PUBLIC DECLARATION OF FORMER POLITICAL PRISONERS (greece)

who have refused to give a DNA sample or would not give one were they asked to

Greece looks nothing like the advertisements of the Ministry of Tourism. We live in an era of subtle dictatorship. Organised assaults on protesters, joint para-State and police actions, racist pogroms, dozens of political prisoners, training the army in “crowd dispersal”, water cannons in Keratea area and outside the Parliament, fences in Evros river but also in V. Sofias Avenue.
The bourgeoisie is armed to defend its interests; with attempts at “psychological warfare” by journalists, the attacks of IMF and EU, the action of Greek and multinational capital …with new measures and new memorandums.
The world of power is armed to exterminate its political opponents. Each scheme of undirected and global resistance must be crushed. Each perspective of revolutionary insurrection must be defeated in advance; with upgraded terror-laws, fabricated prosecutions, dictated reports, bounties, special courts; with the dispersion of the detainees to prisons all over Greece and their isolation in “fortified wings”.
Our position, we, eight former political prisoners, who have been imprisoned over the past two years accused in various cases, our answer to all those who interpret our refusal to give DNA sample at will and as it suits them: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”, as G. Orwell reminds us.
The option that police are taking and analyzing DNA it is not just another “special interrogation measure” as introduced with the first terror-law (ν.2928/2001). On the pretext of the upright denial of those accused of “terrorist acts” to give DNA samples, another “eloquent” element is being constructed. An initial “indication of guilt” is enough for you to be held in custody; following that requests for release will be rejected and so the prosecutor confidently recommends your conviction. In the end that will be enough, so you will be sentenced to severe retribution.
The refusal of political prisoners to donate something of themselves to the laboratories of the Division of Criminal Investigation does not concern the contempt of every law of the Constitution that is about the “respect and protection of human dignity”, “personal freedom” and “protection of sensitive personal data”. These concern the Law professors and constitutional experts. Our refusal relates to something much more important. This is a clear political position against exploitation, coercion, alienation, control.
Therefore our refusal to give DNA is not governed by a superficial, reactionary type of non-cooperation with the protection units of the regime; nor is it characterized by political type of destitution or insignificance in substance. It is a vital political position, an additional subversive dispute which builds a political and practical barrier in the supervision of our lives. We will never consent to genetic material banks and to the exchange of personal data between intelligence services (from September ’09 U.S. authorities have officially free, on line, access to the records of fingerprints and DNA of the Greek Police). Because we will resist the genetic profiling that aims to enforce the law even for those accused of misdemeanours; because we will never legitimize the most controversial identification process, given that even Interpol, according to its reported affirmations in the 1st International Conference on use of DNA, refers to “the need for all operators to treat with caution the data (on DNA), that the police can seize”. Because we will never offer the chance to the police laboratories to replicate and place our genetic material – even if the equipment is put up for sale for free on the internet – on explosive devices, outside hideouts, inside banks burnt to the ground …and will let our choice have its precise price.
Not hiding anything, simply because we have nothing to fear. And if some look for pretexts and excuses, we understand them. They are not able to comprehend that there are people who do not put their personal interests above everything; above their values ​​and conscience; above the struggle for the overthrowing of capitalism. They cannot understand such a “suicidal” choice, simply because it moves against the world that they are defending; the world of exploitation and class separations of appearances and lies, fear and subjection; a world of power which we are continuously fighting more and more .
Our DNA is on the barricades, in the areas of clashes where the revolution is not negotiable, it is in the prison cells where our comrades are imprisoned, in the assemblies, in the hardcore marches and strikes, sabotages and powerful attacks. It is found where the radical struggle takes flesh and bones: in the fermentation, communication, solidarity and comradeship. It is found in every expression of the social war; the war for anarchy, overthrowing, freedom.



Fei Mayer
Vaggelis Stathopoulos
Sarantos Nikitopoulos
Christoforos Cortesis
Panagiotis Masouras
Aris Seirinides
Christos Politis
Dimitris Michael

[published in Pontiki newspaper athens 08/07/11]