Struggle With Any Means Solidarity Without Borders A public letter by anarchist prisoner Nikos Maziotis December 20, 20

Struggle With Any Means
Solidarity Without Borders


















A public letter by anarchist prisoner Nikos Maziotis

December 20, 2000

On the 8th of January 2001, I will again be on trial in the appeal court, for the bombing attempt against the ministry of Industry and Development, an action which I made in 6/12/97, in order to express my solidarity with the residents of the Strymonikos Bay villages who were, in that period, resisting the installation of a gold industry by the multinational company TVX Gold and the repressive attack of the State. The appeal on January 8th is not just a repetition of a trial.

It is a political battle of similar importance with the first one, in July of 99, which became an integral part of the anti-State and anti-capitalist struggle.

The trial in July of 99 was carried out under conditions of pressure from the U.S. government on the Greek state, for quashing terrorism and for the enactment of an anti-terrorist law, something that is expected to happen soon.

My conviction of a 15-year prison sentence was a dictated political decision, taken under the burden of that pressure, and as such it was awarded by an American official.

That conviction literately aimed at convicting the social struggles, the anarchists and their solidarity with the social struggles, the solidarity among those resisting at Strymonikos villages, the revolt against the State and Capital, and all those who resist against the existent social and political order which reigns in this world.

But the trial in July of 99, with the way it was carried out by our side, became a conviction for the State and Capital, a conviction of their crimes and an endorsement of the anarchist insurrectional tradition of struggles in the last decades in Greece, an uncompromising call for struggle against the State and Capital all over the world.

In that political battle I was not alone. There were also comrades who had been accused and imprisoned in the past for similar cases, comrades I had been with in many moments and events of the struggle, in demonstrations, occupations, in the revolt of the Polytechnic School in 95 and in solidarity movements, and the one for the struggle in Strymonikos villages.

There were comrades from abroad, from Italy and France, who came to the trial to express their solidarity, and also solidarity messages sent and read in the courtroom, like the one from the three imprisoned revolutionaries of Action Directe and other messages from anarchist groups.

The dimension of international solidarity given to that trial, was of great importance and value, proving that the struggle against the State, Capital and the New Order is common across the world.

The political and social significance of the appeal trial in January 8th is reasonable. For the State it's the second chance to impose repression again, a job they know very well how to do. A chance to put on trial again not only me, but through me the struggle of Strymonikos residents, the solidarity with their struggle, the resistance against the projects of bloodletting the land and its wealth-producing sources, the resistance against the modernization and development commands of the multi-nationals, the anarchists and all those resisting against the State and Capital.

Through this trial they convict, in general, the social struggles and anarchists solidarity with them. Every trial, like mine, and like those of other comrades, the trials of pupils for the blockades in the streets or of the Strymonikos residents who were on trial for their resistance, is an evident warning, a terrorization and a conviction of the whole of society by the state, either someone understands it or not.

When they convict and imprison others, it is like convicting and imprisoning us. When they threaten to execute Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal, it is like threatening to execute us. When they shoot the landless in Brazil, it's like shooting us. When they bombard the people of Iraq and Yugoslavia, it's like bombarding us. When they torture inside the police stations, it's like torturing us. When fighters die buried in the prisons and in the isolation cells, as in Turkey, Spain or Peru, it's like we die.

For us, the trial is a chance to declare again that they, the State, Capital, the police and the judges are the real terrorists and criminals, that the struggles and the revolt against their regime all over the world is fair, that solidarity is not a vain word, but our struggle itself.

Solidarity is not selective, nor does it have personal criteria or ideological separations, but it is unconditional for all those who fight anywhere, and with any means, against the existing social and political order.

Because the struggles of others who are far from us are also our struggles, and our struggles are theirs.

Because solidarity, for whoever it is expressed, either for workers on strike, for squatters, farmers, pupils or for political prisoners and terrorists, or for prisoners of the penal code, is one and indivisible.

Solidarity concerns everyone because State repression concerns everyone.

And the anti-terrorist law which will be instituted in a while, it concerns the fighters, the anarchists, but also it concerns the whole of society and all those resisting.

The State chooses the criteria, according to which some people will be characterized terrorists as they did for example with Strymonikos residents after the clashes on

The 9th of November, when the State and the police reacted with imposing a martial law in the area.

The anti-terrorist law is an undisguised dictatorship of the State and the security services.

Not only will the declared enemies of the State be called terrorists, but also the social struggles and demonstrations that escape from the limits of their laws and control. Those in solidarity with the terrorists and with the social struggles will also be called terrorists.

Capitalism and Power kill in many ways.

In the way of working crimes called accidents, like the deaths of the twelve workers in PETROLA (oil company) in 92, like the deaths of two construction workers after the collapse of the ATTIKI Road bridge in Paiania, like the dozens of people buried in the factories and other buildings that collapsed in the earthquake, those drowned in the nautical crimes, like the eighty dead people in Paros, or the sailors of the Dystos ship, or in the daily working accidents in construction sites and in Perama (naval refitting zone).

Capitalism poisons us, like the Australian gold multinational Esmeralda in Baia Mare of N.W. Rumania, where the overflow of a toxic waste reservoir has polluted the rivers Tisza and Danube, or like TVX Gold plans with Strymonikos Bay, polluting it permanently, or like the PETROLAS plans to expand its installations in Thriasio.

Capitalism kills, like Union Carbide, which has killed thousands of people in Bhopal of India, after the toxic wastage in 84, like the nuclear accidents of Three Mile Island, in the U.S., and of Chernobyl, that continue to kill and poison people, or like the Shell multi-national which, with the aid of the Nigerian government, expropriates by force the land of the indigenous in order to dig out petroleum.

There are no accidents in the technological civilization in which we live. There are only crimes, where the States and the corporations face the people and the land as consumable fuel for their profits and power.

Power kills when the bullets of the armed State kills immigrants or citizens, when they kill fighters.

Power terrorizes when criminalizing the social struggles, when it attacks demonstrations, when it imprisons fighters and makes anti-terrorist laws, when it puts in jail hundreds of immigrants.

Their development and democracy for us means exploitation, war, repression, death and devastation of the land. For the State and the capitalists what matters is their power and profits, despite human life.

For us what matters is freedom and dignity of human life. That's why we are revolutionaries.

Insurrectional events, like those in Seattle, Athens, Prague and Nice, signal the globalization of resistance against neo-liberalism and the New World Order.

Today, the forces that support subversion not only have to confront the new conditions of domination, neo-liberalism and New World Order, but also those inside the movement left, trade unionist and reformist residues of the Old World and the Old Order, who fight to the bitter end for the preservation and the beautification of the existing social and political establishment, for the salvation of the national State and national capitalism.

Neo-liberalism and its opponent, State protectionism, are two sides of the same coin, like the bipolar of the capitalist West and the bureaucratic East, something that has tormented the former revolutionary movement to some degree and has reduced it to an instrument of the Soviet empire, in the times of the bipolar world order.

Subversion of capitalism passes as much through the rejection of the national State and the subversion of the hierarchical State mechanisms, as through the resistance against the new conditions of domination, the transatlantic, international and transnational New Order structures.

The collapse of the regimes of non-existent socialism and the disintegration of the traditional Left, has opened up the way of new possibilities for the anti-capitalist movement.

For us its not only not the end of history, but it's just beginning...



Nikos Maziotis

Athens, Koridallos Prison

December 20, 2000

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