Pola Roupa
Open letter from clandestinity
On July 16th, 2014 the armed dogs of the establishment unleashed a fierce manhunt, and comrade Nikos Maziotis, member of the Revolutionary Struggle, was hit by a cop’s bullet and fell covered in blood. The comrade gave his battle against the cops that were chasing him. The state apparatus in its totality triumphed over the arrest of the “No 1 most-wanted fugitive” in the country. So did the criminal and real archi-terrorist Samaras, whose government took over the reins from the former pro-memorandum governments in a campaign for the biggest social genocide that has ever occurred in Greece in a time of “peace”. Samaras has used the arrest of Maziotis as a means to the stabilization of his faltering government, in order to support a political and economic regime with rotten foundations, which has long been discredited in social consciences.
For the political and economic regime, not only in Greece but also internationally, the arrest of a revolutionary with the political calibre of Nikos Maziotis is a “significant success”, as stated by the United States. That’s because the comrade’s arrest is perceived by our enemies as a blow to the struggle for the establishment’s subversion, as a blow to the struggle for liberation from the yoke of capitalism and the State, as a blow to the struggle for social Revolution. The size of threat that Maziotis poses to the establishment is reflected in the high-pitched nauseating rejoicing on the part of the domestic and foreign political power. Because the comrade and the Revolutionary Struggle, the organization in which he belongs, are intrinsically linked to the systemic political destabilization, to the undermining of a rotten regime; linked to the consistent war against domination and contemporary barbarity; linked to the struggle for the overthrow of the State and capitalism, linked to the social Revolution itself. Comrade Nikos Maziotis was and continues to be committed to the Revolution. This is what he has fought for, this is what he still fights for; this is why they present him as No 1 danger to the establishment. Thus, the political gravity of this case should be the primary parameter in expressing solidarity with the comrade.
Currently, Maziotis is a prisoner of social and class war. It’s not fair that he is in prison. It would only be fair if he was free, fighting for social Revolution. It would only be fair if those who are responsible for the plight of the Greek people, those who voted for and implement the memoranda, were shackled instead of him and they stood people’s trials; the economic elite, the rich who suck the blood of proletarians, the political elite and their servants. It would be fair if Samaras, Venizelos, Papandreou, Papademos and their criminal organizations, the Troikans and the leaders of the European Union, were shackled in chains. The domestic and foreign bosses, for the economic interests of whom the land and the people who live in it are being ravaged. These are the real terrorists and robbers. These are the ruthless criminals and brutal murderers.
The cheering about the arrest was accompanied by the anticipated attacks of state propaganda, reproduced and largely created by the mouthpieces of Power, the mass media. Attacks that tried to stain the comrade’s revolutionary character and used the shootout in the area of Monastiraki as their banner, in which the comrade is portrayed as “unscrupulous gunslinger” who opens fire indiscriminately, while the cops “are striving to neutralize him” without the use of firearms. The cops supposedly fired a single bullet, and this was merely done to “neutralize” the comrade. How nauseating liars and hypocrites are they, both the state mechanisms and the kneelers who bow down to the regime in the news bulletins! “He was shooting amid the crowd.” Who chose the place for this battle? Who started the manhunt? Or, should Maziotis have dropped the weapon and surrender without a fight?
The cops consciously opted to conduct an armed clash in a crowded place. The comrade was obliged to defend himself. After they made one of the injured tourists, who stated he was shot by a cop, disappear from publicity as soon as possible, they declared again and again in the mainstream media that they fired only one bullet, while the comrade fired eight bullets. But upon mere suspicion that the man they were chasing may turn out to be Maziotis, they would open fire even with automatic machine guns not to let him get away. Because the stakes for them were of great political importance, and they didn’t care one bit if their operation was taking place among dozens of people, nor did it matter to them if some bystander would get killed. Besides, if that happened, they would blame the comrade for it. Who could ever refute them?
As for the ridiculous claims that they had supposedly tracked him down a few days ago, these were said in the context of state propaganda, not to admit that this was a purely random incident. And this is something that can also be seen in their contradictory reports. First, they claim that the comrade was recognized by a secret policewoman shortly before the shootout. Then, they claim that a former secret policeman had recognized him days before at a metro station. If it were true that they had tracked him down the previous days, they would have arrested us. A female snitch and a moment of bad luck gave way to the manhunt. But, again, they could not admit that the police chase started randomly. All of the propaganda about locating him beforehand was generated to publicly assert that the repressive mechanisms, and especially the “antiterrorist” force, are productive and effective. But this is too far from reality. In the whole previous period, we were continuously among them. We were moving everywhere. We were passing by them. We watched them, but they did not see us.
Since the arrest of my companion, I have become “No 1 most-wanted fugitive”; I and my child, about whom the regime’s men of straw in the mass media “inform” with excessive vulgarity, disclosing a lot of his personal data, and with a nauseating hypocrisy they simultaneously reward the prosecution mechanisms for their “sensitivity” not to release the child’s photograph to the public. From now on, the cops are going to sweep the country to find the child based on any clues that they might have. Other than that, my son is not wanted by authorities… And as one disgraceful police-minded journalist stated in the past, they were hoping to catch us through the child. Now, through the child, they wish to capture me.
They have my comrade heavily wounded in their hands. Their vindictiveness was something expected. To them it is not enough that they have Maziotis with an arm crushed by a bullet and in serious health condition; so, despite the fact that the necessity for close medical supervision and more surgeries was made public, they enforced his vindictive transfer to a prison known to not have doctors even for the most basic medical needs of prisoners. No doubt that, because of this transfer alone, his condition has deteriorated. I know firsthand what kind of prison transfers are imposed on armed combatants. When I was forced to be moved to another prison while I was pregnant, I ended up in hospital bleeding, and I was forced to stay bedridden to avoid having a miscarriage. It is obvious that they are afraid. They have the comrade in their hands with his arm crushed, and yet they are still afraid.
In what has to do with me: really, did they expect and still anticipate that I’m going to give myself up? I’m not going to do them this favor. Let them come and get me. In reality, my persecutors do not believe that I would do such a thing. That’s why they raided and searched the home of my family, interrogated my mother and sister looking for any clues, but in vain. Their statements in the media, that I find myself in a difficult position and it’s possible that I will hand myself in to authorities, are nothing more than an ultimate effort to inflict pressure. My persecutors know me. They got to know me on April 10th, 2010, when I was pregnant in their hands, and despite their ridiculous attempts to terrorize me, I didn’t even tell them my name; all they received from me was spitting. They are aware of my political stance during imprisonment, they know what political stance I maintained during the entire trial process. I was, I am and I will be a member of the Revolutionary Struggle. If they think they can bend me, they are grossly mistaken.
The arrest of our comrade was a blow. Our comrade Lambros Foundas shed his blood in the alleys of Dafni, and Nikos Maziotis in Monastiraki. The Revolutionary Struggle has given its blood for the cause of social Revolution. But our enemies will not have the last word.
There is still open ground for the Revolutionary Struggle. The social ground is ours, not theirs. For our enemies it is a hostile, wild ground which they can control only with violence. Every day the State and the Capital plunder, terrorize, murder, and exterminate in their attempt to save the establishment. In the name of “tearing out of the system all the rot” they hack to death millions of people that are considered superfluous for the reproduction of capitalism. At the same time, they bombard the society with stupid stories of “economic recovery” and “a way out of the country from the tunnel of crisis”; stories that make the poor, the hungry, the ragged in this country burst into laughter and indignation.
On the 16th of July a battle took place in Monastiraki. An unequal battle between a revolutionary and tens of armed dogs of the State. An unequal battle, just as the struggle for Revolution is unequal in this historical period. A struggle between few revolutionaries and an apparatus that is armed to the teeth and very large in numbers. It’s just that this struggle, the revolutionary struggle, is not a numerical question. It is a matter of soul. It is a matter of believing in revolutionary justness. A matter of believing in the Revolution. Of combating a murderous system, criminal by its very nature, reproduced through exploitation, oppression, and even the physical extermination of people. A system reproduced by violence. The violence of economic policy, the violence exercised by the economic and political elite to keep the rotten capitalist system alive, to ensure their interests, and to continue to dominate. Every single one of us experience the results of this violence over the last four years that the country has been in the throes of crisis, with millions of unemployed and casual workers, with poverty wages, with the transformation of work in slave trade, with the worst conditions of wage slavery ever experienced by people in this country. We have seen and continue to see the results of this murderous violence in people’s hunger, malnutrition of children, starvations, sicknesses, deaths, and the ever increasing suicides. We see these results in dumpsters where humans-mice, with their dignity crushed, are diving for a piece of bread. This “concealed” violence of the system, amid a systemic crisis, has now become a weapon of mass destruction.
It is absolutely fair to fight injustice; to combat a system that is imprisoning, beating, killing second-class people, whether these are resisters, strikers and demonstrators or wretched migrants, with the raw violence of repressive mechanisms so as to consolidate the order. A system that is establishing “maximum security” dungeons with the primary purpose of annihilating the armed combatants politically, morally, psychologically, even physically, of crushing the willingness to wage an armed revolutionary struggle. A system served by a justice which requires the legitimization of all kinds of state violence (e.g. the case on the wreck in Farmakonisi, where Coast Guard officers were responsible for drowning migrants, is filed), but also the racist violence against wretched workers (e.g. strawberry producers and their foremen were acquitted for the murderous assault on migrant farm workers in Manolada). Moreover, internationally, in the name of consolidating the New World Order through wars against “terrorism”, the slaughter of an entire people in Palestine is being legitimized.
Revolutionary struggle is a matter of believing in the need of combating oppressors; of returning to the real criminals, the real terrorists and murderers who make up the system, a percentage of the violence which is perpetrated by them. Because only with armed revolutionary action they will be able to understand that they won’t stay forever untouched.
Most of all, revolutionary struggle is a matter of deep and unyielding belief in revolutionary justness, the righteousness of abolishing every form of exploitation and repression, and destroying the State and capitalism. The fairness of a society of economic equality, without rich and poor, without masters and slaves. The fairness of a society of truly free people.
In the period that the Revolutionary Struggle has been active, since 2003 to date, it has waged a forceful armed struggle against all forms of violence of the establishment which were mentioned above. Ministries, courts, police forces, banks, the stock exchange building, the American embassy, the Bank of Greece were targeted by the organization. Acting consistently, the Revolutionary Struggle has given significant responses to state violence, the violence of the economic and political elite, the violence of the establishment’s justice, and has written significant pages in the revolutionary history of this land, but also at international level.
The Revolutionary Struggle acted and spoke with regards to the economic crisis in times when silence spread over the establishment’s fraud of “eternal stability of the system” and “flourishing Greek economy”. Later, with the onset of the crisis, the organization refuted all of the dominant voices that spoke of “fortified and unassailable Greek economy,” but also the swallow perceptions, impregnated with the regime’s propaganda, that were unable to grasp the magnitude of the coming storm.
The Revolutionary Struggle spoke and acted with regards to the Revolution and the revolutionary social organization in times when these issues were buried beneath the mold of fraudulent social welfare. It kept and continues to keep the flame of social Revolution, the flame of freedom, alive. It marked, determined, inspired many people, and shaped and continues to shape consciences.
For all of the aforementioned, it has posed, poses and will pose a serious political threat to the establishment. The Revolutionary Struggle has fought, fights and will fight for all of the aforementioned. For all that, I will continue to fight.
FREEDOM FOR COMRADE NIKOS MAZIOTIS — HONOUR FOREVER TO COMRADE LAMBROS FOUNDAS — LONG LIVE THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Pola Roupa — August 8th, 2014