Prison Struggle – Page 32

Greece: Judicial Council of Amfissa rejects the request for release of the hunger striker Giannis Michailidis, who has been on hunger strike since 23/5

Posted on 2022/06/20 - 2022/06/20 by darknights

Today 20/6, the Judicial Council of Amfissa rejected the request for the release of fellow hunger striker Giannis Michailidis. The Judicial Council of Amfissa and its judges signed with their dirty hands the attempted extermination of our comrade. Next to their name, the word executioner will carry with it the stigma that must accompany them for the rest of their miserable lives.

The Amfissa Judicial Council has carried out part of a wider repressive plan to deal with our comrade’s hunger strike. Systematic silencing by the mainstream media, bureaucratic delay of the response in order to damage and exhaust the striker, rejection of the application at a time when he is in a critical condition in the Lamia hospital.

As we speak, after a month of hunger strike, Giannis has reached 57.5 kg, has lost more than 21% of his body weight and his life is in danger. He is locked up in a squalid cell in the Lamia hospital, without even a television to keep him informed, which he is deprived of by the ridiculous argument of the cops that “there is a fear of suicide from the TV cables”. Visits with his companion are refused, and she is not given an official update on his medical condition.

We denounce the vindictive treatment of the hunger striker and call on the mass bodies and the doctors’ trade unions to take a public stand against these outrages. Hunger strikers are not suicidal, they are putting their lives on the line and fighting for life itself to triumph.

Dead hunger strikers do not commit suicide, they are murdered by capitalist states, imperialism, fascism. This is how it is done in Turkey, this is how it has been done in Germany, Northern Ireland and elsewhere. We warn for the last time those responsible, the executives and deputies of the New Democracy, the appellants of Lamia who will examine the appeal of the hunger striker, those willing servants of the state apparatus who give any kind of cover to the plan of extermination of our comrade: Those of you who put your hand on our comrade’s extermination, those of you who become part of the repressive tactics against him, those of you who do not separate your position while it is still early, we will make sure that nothing goes unanswered.

We call upon the solidarity movement, as well as every progressive person who recognizes in Giannis a selfless fighter who fights with his life against state arbitrariness and vengefulness, to unite his voice, to join the solidarity demonstration on Friday 24/6 at 18.00 at the Propylaea. To do everything in his power to set up the roadblock that will prevent the extermination of our comrade.

Assembly of solidarity with the anarchist Giannis Michailidis today 20/6 at 18:00 at the ASOEE.

VICTORY IN THE HUNGER STRIKE OF GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS

ALL IN THE STREETS

Assembly of solidarity with the anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis

Source: athens.indymedia

Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/06/18 by darknights

In this umpteenth hearing in videoconference and after many requests, all denied, to appear and attend in person and not in absence to all the hearings of the trial that sees me charged, for the heavy and infamous accusation of massacre, I have to face the issue of videoconferencing, which enters, or to be more precise, was entering, in the infamous logic of the differentiation of the penitentiary circuits, in which the individual prisoner and accused is demonized and dehumanized by the said “considerable social dangerousness”. And I said that I was entering, because the videoconference, the trial in absentia, has been extended to all the prisoners in Italian prisons, who have been left without a real defense and with the marginalization that all this implies for all the defendants who suffer this imposition, through a liberticidal dynamic of the umpteenth emergency, this time for the Covid-19 emergency, which then became law. It is known, it is already evident and unmasked – and I am not only talking about the contradiction of this problem especially, or of one law or another – how the specific problem of the videoconference has reduced the defense to be a farce, annulling in fact the defendant within the trial.

This court will probably say that this has nothing to do with the trial taking place today.

But I believe it does, and what is more, I believe it is a fundamental issue. I am talking about the contradiction that the States possess by their own systemic nature, the fundamental problem is the disintegration and degeneration that dresses itself as emergentialism, and has the objective of breaking and directing the consolidated and ordinary legality at will, transforming it into another legality. We see it with the same dynamics of the perpetual emergency, and the specific plan of the videoconference is only an example of how the systemic authoritarianism liberticidal system expands in a capillary way. It is the exception, the emergency of today, that forges the law of tomorrow, reducing it more and more. The trials by videoconference, that is, in absentia, have been established by the continuous emergencies within the said social dangerousness, which is already the norm, such as the trial by videoconference for all the prisoners in Italian prisons. And it is not that this does not have repercussions on the real conditions of the entire trial, since it hinders the management of a real defense of the accused, creating a contradiction with what your own democratic and bourgeois law argues. Continue reading “Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.” →

Greece: Georgia Voulgari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/07/26 by darknights

The dictatorship of confinement is the mirror of democracy. It is the morbid representation of a tyranny that is not content with its military victories. It wants to see those it subjugates bend, sink into deprivation and decadence. To see in the faces of the captives that laughter disappears and misery takes its place. Power builds mass graves of souls to bury in concrete the voices of the invisible.

And yet some continue to shout. They shout loudly about injustice, inequality, arbitrariness. They shout for freedom and their voices break the concrete, cut the wires and travel free as birds in the sky. They contemplate the meanness of this world and from their proud height they fall like thunderbolts on the heads of the lords.

Comrade Giannis Michailidis belongs to these voices. A disobedient fighter both outside and inside the walls. Intransigent with the demand for encirclement to this day. Humble as a personality as much as a sworn enemy of exploitation, our comrade condenses in his journey the meanings that today we are called to defend collectively. Revolutionary consciousness against subjugation, abnegation against self-interest, the sharpening of the struggle against disarmament and generalized resignation.

In the face of the general decadence that prevails around us, there are people who, with their faith and dedication to revolutionary ideals, have left their own special mark in the militant struggle for total liberation. The lives of these people, whom we are honored to call comrades, weigh like mountains. Therefore, the struggles they wage are the struggles of all of us. Giannis placed a stake on his body to defend the collective current of those who chose to march, from the first to the last day, on the paths of intolerance through the walls. Continue reading “Greece: Georgia Voulgari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.” →

Greece: International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker Giannis Michailidis EN, DE, FR, SP, IT, JA, RU

Posted on 2022/06/17 - 2022/06/20 by darknights

International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker G. Michailidis

“After 8.5 years in prison, after all these arbitrary actions against me, I decided to put an end to my 11 years of suffering, by putting up a mound against the practice of preventive imprisonment, or else the additional punishment of escape with legal loopholes. After 5 more months of preventive detention, I am starting a hunger strike for my release. This choice, with the deep motivation of the much desired freedom, I intend to support it with the same consistency that I have supported my choices so far and for which they are avenging me.”

Giannis Michailidis, preventively imprisoned in Malandrinos prison, 23/5/2022

Throughout his life, Giannis Michailidis, has been an integral part of the struggles against the state and capital from an anarchist perspective. He participated from a young age in anarchist student groups, in demonstrations against the Iraq war, in anti-state/anti-capitalist demonstrations of the 2004-2006 anti-globalisation movement and was arrested during the conflicts. He participated in the 2006-2007 student struggles against the reactionary reforms in higher education (privatization of universities, abolition of university asylum, etc.). He fought against the plundering of nature and was arrested in an intervention against the deforestation of Mount Parnitha in 2007. He was an integral part of the December uprising, when police officers murdered in cold blood the anarchist 16-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the Exarchia area. He was present in the battles against the memoranda in 2012 and chose to expropriate the bloody wealth of the banks, remaining steadfastly committed to the vision of the overthrow of the state and capital, holding a militant – feisty stance, against the police-judicial complex, the material expression of state terrorism. Continue reading “Greece: International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker Giannis Michailidis EN, DE, FR, SP, IT, JA, RU” →

UK: Text from Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone June 11th

Posted on 2022/06/13 by darknights

Text from Toby Shone June 11th

War in the Heavens

J 11. Open Letter in solidarity with Juan Sorroche
Hi, Juan. I’m writing this letter to express my solidarity and send you a big flaming hug of anarchy for the date of June 11th. This date, which is the date of the sentencing demands from the prosecutor, and also is the date for the International Mobilization for Anarchist Prisoners, is one more day in our intransigent lives.

Most likely, you may not remember me, but we met approximately 15 years ago, in Carcelona (i.e. Barcelona, a play on words which mixes the word “Barcelona” with “carcel” or prison in Spanish – translator’s note). I recall your broad smile, your laugh, and your warm and strong heart.

I saw your letter in Respiro number two with a collage of sunflower
seeds and a zen squirrel! Comrades from the Anti-repression fund of the Western Alps sent it to me while I was in the prison of Bristol, which I’m now banned from. When I see the artwork letters of my comrades, it gives me strength. I want to share this vitality with you and all the other comrades through this letter.

Anarchist direct action has precise objectives – it advances towards
those responsible for tyranny and the structures they administer. Our struggle is irrevocable, empirical and international. It is the state which carries out the massacres. It is the state which terrorizes. All the piles of corpses at the borders of Fortress Europe and drowned in the Mediterranean are mass murders. The results of the failed military interventions in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, just to mention a few, are mass murders in the service of Western interests. Multimillion dead from poverty, malnutrition, and economic adventurism, are mass murders. The killings by police on the streets or in custody, the deaths in prison and at the hands of nationalist fascist gangs are mass murderers. And those responsible where are they? With power. We may be imprisoned but our hearts are free. As anarchists we have nothing to explain to the enemy nor apologize for. It is the state which must justify itself and it is the state which is on trial.

It is said that “mountains and rivers differ in each region. But the
wind and the moon are the same throughout the skies we look upon.”

This is the love of the comrades and the compassion which navigates.
Five continents of fire. Five arrows. Five Fingers form a fist.
A fist of solidarity.

We’ll escape beyond the sun.
And nothing can stop us.
04/06/2022
G4S Park, UK
Toby Shone

Source: Act for freedom now!

Greece: Solidarity poster for Giannis Michailidis by Nihilists for Total Liberation

Posted on 2022/06/11 by darknights

VICTORY FOR ANARCHIST HUNGER STRIKERS

Dedicated to the rabble. The fall of peoples and of humanity will be the signal of my elevation. – Max Stirner

BEFORE THE DAWN OF THE NEW NIHILISM EVERYTHING IS DOOMED TO BURN

We retrieve and bring the contents of this poster back to the present as a message of solidarity in the war of words for our comrade Giannis Michailidis who has been on hunger strike since 23/05 demanding his release from prison.

GIANNIS BE STRONG TILL FREEDOM

ΓΙΑΝΝΗ ΓΕΡΑ ΩΣ ΤΗΝ ΛΕΥΤΕΡΙΑ

Nihilists for Total Liberation and the Insurrectionary Perspective

Source: athens.indymedia

Thessaloniki, Greece: Solidarity broadcast (telephone communication) with the anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis

Posted on 2022/06/03 by darknights

FRIDAY 3/6 AT 17.30 ON FREE SOCIAL RADIO 1431AM / www.1431am.org

This Friday, the anarchist Giannis Michailidis, who started a hunger strike on 23/5, will go on air on the free social radio 1431AM. For our part, as a minimal sign of practical solidarity, we support the comrade who, with his body as his only weapon, is fighting for his liberation from the dungeons of bourgeois democracy.

FREEDOM TO THE ANARCHIST HUNGER STRIKER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS

PRISON FIRE

FIRE ON POWER

RESISTANCE AGAINST THE AUTHORITY

antistasi@espiv.net

Greece: Giannis Michailidis – Announcement of a hunger strike for my release GR, EN, DE, IT, FR, ES

Posted on 2022/06/02 - 2022/08/03 by darknights

GR: Γιάννης Μιχαηλίδης: Ανακοίνωση έναρξης απεργίας πείνας με στόχο την αποφυλάκιση μου

After 8.5 years in prison, after all these arbitrary actions against me, I decided to put an end to my 11 years of suffering, by putting a stop to the practice of pre-trial detention, or the additional punishment of escape through legal loopholes. After 5 more months of pre-trial detention, I start a hunger strike for my release. This choice, with the deep motivation of the much desired freedom, I intend to support it with the same consistency that I have supported my choices so far and for which I am being persecuted.

“Woe to those who will accept prison as a condition of life, and from the brightest sunlight, the smallest ray” – The rallying cry of the Alikarnassos prison uprising

For 11 years I have experienced state vengeance against choices in line with my values and ideas. The difficult journey, from which I choose to share some blatant vengeful acts of arbitrariness against me, began in the distant 2011, when an arrest warrant was issued against me for the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire case, for which I was eventually acquitted as there was not the slightest connection between me and the charge against me. It was the incrimination of a relationship of solidarity with wanted anarchists that put me in their place when they were arrested.

After 2 years of being on the run, I too am now walking through the heavy doors of prison, as the existence of a warrant that entails a decade of incarceration has led to certain choices and consequent mistakes. The comrades who were arrested at the time in the bank robbery in Velvento, Kozani, were tortured by the police, which is common, and then the Ministry of Public Order published photos of our swollen faces, provoking a public reaction. Of course, no police officer was accused of this by the blind Greek justice system. Continue reading “Greece: Giannis Michailidis – Announcement of a hunger strike for my release GR, EN, DE, IT, FR, ES” →

Greece: Text of Solidarity for the hunger striker Giannis Michailidis by Giannis Dimitrakis

Posted on 2022/06/01 by darknights

The militant and conscious start of the struggle that comrade Giannis Michailidis began on May 23, as a hunger striker, claiming his freedom from the prison hellholes, can only find me in solidarity with him, and, to the extent possible, with every means and way by his side. Unfortunately, my state of health does not allow me to unite words with action, so that I can accompany his struggle, for a short or long period, with a hunger strike.

I want to hope that the knowledge and experience gained a year ago from the movement, when it clashed with the same state mechanisms to justify D. It has left those who participated with a qualitative basis on which to recombine thought and action in more effective ways, leading collective solidarity to rise again as our weapon against the authoritarian rodents, like a sharp blade, cutting the state chains that vindictively hold a comrade captive and opening the way to freedom.

Good strength, all of us together have nothing and no one to fear.

The fear for freedom is stronger than all the others (fear in the heart belongs more to the bosses)

SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON

Giannis Dimitrakis

Domokos Prison 27-05-22

Source: athens.indymedia

Event updates for the hunger strike of anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis

Posted on 2022/06/01 - 2022/08/03 by darknights

27th July

URGENT Athens, Greece: Occupation at ADEDY (Civil Servants’ Confederation) in solidarity with the hunger striker G. Michailidis

– Thessaloniki, Greece: Occupation of the Thessaloniki Labour Centre for G. Michailidis by Assembly of solidarity with the hunger striker G. Michailidis (Thessaloniki)

– Greece: Statement of support to hunger striker G. Michailidis, by prisoner students at the Malandrinos SDE

TO: MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

SUBJECT: SUPPORT FOR GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS

We request that the requests of Giannis Michailidis be accepted. Immediate release.

Giannis Michailidis is deprived of this basic right of freedom. As a protest, he has been on hunger strike since 23 May 2022 and is now on the verge of death.

THAT HIS DEMANDS BE IMMEDIATELY ACCEPTED

26/7/2022

Malandrinos Second Chance School students

– Athens, Greece: Slogans at the town hall of Nikaia in solidarity with the anarchist hunger striker G. Michailidis

26th July

– URGENT: Critical health condition of 65-day hunger striker Giannis Michailidis

– Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for an arson attack on a porsche by ‘Children of chaos’

– Patras, Greece: Responsibility claim for arson actions in solidarity with the anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis

– Agrinio, Greece: Intervention for Giannis Michailidis at the concert of Giannis Angelakas.

Video of intervention

– Heraklion, Crete, Greece: The occupation of the Heraklion Town Hall continues in solidarity with G. Michailidis. The occupation of the Heraklion Town Hall continues for a second day with a book baazar at the Loggia site and with an assembly scheduled for today at 6 pm to organize the next actions.

– Greece: End of the hunger strike of Dimitris Hatzivassiliadis (in solidarity with comrade Giannis Michailidis)

Today Tuesday 26 July I am ending my hunger strike as a way of solidarity with my fellow hunger striker Giannis Michailidis.

Giannis is lying on the wings of Hitchcock’s birds.

UNCEASING STRUGGLE FOR ANARCHY BY ALL MEANS

Dimitris Hatzivassiliadis

25th July

– Athens, Greece: Multiple direct actions claimed in solidarity with anarchist hunger strike Giannis Michailidis

– Lamia, Greece: 150 comrades hold a rally outside the Court of Appeal in Lamia. The decision for whether the comrade will be released is delayed until Friday 29th prolonging the hunger strike and making it clear the state’s murderous intentions on the comrade’s life.

-South London, UK: ‘Life means intervention, decision, struggle, not to be a battery for the machine to work.’

– Heraklion, Crete, Greece: Occupation of Heraklion Town Hall in solidarity with hunger striker G. Michailidis

Since early this morning the Heraklion Town Hall is under occupation in solidarity with the hunger striker Giannis Michailidis, who has been on hunger strike since 23/05. The space is accessible and people are invited to support it.

– Chania, Crete, Greece: Occupation of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Chania, in view of the meeting of the Judicial Council of Lamia.

Immediate release of the anarchist Yannis Michaelides, hunger striker from 23 May 2022

After more than 60 days of hunger strike, today 25 July, the Judicial Council of Lamia is meeting once again to request his release. After the previous rejections of his request, comrade Giannis Michailidis is now in immediate danger of serious permanent damage to his health. We have no illusions about civil justice and its role. For our part, as a minimal act of solidarity, we proceeded to occupy the Chamber of Commerce & Industry of Chania.

The struggle for the freedom of one is a struggle for the freedom of all, until the last cage is torn down.

Occupation of the Chamber of Commerce, Chania 25/7/2022

– Xanthi, Greece: Spray at the courthouse for G. Michailidis