…about the uprising of immigrants on Thursday and Friday, 21 and 22 of May, in Athens…
Posted by clandestina on 31 May 2009
This a translation of a text we leafletted in Thessaloniki the last few days.
clandestinenglish
…about the uprising of immigrants on Thursday and Friday 21 and May 22 in Athens …
… background “snapshots” …
- left: refugee camp in Samos …
- center: Afghan refugee smitten by port police in Patras …
- extreme right: riot police and “Golden Dawn”neo-nazis during their collaboration for terrorizing refugees, 10th of May 2009 …
- left: teenage and children refugees in Patras port run behind trucks in order to board to Italy …
- center: The 24 year old Mazir who was killed by falling into ditch in Votanikos area in Athen, most likely while chased by police near the Asylum Police in Petrou Ralli (as two more refugees in a few months) …
- right: the religious debate has only started …
… and “perspectives” …
“It could have been something else, not the pages of the Quran …”
It could have been an old family photo. Or a crumpled piece of paper with the mobile phones of relatives and friends in Sweden, England or Germany on it. It could be some few folded banknotes – this, though, the cops would have seized, not torn. The cops, who are not supposed to treat immigrants as people; the cops, who are indifferent whether immigrants love those pieces of paper of theirs, the ones they move from one pocket to another, the same pieces of paper which count as many kilometers and borders as they themselves do. The “waste papers” of the“sans papiers”.
Someone tore up a Qur’an volume and stepped on it. Symbolic violence. Violence confirming the real degradation, the crass devaluation immigrants are subjected to by the Greek State, violence imposed in a thousand ways, not at all “symbolic”. By the Greek State, which permeates racist attitudes and rewards voluntary atrocity.
“It could have been nothing other than the Qu’ran …”
“It could have been nothing other than the Qu’ran, what could make immigrants take it to the streets” since « only religion» could make them confront collectively the cops of the “civilized world”. Because “these people” are “pious”. And only some insult to their religion could make them surface out of the rapidly growing ghettos in the center of Athens, in order to rally for something – for their religion, which is of course “absolutely respected” in tolerant Greece … as long as it remains in the basements and the back rooms of fast-foods. Which is also true for the lives of “these people”, which are “absolutely respected”in Greece as long as they remain expendable among the urban waste. As long as they stay available for slavery and death…
“They rallied under the dictates of the imams”, they are “steered”, this is the convenient explanation and perspective for the holders of authority, either grand or small. Imams ,who try to keep and expand their “flocks”… Let the ones who want to become herdsmen see herds… We don’t. What we see is people and communities from the devastated continents of the globe seeking refuge…
For the Qu’ran? Or for all the reasons of the world …
“Did you see what happened in Athens with the Qu’ran;”. Indeed. What happened in Athens was the clash of cultures, discovered in Greece as well with the usual delay! … The opportunity should not be missed…
It is absolutely clear that the people in the photos enjoying the Greek hospitality, they are not immigrants, refugees, poor people, they are not even Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis …“Muslims, that’s what they are”!
They are not reacting to the humiliations, the tortures, the detention-stables, the workplace-treatment, the deportations … No. They are doing this «because they are Muslims» …
… and those residents kept shouting to the firefighters in Patras “let them burn” during the recent fire in the refugee camp because…becasue they are Christians …
… and the landlords at Manolada shot migrant workers…
…and the Christian Ministry of Interior Affairs announced new detention mega-camps,creates a prison – warship, plans to limit even further the already negligible asylum rates …
… and the Greek State cooperating with both the Fortress Europe commissioners in Brussels and the neonazis in Athens…
…they all did and do so essentially on… religious grounds…
The only clash of cultures is the one
between freedom and exploitation.
Thessaloniki, May 24, 2009
Group of Immigrants and Refugees – «o Dromos», Baltadorou 7, Thessaloniki
clandestina 
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