidarity with their fellow prisoners. It is a serious political deficit that there are dozens of political prisoners and imprisoned fighters and there is not a solidarity meeting for them. Solidarity is a political position and attitude. It is a key element of a movement or a political space that wants to have kinematic characteristics. Solidarity means that the detained militants and forms of struggle they choose for this and for what they have been in prison for are part of the common struggle, of the struggle for the revolution for anarchy and communism. Solidarity means that we believe that the armed struggle and guerilla warfare is part of the struggle and movement for the Social Revolution. Anyone who disagrees with this principle, therefore can not be in solidarity with their companions and comrades who are prison and advocating armed struggle as an option of struggle.
This does not mean that solidarity, the space or the movement can not have critiques on the positions of the reasons or the actions of the armed Revolutionary Organizations, provided such criticism is made in good faith with purely political arguments rather than mud, hubris and aphorisms. To ultimately prove that “solidarity is not a badge of identification” is sincere and not an excuse to those who disagree and condemn the armed struggle and guerilla warfare, but only have the political courage to say so openly and publicly to claim selective ‘solidarity’ for those who claim they are innocent and deny the charges, while turning their backs on those who advocate armed struggle and those who assume political responsibility for their participation in the organizations they belong to.
Solidarity is not selective because otherwise there is no solidarity. Solidarity has personal criteria, friends, relatives or family. Solidarity is not the distinction between the innocent and the guilty, not the distinction between assumptions of organizations or individuals. Solidarity does not make distinctions between Anarchist and Communist prisoners, nor has national characteristics. Solidarity is not the separation of the forms of struggle, the promotion of the dipole “mass or armed struggle”, “legality or illegality”, the separation of armed struggle and the movement, or the dividing line between “confrontational but non-armed track of anarchy” and “armed anarchist section”. I repeat that solidarity has only one political criterion, that prisoners and forms of direct action chosen as the armed struggle, urban guerilla and any other form of action that are found in prison, is part of the common struggle and the movement for the overthrow of Capital and the State, for Social Revolution. Those who do not apply this criterion are informers and renouncers like Corcis who denounced companions in the case of 17N, without pressure, violence and torture and Giotopoulos who condemns the actions of 17N in court.
I therefore propose to transform the Assembly for C Type prisons into solidarity meeting for political prisoners and imprisoned fighters. Not only those imprisoned for armed action but also for any form of struggle. The solidarity actions of this assembly are logical that they shall include in their activities those in relation to C Type prisons.
It’s time to put each companion and each comrade in front of their responsibilities and take a clear and explicit position on the issue of solidarity. Any subterfuge demonstrates that solidarity is not a weapon, but that is a word empty of content. It’s a corpse in the mouth enough already. So I invite all companions and comrades inside and outside of prison to take a stand and put themselves forward politically to open up a dialogue on the proposal to create a solidarity assembly.
If the anarchist / anti-authoritarian space wants to forget the prisoners of the State and let them just rot in jail, then it forgets the same struggle.
Nikos Maziotis
Member of Revolutionary Struggle
Diavata Prison