“From the social trench of Villa Amalias” (a statement by the Villa Amalias squat in Athens regarding the events of the past days)

For the past three days the wider area around Villa Amalias has seen events that any intelligent being living in the year 2011 would have thought to come out of a science fiction scenario. But this is not the case. This has been the reality for the past three years more or less: some have not experienced it, some do not want to see it, some are stupor and refuse to see it, some become complacent — and yet some seem to seek it.

Under the pretext of the condemnable —by all of us— murder of the 44 year old Manolis Kantaris on the junction of Tritis Septemvriou and Ipirou street, some people decided the time had come for them to cleanse the area from those strange and grubby creatures (according to them), the migrants, launching an indiscriminate pogrom.

From the very first moment TV stations stepped into a dance around the dead body, ballooning all the wrongdoings of this case, and our well-known “neighbours” made an appearance once again to help the scared residents step out of their doorsteps. Could it be that “golden dawn” is the new name of an entire area of Athens, not yet set because of some bureaucratic issues with its naming? All of a sudden, the death of a man by persons unknown with robbery as its motivation turned into the murder of an entire “nation” by “illegal migrants who act uncontrollably”. The ideal story for the fascist TV scenario writers who long a greek purity they have lost for at least half a millennium (if it ever existed at the first place that is) in order to organise feasts, with their trophy being any migrant that would happen to cross their way.

In a blink, the rules of the game are overturned and from the point where all enraged greeks would condemn criminality and uncontrollable violence in their neighbourhoods, we now reached the point where anything is allowed as long as it is committed by greeks. Mobbing is allowed and so are mass beatings, stabbings, exemplary and throughout likeliness murders — like the one of the 21 year old Bangladeshi migrant [in the neighbourhood of Kato Patisia, trans.] Everything is allowed in the name of fear, survival, imposition and revenge. Cannibalism is allowed, too.

Social cannibalism. The result of dissolved society which refuses, whether willingly or not, to acknowledge the source of all this. To understand that the poverty and squalor never came, nor will it ever come from those from below in this world. Those from bellow are the recipients of a situation that is eternally fed by those above, those holding capital and power, because this is how they safeguard their continuity. The manipulation and subjugation of the world, with social, economic and class criteria, holds for them the balance of the base of the capitalist pyramid.

By beating, stabbing or imposing yourself on whoever you consider to be inferior to you, without any specific logic, based on the colour of their skin or the country of their origin, no financial troubles of yours will be resolved. This, unless we all dream of working day and night at traffic lights, brothels, as street traders, builders, or cleaners for a crust of bread. Neither your social troubles will be resolved, since you will always have an inferiority complex —since you have it now too— inferiority and depreciation of your life by someone you consider to be your anterior.

The solution will always come through the social awareness and collective nuclei of resistance against those who truly suck away our lives. Those who convict in absentia those from below in terms of class, condemning them to a total, reciprocal extermination under the veil of order, security and prosperity. The same order and security that sent the young demonstrator Y.K. to the intensive care unit (and another 70 demonstrators to the hospital), following the consecutive murderous blows he received by the uniformed pigs, the executing force of their junto-democracy.

For the record:

For the past 3 days and continuing on from the turmoil that followed the murder of M.K., the squats of the Plateia Victorias area saw some attempts of organised attacks by golden dawn members, so-called “indignant residents” [the term often used in mass media as a euphemism for fascists/racists — trans.] —and don’t you ever dare call them racists!— and cops. Chronologically, the first such attempt happened on May 10th at the squat of Patision and Skaramanga, with the fascists trying to attack the squat aided by cops who threw tear gas to the squatters to force them retreat inside the building.

Immediately afterwards was the turn of Villa Amalias. In all these three days the aforementioned (fascists and cops) tried to attack the squat but they were unsuccessful, as the crouching together and solidarity of those who see part of their self in Villa prevented this aim. In their attempt they found a helping hand, as in all their actions up to date, in the police. Sometimes hand by hand and lined up together, sometimes with the cops in the front and their fascist poodles following behind, sometimes the other time round. In any case this illegal relationship of affection and passion between the greek police and fascists has started to become legalised a long while ago, and it has been blatantly covered up not only by the state (that is, the employer of both) but by the media as well (a faithful contractor and associate of the state in dealing with tasks of social stupor and distortion of events). Or, with the narration of history either cut in half, or distorted. The truth in just three lines is that they came, they got their response —and not only that— and they bolted, because their procurers threw us tear gas. End of the story.

All these “gentlemen” should make clear in their minds that for us, people and ideas are not disposable products or part of some trend that we would change or bin at the first instance. Our responses, from whatever post they are given, will always be collective, dynamic and unabridged — they will not be supported or manipulated by anyone who wants to gain from bodies, whether metaphorically or literally. For us life has no “price tag” to negotiate in the markets of nationalities and their falsified national pride.

We have written this in the past but we do not tire ourselves in repeating it: we consciously find ourselves facing and against any exploiter, procurer and heroin dealer, regardless of nationality. Yet we also know that what is lacking is neither more police (there is an excess of that), the demand for order and security, nor of course the racist propaganda and fascist violence. What is lacking is the courage of the contact and association with what is different, the mutual self respect and dignity, the attempts for cross-cultural coexistence and the (substantial, not para-statal) self-organising, which can heal many of the wounds of our multicultural/proletarian neighbourhoods.

A HUMAN’S BLOOD SHALL NOT BECOME

A SEA THAT THE FASCISTS CAN FISH OUT FROM



May 13th, 2011

Villa Amalias Squat

80, Aharnon Str. & Heiden