Solidarity Occupation inThessaloniki FREE THE 7 - 25.11.2003 15:53
OCCUPATION OF THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGY FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE THESSALONIKI SEVEN Since yesterday, the 24th of November, the building of the Faculty of Theology is under occupation. We demand the immediate release of our seven comrades, arrested and detained at the demonstrations against the EU summit in June 2003 in Thessaloniki, Greece. A week of various activities in three occupied buildings on University campus, a magnificent demo of over 4,000 anarchists and antiauthoritarians through the streets of the city on Thursday, an organized clash at the red zone in Halkidiki against heavily armed police forces on Friday, and a mass excursion to the FYROM border in solidarity to hundreds of Roma refugees detained in a concentration camp, dynamic marches on Saturday, violently attacked by the police, which arrested thirty demonstrators, and attacked a meeting held in solidarity to the arrested outside the Court House the next day. Seven of the thirty arrested demonstrators were imprisoned on obviously falsified criminal offences. Five of them decided to go on a hunger strike after three months of detention, under devastating circumstances, and the refusal of all their applications for the termination of their preliminary detention. The torture and humiliation of the prisoners on behalf of officers and plainclothesmen did not end even at the hospital corridors where the prisoners are being transferred (in a seemingly endless back and forth to and from prison) in critical condition. More specifically , the detained hunger strikers who face irreversible damages to their health and risk falling in a coma at any moment are · Suleiman Daikduk Castro: on hunger strike since the 21st of September · Fernandeo Perez, Simon Chapman and Carlos Martin Martinez: on hunger strike since the 5th of October · Spyros Tsitsas: on hunger strike since the 8th of October Yesterday, the Public Prosecutor refused their application for release, a decision virtually coeval to a death sentence, as their health is steadily deteriorating. The State, through the specific orders of the minister of Justice Filippos Petsalnikos and the ex officio prosecutor, have proved that they are ready and willing to totally exterminate the demonstrators – and through them, everybody who dares to resist their plans, their orders and their values. Their ultimate plan is to impose the silence of the graveyard upon society before, during and after the Olympic Games. Power will remain invincible, and society will remain guilty, as long as society remains silent and passive in the face of the extermination of the seven detainees. SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON With our decision to occupy this building, a series of actions of counterinformation and solidarity, that started the day after the detention of the seven demonstrators, reach their final climax. In many cities, in Greece and abroad, various actions are being organized daily with the same demand: the immediate release of the Thessaloniki Seven. We are determined to get our comrades back, at any cost. This is a self-organized squat, decisions are taken in the General Assembly Meeting of the Occupation through direct democratic procedures and principles, held daily at 7 pm. We express our solidarity to all squatters occupying building with the same demand throughout the country, in Patras, Heraklion and Athens. Against the imposition of individualism and indifference SOLIDARITY, RESISTANCE, SELF-ORGANIZATION Let us organize our negation and might collectively, against all that destroys us. FREEDOM NOW FOR THE THESSALONIKI SEVEN SOLIDARITY TO THE HUNGER STRIKERS EVERYTHING AND NOTHING LESS General Meeting of the Occupation Website: http://thessaloniki.indymedia.org |