SOLIDARITY WITH OUR COMRADE THODORIS SIPSAS
PROSECUTED FOR THE MARFIN CASE
May the 5th 2010, day of national general strike against the passing of the first Memorandum and the impoverishing, antisocial measures that it entails. At the verge of the integration of the country in the Troika’s stability mechanism, one of the most massive demonstrations of the last decades takes place in Athens. It’s differentiation from older ones is not exclusively due to the unprecedented massiveness but also due to the decisiveness and confrontational spirit expressed by a major part of the people that participated. For many hours, throughout the city’s centre, clashes of unrelenting heat and duration burst between demonstrators and the repression enforces of the police. The demonstration seems to start acquiring characteristics of insurgency, with the Parliament under siege. Then, the news about three working people meeting a tragic death after inhaling fire fumes caused by the arson of a “Marfin” branch (property of Vgenopoulos) in Stadiou Str. The sad event will mark the end of the demonstration and also its stigmatization.
For hours, the terror of the numerous repression forces could not control the social turmoil, which was deterred in just a few minutes, with the “numbness” and awkwardness that followed the news of the deaths of the three working people. The state and its spokesmen without any lingering, get in charge of the management of the situation, aiming to use it in their advantage. Immediately, bourgeois mass media-television courts, with no moral hesitation, start spreading unconfirmed information. They target the anarchists and anti-authoritarians, the wider radical movement and the social-class anti-violence exerted against the state and capital violence, in an attempt to strip it off its meaning and to taint it. Concomitantly, forbidding of people assembly in the city’s centre is announced and the repression forces attack and evacuate the street from the demostrators. In Exarchia, DELTA forces invade the “United, Polymorphous Anarchist Action” in Zaimi Str. and the “Immigrants Haunt” (Steki Metanaston) in Tsamadou Str. causing extensive damage. The foundations for the raw repression that would follow are set, and the machinations have begun.
On April the 29th 2011, three anarchists are held under detention (virtually kidnapped) by the police, without any excuse. Much later they are informed that they are considered suspects for the Marfin case and the attack against the bookstore “IANOS”. The Police, with absolutely no evidence, invokes an anonymous note, of unknown origin, that names and suggests our comrades as arsonists. All of them from the first moment they speak in public and deny the charges. Subsequently, two out of the three comrades are released from the charges and only Thodoris Sipsas, upon whom the charges are condensed, is called upon for testimony, while he keeps denying all the charges he is being accused of. On May 5th 2013 though, day of anniversary and revenge, new groundless charges for felonies are pressed for the arson of “Marfin” bank, while restriction terms are imposed, among which prohibition of participation in any march or demonstration.
Finally, the comrade is referred to court on December 9th 2013 with the only “evidence” being his participation in the strike demonstration of May the 5th 2010 and his political identity. On that day and following the request that was placed by the civil plaintiff due to alleged inability of one of the plaintiffs to attend, the trial was postponed for May the 14th 2014. That is only a few days after the anniversary of the tragic event and a few days prior to the coming elections (municipal and for the European Parliament). The state is not looking for guilty people. By setting up political machinations, he creates and highlights them.
In a time of systemic crisis and of the most acute attack of the bosses, the “state of emergency” mobilizes all its repressive, mass media and judicial machinery, and attempts to communicate threating messages toward the society, aiming at her uncomplaining consent. Invoking the assurance of social peace, possesses the monopoly of violence. Thus, it imposes the doctrine of “law and order”, repressing all those who fight daily against all expressions of the authoritarian system (e.g. struggle of the inhabitants of North Eastern Chalkidiki against “Hellenic Gold” corporation of the “national contractor” Mpompolas).
Vulgarly, it dares to treat in the same way anarchists/anti-authoritarians, all those we resist and fight and the state-supported murderous fascists. The above practices are applied within a context of a wider ideological attack that aims the moral and political annihilation of all those who struggle against the power of the state and the capital, seeking to criminalize them.
We, as anarchist men and women, shall not allow to become the prey of the machinations of authority, neither shall we passively accept the monopoly of violence. We respond to the violence daily exerted upon us with vigor, advocating the social and class anti-violence. This is not for us some sort of stress relief but rather a deep political act, the rational attack against the raging daily barbarism that the system and its suppressive mechanisms imposes upon us. An attack that cannot be anti-social since it joins the ranks of the struggling society as we ourselves are part of it, despite the carefully planned attempts of authority to isolate us from it. It is one of the means of struggle that we choose to resist and demand a society of equality, solidarity and freedom. Under these values we do not allow ourselves, under no circumstances, the margin of error and we do not recognize concepts like “bad timing”, “collateral damage” or “bad estimation”.
In the face of our prosecuted comrade, we recognize part of ourselves and we are not going to let the state machine crush him. His consistency in the social-class war that he is carrying out, through the political wing in which he belongs, is the cause for the state machinations against him. In his face all of us who prefer the “we” in order to describe our wants, taking control of our lives, are trialed. All of us who march on the streets, fight and clash, until the social liberation. In the face of the prosecuted comrade, a rotten state is reflected, which with not even trace of shame invokes the memory of dead people in order to set up political plots against our comrade, against us. The capital is also reflected and the vulgarly of its carriers, like Vgenopoulos, who oppresses his employees, diminishing their self respect and human life. The snitching of the mass media is reflected, like the “Real News” newspaper which makes haste to find our comrade “guilty”. Which uncritically do whatever they are asked to do in order to faithfully serve the interests of the state and the capital.
Let the vultures who, using our comrade, seek to target us, isolate us and highlight the image of a powerful state know that… We shall not let for a moment our comrade alone. We shall stand with solidarity by his side, against any state machination that aims his moral and physical extermination.
