Latest news on struggles in Greek prisons

~ The imprisoned members cell of the R.O. CCF and Theofilos Mavropoulos announced the end of their hunger strike, after their demands were met on 30/4:
May 1st, 2012
‘A battle has been won, but the war doesn’t end just here yet…’
After 23 days of hunger strike, we come out winners against the wear and tear, the defeatism and the captivity that prevail in the world of prisoners.
We wrote that ‘we made a decision … we fight to the end…’ We stood consistent to this choice of ours even when we saw our brothers Gerasimos and Panagiotis leave the prisons, get hospitalized in bad condition, and admitted to Tzaneio Hospital. Because of all that is written, we love what one writes with his/her blood and seals with his/her actions. All the rest is hollow verbiage and a waste of time.
These 23 days, we never for one moment regretted the choice of hunger strike. We were aware of the risk. We know that at some point everyone dies… but there are deaths that weigh in different ways, because we ourselves decide the way we will die, just as we choose the way to live. And we decided to come out winners from this battle.
Gerasimos and Panagiotis won their definite transfer from Domokos prisons. Gerasimos got a transfer to Koridallos prisons and Panagiotis—as he is considered a long-term convict (sentenced to 37 years’ imprisonment), and could not come to a prison such as Koridallos, which is mainly for respondents awaiting trial—won a transfer to prisons of his own ‘choice’, so he will be transferred to Trikala prisons, where three other members of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire are already being held.
This winning provides in its own way even another legacy for our pursuit of political coexistence of the CCF members within the walls and eliminates the isolation they try to impose on us.
In this confrontation—with the system, time and wear and tear being the adversary—we put our bodies as barricade and pledge for our dignity. For this, we neither pleaded, nor begged for solidarity in places which we avoid associating ourselves with in our course as anarchists of praxis. We stayed clear of leftist parties, away from press conferences with a humanitarian background, from reformist circles. Thus, choosing to be in a conscious loneliness, we counted friends and enemies, comrades and indifferent ones, actions and silences…
We don’t have spare words for the petty populists and the insignificants. On the contrary, the words ‘we thank you’ are very poor for the comrades from the whole of Greece who ran out there, gave out texts, pasted posters, set up PA’s gatherings, organized assemblies, occupied a TV station, came with a demo outside the prisons, broadcasted updates from radio shows …
Finally, we send our warmest hug to all those vandals, hoodies, provocateurs, night-time arsonists and bombers in Greece, the anarchist nihilists in Spain, our brothers and sisters in Bolivia, in the UK, and to all the cells of the Informal Anarchist Federation and of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire…
Nothing would be the same, if it weren’t for you all…
Until me meet again, comrades.
Since, although we won, we only have to start the next battle now.
FOR THE DIFFUSION OF THE INFORMAL ANARCHIST FEDERATION (FAI/IRF)
FOR THE BLACK INTERNATIONAL OF ANARCHISTS OF PRAXIS
CCF/FAI imprisoned members cell
and the anarchist revolutionary Theofilos Mavropoulos
~ In the meantime, and according to information we received so far, the prisoner Spyros Dravilas has suspended his hunger strike after his request was, once again, rejected. The Domokos Prison Council has denied him the 5day temporary leave from prison that he’s entitled to for 2.5 years now.
~ Inside the aforementioned hellhole, Domokos, a mutiny was carried out on May 1st. Early on, police squads were also present at the detention facilities. The inmates of the E1 wing refused to enter the cells and protested against the sadistic prison guards, demanding that their fellow inmate Stavros Makelaris returns immediately in the wing from a punitive isolation cell where he is kept for 40 days already. The man was punished and put in isolation accused of making tsipouro (raki) in the prison to drink! In the night, special suppressive antiterrorist units (ΕΚΑΜ) were reportedly ready to storm the E1 wing of Domokos prisons in order to stifle the prisoners’ protest.
~ One day before that, on April 30th, the Doctors’ General Assembly of the General State Hospital of Nikaia (Athens/Piraeus) had released a public denouncement regarding a prisoner’s transfer, namely the then hunger striker Giorgos Karagiannidis. The doctors stated that the patient was admitted to the hospital (23/4) with his hands handcuffed behind his back, guarded by more than ten police officers who had covered their faces with black hoods and conspicuously held heavy weapons (automatic machine guns), while on-duty physicians had to examine the patient only under those men’s close monitoring. Nikaia’s doctors confirmed that the exact same abusive behaviour occurred when Kostas Sakkas was admitted to Attikon Hospital (25/4). As the doctors make clear, both men are political prisoners, and yet they were treated by the police as if they were nothing but ‘terror law’ offenders. Finally, they underline that certain ‘eminent’ people (like Greece’s former defense minister Akis Tsohatzopoulos, who was imprisoned shortly before the general elections) were sent to custody in ideal conditions, with discreet police presence, etc. and add: ‘as doctors of the General State Hospital of Nikaia, we are denouncing such appearances and practices that insult the personality of both our patients and ours, since we have been obliged to perform our social work under such appalling conditions, thus we declare we will no longer allow our public hospital to be converted into a show-offs’ theatre of state arbitrariness and brutality.’

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