In the evening hours of Friday 22/10 in Athens, a chase is carried out by the Dias (motorcycle unit) on a passing vehicle as it did not stop at the corresponding signal. Three Roma were in the vehicle. The chase started from the neighborhoods of Egaleo and ended in the streets of Perama. Unfortunately, the end of the chase took place with the car being riddled with 38 bullets while trying to extricate itself. The result was the death of the 18-year-old passenger, Nikos Sampanis, and the injury of the third passenger, while the driver managed to escape in order to save his life while the bullets were raining down behind him.
The first moves of the state, the media and the cops were out of the laundering manual in order to de-escalate any reaction. The state at first took a ‘cautious’ attitude towards the incident by arresting the cops, but without much success because support for them could not be kept hidden for too long by various politicians. The media unleashed a racist barrage against the victims, being Roma, in order to highlight how dangerous these people are and to justify the actions of the cops. However, the occupants of the car were unarmed and there was no such suspicion. Their only ‘weapon’ was their colour and their position at the bottom of the social stratification. As for the cops themselves, in order to justify their actions they employed the tactic of lying and victimization, saying that in trying to extricate the vehicle, he rammed them with the clear aim of killing them and that this was evident from the fact that 7 of them were injured. Of course, audio-visual footage came to flatly contradict these statements.
In the following days we witnessed attempts to build a profile of hard robbers as to the faces of the three Roma, but all of them , being lies, fell on deaf ears, The truth, the only truth was and is one. Cops and the state murdered a child. Racism, bigotry and power armed the hands of the cops who fired that night, not fear for their lives. After all, since when is failing to stop a vehicle at a cops signal punishable by the death penalty and on the spot? But as harsh as the truth is unfortunately we are not falling from the clouds. This is not the first time that state and capital have left cold bodies behind. Whether they come from the bullets of the cops or from the arbitrariness and impartiality of employers, from exploitation and oppression, as in the latest example of the dead 45-year-old worker Dimitris Daggli, who was dismembered by a crane bridge at the Cosco piers in the port of Piraeus. All these people will never return to their families and for a piece of bread, for a starvation wage, they paid the price with their lives. The price of being born poor in a world of the rich. And it won’t be the last time that state and capital murder only if they cease to exist. Only if those at the bottom, the exploited and the oppressed raise class barriers. Only if we overthrow the system that sows death and sorrow.
So we too wanted to put a small stone in the mosaic of class resistance and solidarity by carrying out coordinated attacks with hammers on banks and ATMs on Tuesday night 26/10, 2 in Lagada Street in the western part of Thessaloniki and one in Karamanlis Street in the eastern neighborhoods.
NOT TO GET USED TO DEATH
ORGANIZE AND STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY AND FREEDOM
Nikos Sampanis Brigade
Source: Athens IMC
