Solidarität für die 8 verfolgten Student*innen der AUEB, Athen Griechenland

Nach einer Aktion in Solidarität mit geräumten besetzten Häusern, die am 29. Oktober 2020 stattfand, starteten die Strafverfolgungsbehörden einen Angriff auf das Zentrum. Die Aktion selbst soll hier nicht diskutiert werden, wir sind in keiner Weise damit verbunden. Weder mit ihr, noch mit der Gruppe, die dafür die Verantwortung übernommen hat. Der Staat beschuldigt nun 8 Student*innen und Mitglieder des selbstorganisierten Student*innenzentrums für die Teilnahme an der Aktion. Sie sind die Hauptverdächtigen in dem Verfahren, das vor Gericht verhandelt wird. Am 23.12. schickte die Polizei Vorladungen zur Vernehmung von 8 Genoss*innen, während der Schriftsatz des Falles war noch nicht mal eingereicht oder formell ausgehändigt worden war. Am 08.01. wurden alle 8 Genoss*innen verhört und durchliefen den regulären Prozess vor der Staatsanwaltschaft.

Die lose Fallakte, das Schema der Behörden und den gezielten Angriff auf die politische Identität der Student*innen bestätigend, entschied der Untersuchungsrichter zugunsten der Angeklagten und keine*r der beschuldigten Genoss*innen wurde verhaftet. Dem ungeachtet sind die Genoss*innen mit schweren Anklagen konfrontiert, wie z.B. Bildung einer kriminellen Vereinigung usw.

Vier der Genoss*innen wurden bis zur Verhandlung auf freiem Fuß gelassen, während die restlichen vier verpflichtet sind, sich einmal im Monat bei der nächsten Polizeistation zu melden und eine Kaution von 3000€ bis zum 19. Januar zu hinterlegen. Zusätzlich sind alle 8 verpflichtet, bis zur Verhandlung ihre Fingerabdrücke und DNA abzugeben, was eine neue aggressive Taktik des Staates ist die viele Auswirkungen mit sich bringt.

Einerseits ist es die kurze gegebene Zeitspanne, zum anderen die Corona-Situation, die jede wirtschaftliche Struktur, ob persönlich oder kommunal, belastet. Wir befinden uns also gerade in einer Situation in der die Freiheit der vier Genoss*innen ernsthaft bedroht ist.

Deshalb bitten wir um weltweite finanzielle Solidarität und

Unterstützung für diesen Fond: https://www.firefund.net/s8a

Das Komplott wird zerfallen

Der Kampf geht weiter

Public statement of self organized student center of AUEB regarding the scheme against students for the university’s rector’s case:

We are forced to publish a statement because of the unbelievable and unprecedented attempt of the law enforcement authorities to get the self organized student center of AUEB and individuals who are participating in it, invoved - with a loose case file - in the well known case of the action at the rector’s office in the university (AUEB) by the group “Militant Solidarity Initiative” at 29/10/2020. In fact, as it’s already known, a new repressive operation has begun since 23rd of December, resulting in having 8 individuals called for a hearing to an investigating magistrate and prosecutor, with accusations placed on them for the particular above action.

The criteria which have resulted to the selection of these 8 individuals as suspects, are relevant to their student identity in AUEB, their lasting presence in students’ movements within the school, the friendly or political relationships, or their social associations in general.

The blatant fabrication of the accusations by the state police and their attempt to declare the identification of the 8 accused individuals is crossing a lot of boundaries. More precisely they criminalize the physical presence of the students at the university that specific day with the pretext of lectures not happening on the time period given, but with all the other services such as student’s restaurant and secretariat, operating normally. They perceive students’ presence in school in the middle of the day as illegal using as “evidence” their phone conversations and the most illegal of all for them, their social relationships among them.

But the obscenity doesn’t stop there. A loud example of this constructed case is that a member of the students’ center and one of the 8 accused ones, was working in his official job position, during the time that he faces accusations of being at the university, while another comrade is being charged, with only evidence, a phone call that he did to another comrade, a suspect also. During that call, his phone is triggering a mobile carrier’s antenna in the region of Exarchia, which is his permanent residence area, just after the action they 8 are accused of participating in. In the same terms of hilariousness, the other “findings” of the police, are based on phone calls among students that are regularly and daily in the school and have social relations among them. In a fabricated loose case like this, the “anonymous” phone call couldn’t be excluded. They cops’ beloved tactic, that we ‘ve seen all these years , decorating schemes against members of the radical movements.

Except of the above, while we witnessed the press, claiming from police sources and celebrating that the suspects have been identified from footage, the very same case file is failing them, we think that this text is not the space for the loose case to be decomposed and exposed. The accused may make public statements about it. It turns out that it is a typical plot case, like all the others that had loudly collapsed in the past years.

But in this particular case, some things that we will explain below are not that typical.

Since the very first moment that it became known that the specific action has happened, there was a constant and continuous targeting of the students’ center in press releases and articles, that mentioned that the physical space of the students’ center was used as starting point of people that participated in the incident, quoting ”about 15 assailants started their attack using as a starting point the anti-authority center of AUEB (capital.gr)” . All these happened, before any investigation was ever conducted and could result in any conclusion. Obviously the articles weren’t an initiative of the media, but came as indications from police and state security that needed a tension and targeting atmosphere to be created against the students’ center based on fake reports.

Admittedly, it’s not the first time that the center is being targeted. Self organized center of AUEB, counts at least 18 years of active presence in the university and in general in the radical movements. From the very same center, multiple generations of radical students have passed. It’s targeted by the rectoral and law enforcement authorities, because of its consistency and constant presence in movements in and out of the school limits. It declared and showed solidarity with immigrants that are selling low value products on the streets but also substance addicted people that have been chased from murderous hordes of any kind of cops, around the school. It has resisted against every attempt of making universities prone to authoritarianism, participated in the movement of abolishing public transportation’s tickets, has been active member of antifascistic coordinations among groups, have supported the occupation of the university that had been decided by the students’ association and have also participated in numerous students’ movements and events. For its particular presence in the social rallies, it has been evicted twice in the past, while the last time was accompanied with grotesque reports from government members talking about “a terrorists’ hideout’ in which weaponry and munitions had been found, “similar with those of Syrian insurgents”. In the meantime, the photos would depict flags’ masts and sticks and a handful of empty alcohol bottles.

Another reason of targeting the student’s center, which targeting becomes obsessive, is the fact that AUEB is not a random school, its spatial position in the city center, next to Exarchia and in the triangle shaped by schools of NTUA and Law School, places AUEB right in the target of the authorities, taking into account the radical presence that traditionally is being observed inside this triangle. It’s not accidental that AUEB had been one of the occupied buildings during the uprising of 2008 but also a hearth of struggle during other large social incidents and events. This is how it’s often referred to in public articles, a space that the police should definitely enforce total control. But the peculiarity of the particular plot is not just the targeting of a political space, this is just a regular routine for the repression forces. The unprecedented of this new plot, has to do with the unmatching confrontation by the state, as it is evident from the amount of multiple governmental reports, literally prior noticing political prosecutions, with the order of upgraded accusations that include crime status of offense ( which among others it is considered as an extreme intervention in the justice system, by those who claim that they respect the separation of powers) and with the imposition of a bounty on the assailants of the act against the rector for 100,000euros (during a pandemic, that no social request for financial enhancement of the nation healthcare has been fulfilled)

The above are not an image of some dystopian future, but of the very dystopian present. For us, the criminal upgrade of this case and the fabricated involvement of members of the center, students and people who maintain friendly relations, through an inaccurate and lame indictment, is used in this case as a tool, as a Trojan horse for a general attack against student struggles and militant student groups. This is happening, not accidentally, after the end of the Golden Dawn trial, where many government officials, including the Minister of Civil Protection Michalis Chrysochoidis, openly announced that it is now the time to deal with the other extreme, that of "red fascism". Fully in line with the theory of the two extremes, the government aims to eradicate the social resistances with the main concern being the field of universities, which have historically been starting points and centers of struggle in times of social polarization. They therefore estimate that by applying zero tolerance policies in faculty premises and by attempting to politically exterminate militants through manufactured charges, using even their social relations to offer gravity to them, they will manage to significantly reduce resistance against their authoritarian policies.

For our part, we believe that the militant student movement and the anti-authoritarian student collectives will prove them wrong. We also note that the criminal upgrade of political actions is at the heart of the government's agenda in a number of cases, where slogans outside of journalists' homes are labeled as "terrorist acts" and demonstrations and interventions outside political offices are labeled as attacks to justify the arrest of militants and heavier charges. The ban on gatherings of more than four people on the anniversaries of November 17 and December 6 follows the same logic, while twenty days later the churches were allowed to function during the festivities, being granted the freedom of gathering up to fifty believers indoors. The repression we saw in these days, the arrests of 90 comrades for occupying both campuses of the Polytechnic, the attacks by thousands of police that swarmed every part of the city in order to disperse any attempted gathering, the banning of access to the monument of the murdered anarchist student Alexandros Grigoropoulos, even to individuals who attempted to approach and pay tribute alone, the DELTA motorised riot police raids inside people’s houses with stun grenades and the image of police armored vehicles firing tons of water against protestors form the image of the new situation that the resistance movement is called to face from now on. The level of repression is shown by the abduction and summary deportation of the anarchist militant Erol, just because he chose to participate in the protests of December 6 and by the police raid on the dorms of Athens University in Zografou (FEPA) in an attempt to terrorize the students residing in them who the previous week had organized mobilizations claiming a series of demands from the Rectorate. The case of the four comrades accused as members of an imaginary "terrorist" organization called "Comrades" - An organization out of the sick imagination of police "brains" - follows the same political choice of attacking the anarchist movement by any means possible.

Everything points to the direction that this new fabrication that is being attempted against the occupied student center and all those who are persecuted for the action in the Rector's Office, is part of a larger repressive plan, which among other things includes the restructuring of universities through the voting of the law on university police. They are using an ill-conceived, farcical case as an excuse to impose police control on our campuses, although leaks in news websites and papers prove that they had actually been planning this law months in advance. They talk about the presence of police officers in campuses and how this will create a safe academic environment, while less than a year ago an armed cop threatened students inside the premises of ASOEE University, pointing a gun directly at them and threatening to shoot them. Their aim in this case is to turn the universities into guarded places, stripped of all political activity, their main concern being the crushing of every weapon of autonomous student struggle, but mainly of the self-organized spaces and squats within the universities.

The abolition of the university asylum is aiding this repressive policy and reminds us that the only way to defend and expand the gains of social struggles, is the struggle itself. As mentioned earlier, we do not consider the intensification of repression across the social spectrum, including universities, to be accidental. It comes as a response to the government's recent loss of image, to the thousands killed by the pandemic, whose blood is in its hands due to its criminal practices, and in the long run acts as a counterweight to its neoliberal policies in every field. Specifically for the right-wing conservative public, to whom the government addresses, the doctrine of "Law and Order" provides a balancing act against the economic and labor scourge that has already hit a huge number of workers and in the near future will only get worse. We see the political and moral defense of our comrades and of the persecuted students as an absolute necessity. We will not let them become for the beast of repression. Nor will we watch idle as our social relations and our very presence in the campus is being criminalized.