Christos Michalopoulos

The constant distortion of reality by the authorities and their sycophants everywhere.

On 22/10/2021 the 18 year old Roma Nikos Sampanis was shot with 36 bullets by the uniformed scum of the DIAS unit (motorcycle cops) in the area of Perama. This was preceded by the torture of Vassilis Maggos, which led to his death, followed by the rape at the Omonia Police Station, while on 22/09/2022 16-year-old Michalis was dragged and abandoned by an police vehicle in Ampelokipi in Thessaloniki, resulting in him breathing his last breath in hospital.

A little over a year after the murder of Sampanis, the 16-year-old Roma Kostas Fragoulis was murdered in Diavata, Thessaloniki on 05/06/2022 with a bullet in the head by a cop of the DIAS unit as he committed the crime of not paying for twenty euros worth of petrol.

On 11/11/2023 shortly before midnight after a chase, the cops once again murdered a Roma minor, 17-year-old Christos Michalopoulos. Two and a half months before, Kostas Manioudakis has left his last breath due to a beating by cops of the Souda police station during a random check. One month after the murder of Michalopoulos, a cop beats and abandons 19-year-old Ayse in the city of Xanthi, killing her.

To these incidents we could add countless beatings, torture, murders, all carried out by the police and silenced by the judiciary and the media.

In the few cases when police violence cannot be hidden, the mouthpieces of the state apparatus are quick to present the obvious as an isolated incident, that it was a bad moment or that the cops were in self-defense or that justice will be decided at a later stage.

It is worth mentioning that they try to throw tons of mud at the murdered person. Whether it is the criminal record, the social group to which they belong, or their political beliefs are emphasised over and over again, implying, where they do not say it outright, that it is a good thing the cop’s hand pulled the trigger. The presentation of the cop-killer is diametrically opposed. A family man with children, hard working for the safety of the citizens, with a social contribution, particularly beloved by the rest of the gang (“Hellenic Police”).

The media narrative changes the times when social revolt erupts and targets the perpetrators of so many murders. Suddenly the value of human life has become the ultimate good and the justly targeted uniformed killers become heroes wounded in the line of duty and unfairly targeted. Those who experience state and capitalist violence in their own skin and at times respond combatively to it are portrayed as brutal criminals with murderous intent.

To the apologists of the police: you and those who settle for the fairy tale you are selling are ridiculous low lives without a shred of dignity and morality.

To put it clearly and succinctly there is no room for doubt, the Greek police operate as a gang of armed potential murderers with complete impunity.

In this context we chose to carry out a raid with Molotov cocktails on 07/12/23 on the MAT (riot cops) bus on Agiou Dimitriou Street at the height of the Agricultural School in Thessaloniki. Continue reading “Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for a raid on a MAT (riot cop) bus” →

On Thursday 16/11 we chose to attack the platoon of the notorious OPKE group (Crime Prevention and Suppression Groups, Ομάδες Πρόληψης και Καταστολής Εγκλήματος) at the junction of Navarino and Charilaou Trikoupis streets. The result of the attack was the burning of the vehicle and the injury of some of them. Our attack is both a small crack in the enforced blockade of the area of the annexes by the uniformed scum of the Democracy, and a small reminder that nothing will go unanswered.

50 years after the Polytechnic uprising, 15 years after December ’08, which erupted after the murder of the anarchist student Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the states and the capitalists have launched an attack of unprecedented intensity on the conquests won through blood and struggle. The intensity of the attack is experienced by the most impoverished sections of society who are subject to daily exploitation. The murders in the workplaces and work sites, at the borders, in prisons and police checkpoints are dubbed ‘industrial accidents’, ‘isolated incidents’, ‘shootings’ and occupy a single column in the margin of a newspaper. But they are clearly state and capitalist killings in an environment where our lives are devalued and expendable. In a neoliberal environment where the bosses, whose sole criteria is to increase their profitability, aim the guns of the cops at the disposable, poor, outcasts and petty criminals. The forces of repression have always been the murderous assault battalions of bourgeois democracy. The uniformed murderers have stained their hands with blood, blood that has not yet dried after the recent cold-blooded murder of the Roma Christos Michalopoulos in Voiotia, the murder of Kostas Manioudakis, the attempted murder of the 16-year-old girl B. in Neo Heraklion and the countless beatings of demonstrators, strikers, etc. The natural perpetrators and instigators of the above incidents were men of the OPKE, a gang of murderers and torturers. To remind that no state murder will go unanswered, that the lives of the Roma count, that the blood flows and calls for revolt, interventions like these are an organic duty of every movement, organization, social process that has reference to the cause of social revolution. They are an organic task for the formation of a revolutionary movement so that the projections of social and class self-defence are not empty and heavy-handed declarations but positions of battle that actively challenge the monopoly of state/capitalist violence.

We send militant greetings to the antifascist comrades who have confronted the state and the fascists in the run-up to November 1, striking blows against the common front of cops and fascists, promoting solidarity and comradeship which remain our most powerful weapons.

Good Freedom to the guerrilla and member of the Revolutionary Struggle Pola Roupa and to comrade Kostas Dimalexis.

Solidarity to comrade Polykarpos Georgiadis (trial 13/12) and to those accused of the state frame-up called “comrades”.

Strength to the comrades D.S. and R.Z. accused of attempted explosion in Thessaloniki.

Freedom for Palestine.

Nothing is over, everything continues.

Michalis Kaltezas* Cell

Source: athens.indymedia

DN Note

*Michalis Kaltezas, the murder took place during demonstrations on the anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising in 1985. The cop Athanasios Melistas shot the 15-year-old student Michalis Kaltezas in the back of the head from a distance of twenty metres as he was running with other demonstrators towards Exarchia Square. Immediately after the death of Kaltezas, anarchists occupied the old Chemistry building on Solonos and the Polytechnic in protest. On the morning of 18 November, the University Asylum Committee, chaired by the rector Michael Stathopoulos, gave permission for the police to enter the Chemistry building. The invasion was carried out with the use of tear gas, for the first time since 1976 and the police arrested 37 people and beat them severly, while a few managed to escape and reach the occupation of the Polytechnic through the sewers. This was the first lifting of the asylum since its official establishment in 1982. The riots in Athens continued in the following days. The cop murderer was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but he appealed and was declared innocent. Revolutionary organization 17 November attacked a police van to revenge the death of Kaltezas; the attack resulted in the death of a police officer.