Demonstration in solidarity with the social struggle in Greece

During the last few months, the Greek State has been imposing a series of measures to suppress a growing social movement against the governmental policies. Greece is one of the European countries with the hardest lockdown measures, and the pandemic has offered the perfect excuse for an unprecedented attack to social, civil and working rights. In this context, the government has issued a new law that forbids demonstrations as illegal and penalizes any political manifestation.

In a continuation of the EU-directed austerity measures that have been targeting the working class and dismantling the social domain during the last decade, the right-wing government of New Democracy fulfils the European Union's neoliberal policies: they privatize the public sector and destroy any remnants of social benefits. While promoting the establishment of private Universities, the government recently hired 1000 policemen as "security force" that will be controlling students and teaching staff inside the public University campuses. At the same time, instead of hiring more doctors and nurses to support the collapsing public health care system, the government finances the private clinics.

As always, the first victims of the State's oppression are the most precarious and/or resisting parts of the society: the poor, lowest-ranked people of the working class, the refugees and immigrants, the social fighters, the political prisoners. Dimitris Koufontinas, a communist political prisoner, was on hunger strike for 66 days, demanding basic rights as prisoner. In his own words: “The “state of justice”, as they call it all the time, has been fully ridiculed, there is a total disgrace of their own laws. However, what is happening is not only about the systematic extermination of a political prisoner. Nor is it about caressing the far-right fraction of a government that moves more and more towards the far-right. It is about the effort of the State to demolish a person, not for what it is, but for what it stands for, when this person refuses to knuckle under the immense pressure that the system exerts.”

•  To all this suppression of basic civil rights, the people of Greece has responded with massive, purposeful demonstrations and actions of solidarity. People reclaim the streets and gather in public squares to denounce the State oppression. The regime has responded with unparalleled violence and cruelty: the 'anti-riot police' and special police forces attack groups, individuals and demonstrators even on their way to the rallies, they arrest people in massive numbers and charge them with fake but severe accusations; people are being kidnapped by the police outside their homes and are being tortured in the police headquarters. The State-fed Mass Media, in a provocative manner, either distort this reality or remain silent, supporting the government. However, the police brutality has been captured in photos and videos made by the demonstrators, and has been circulated in the social media, in a continuous effort for counter-information (#boycottGreekMedia), despite the censorship of personal accounts and journalist sites.

• The extreme violence by the police, the fake news and ridiculous lies transmitted by the Mass Media and their political sponsors, and the escalation of the oppression by the State authorities, have altogether fueled a wave of resistance. Thousands of people have been marching in solidarity with the struggle of Koufontinas and with the struggle against the oppression of the State.

We march in solidarity with the people in Greece,

fighting against the police-state and the penalization of political action,

fighting for freedom and social justice!

Hands off the social fighters – solidarity to all political prisoners!

DEMONSTRATION

 SATURDAY MARCH 27, 14:30,

 @ SCHLOSSPLATZ, STUTTGART

Tübingen Initiative für Solidarität

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