Events in Chania, Crete and Larissa, Thessaly on the new law on Citizenship

Chania, Friday 5 March, 8 pm, Technical Chamber Chania, Nearhou str.

Larissa, Thursday 5 March, Trade Union Center, Larissa, 19.00

About the death of the Indian immigrant worker in Varipetro, Chania, Jan 31, 2010

This is a Forum of Migrants in Crete press release.

For the death of the Indian worker in Varipetro, Chania, on Sunday, 31/1/2010

3 FEB 2010
Labour accidents are tragic, shocking events. But what is more than shocking is what these people die of: inadequate protection measures.
One more spectre that should haunt the sleep of state bureaucracies, trade union bosses, and the business world.

Another worker killed, due to inadequate safety measures.

He fell from scaffolds, from a 6 meters height …

We note that many immigrant workers have already lost their lives in a working regime verging on cruelty. We are not only talking about the labour intense and unsafe conditions, but also about the long shifts, the ridiculous wages and of course the uninsured status. It is the harsh reality, which the Greek politicians do not see and nobody refers to now that the new bill on citizenship and immigration is discussed. It is the hard fact that some Greek people refuse to see, entrenched as they are in insecurity and fear and the conviction that they have discovered the “enemy” of their wealth: immigrants. Yet, it is immigrants -uninsured and underpaid – who build their houses, who look after their elderly relatives and their household, who pick fruit from their fields, who do all those jobs that Greeks refuse to do anymore.

We require that the state protects workers and implements the labour law.

We demand that trade union leaders deter further accidents and deaths by having unions’ and associations’ gates wide open for their immigrants colleagues (with or without papers) who should be fully entitled to the rights of membership

Let us not wait passively for the next “accidental death”.
Greek and foreign workers, united, let us claim now everything that is ours.

Let us push with our actions the employers, who we know very well will never show concern for us.

No more deaths, no more crippled workers.

One step forward, two steps back! Forum of Migrants in Crete event on the new Immigration Bill

This is a translation of a Forum of Migrants in Crete press release.

ANNOUNCEMENT – CALL
for debate on the  immigration bill
1 step forward and two steps back

The Forum of Migrants in Crete considers that the proposed amendments to the Code of citizenship and the participation in elections of local government indeed are in the right direction – at any case we would be saying the same thing, even if it was about a single immigrant obtaining his/her rights.

The proposal to grant citizenship to second generation immigrants puts partially an end to the chronic hostage status of the second generation immigrants.  However the bill requires 5 years of lawful and undisrupted residence of their parents in the country, attendance of the first three classes of the primary school or 6 years of attendance at a Greek school.   So, we ask:

• what about the children whose parents had been legally residing but were at some point unable to renew their residence permits (in most cases because they had not adequate work revenue stamps)?
• what about the children who have no parents (since many minors come on their own)?
• what about the children of parents without legal documents?

Concerning the proposal for the participation of all long-term foreign residents in the local authority elections, we ask why the boll excludes them from being candidates for senior posts?

We respond to xenophobic voices that they should not worry, since in any case the bill concerns to only a very small percentage of people from other countries, those who live lawfully and continuously for many years in Greece.

As for the acquisition of Greek citizenship by first generation immigrants, we actually wait to see the concrete and final requirements of the bill; under the pressure of racist critics. though, we expect them to be harsch.

We will continue to struggle for the legalization of all immigrants (the draft law does not say a single word about sans papiers, and legal documents is a prerequisite for everything proposed by the bill).

We will continue to struggle for citizenship for all children born, live and grown-up in this place.

We call for an info, discussion and recommendations event on Tuesday, January 26, 6:00 pm at Agora Sq. Chania.

Chania, Jan. 24, 2010.
Forum of Immigrants in Crete

NOTE: this call by the Forum of Immigrants in Crete is in the frame of a AN ANTIRACIST DEMONSTRATION CALL BY VARIOUS ORGANISATIONS IN CHANIA.  SIMILAR CALLS AHVE BEEN MADE IN OTHER CITIES AS WELL (Herakleion, Ioannina etc.) This is the Chania demonstrations poster:

Antiracist demo attacked by fascists in Athens / Update on the arson attack against synagogue in Chania

source:  libcom article.

for the synagogue incident see this post.

Antiracist demo attacked by fascists in Athens

A local antiracist demo in Ampelokipoi, Athens, came under attack by fascist thugs, leading to the hospitalisation of one woman. More than 40 fascists have been detained. The attack marks a climax of fascist violence which has also led to the torching of Chania’s Synagogue.

On Saturday 23 January an anti-racist demo of the Cultural Centre of Ambelokipoi in Athens was fiercely attacked by a fascist group of so-called “autonomous nationalists”. The demo was organised as a response to continuing disturbance of the functioning of the 50 year old Centre by fascist thugs who tried to burn it down last week. Before the official start-time of the demo, at 12, when only the organisers were in Panormou square, 40 fascist thugs attacked them with sticks leading to the wounding of three people, amongst which a 50 year old woman who has been hospitalised. During the attack riot police forces stationed in the square stood by watching, even moving aside to let the fascists strike. Nevertheless, the demostrators managed to counterattack chasing the fascists, despite police efforts to stop them.

Thr police finally intervened only after it became known that an MP was also amongst the people attacked. The police intervention has led to 44 detentions of fascists, who are being interrogated at the police headquarters.

The attack comes in a climax of similar moves that have been growing ever since the government announced a law that will legalise hundreds of thousands of second generation immigrants giving them the right to vote. The extreme-right has launched a campaign of hate in order to halt the procedure.

Ambelokipoi, the area where the attack took place, has a long record of fascist action, with leafleting at schools of the area coming under frequent attacks, once even at gun-point. This does not however mean that the neighbourhood is fascist as such. In fact, after the 50 year old woman was taken to the near by Red Cross Hospital, doctors and nurses came down to the street to join the demo in protest to the fascist violence. The demo formed a protest march towards the Athens police HQ which is also in the area.

The Coalition of Radical Left MP who participated in the demo has declared that “For one more time fascists are acting in the open with the toleration of the police against any kind of protest against racism and xenophobia. This terrorism will not pass. Fascism will not take root in this country”. The Left wing labour union umbrella “Autonomous Intervention” denounced the “Uncontrollable activity of neofascist groups which are provoking the democratic and anti-fascist sentiments of the people”.

It must be noted that recently Spartakos, the 30 year old “Network of Free Conscripts”, revealed that the Ministry of National Defense has been organising paramilitary training camps in Chalkdiki, where ex-soldiers and other militaristic elements have been trained in “counterterrorist” operations. After the revelations, Spartacus has come under the spotlight of the fascist parliamentary party LAOS, which has demanded from the Ministry the containment of the group. Spartakos has denounced efforts of detaining its members during leafleting, and has further revealed that a secret General Stuff document describing in detail the Network’s totally legal day-to-day activities has come to the Network’s possession.

Moreover, the escalation of fascist violence has inculded the torching of the Chania Synagogue which destroyed thousands of rare manuscripts and books. Regarding the torching (twice in one month), the police has arrested 1 greek and 2 british citizens as part of the anti-Semitic group that perpetrated the attack. The greek has confessed, while the british are denying any involvement in the act; 2 US citizens are also wanted for the same case. However, the police is refusing to follow the link to the torching of the Immigrant Social Centre of the city which occurred within the same time. Swastikas were found painted in the torched Immigrant Centre, while a slate of soap believed to be the group’s signature was found in the torched Synagogue.

The arrests come as a rare incident in a country where fascist action is tolerated by the state to the degree that it is often believed that fascist groups are in fact parastate terror organisations, similar to the ones kept by the state until the end of the junta.

Update: According to the bourgeois media, 35 of the detainees have been declared arrested and will be persecuted for “breach of the peace”. It is indicative of the state’s stance towards the fascists that although one person was hospitalised during their attack, the thugs are not accused for human injuries etc. “Breach of the peace” is the most harmless accusation possible under the circumstances. It is also indicative that, as revealed by photos published on the web, the fascists are not being persecuted under the anti-hood law, though they are visibly arrested while wearing full-face masks. Unlike the usual police brutality towards anarchists and the left, or in fact any common protester, the cops did not even use their batons against their ideological colleagues.

Update2: According to the bourgeois media, the final outcome of the interrogations has been the arrest of all 44 fascists. Apart from the initial charge for “breach of the peace” initially suggested, the state persecutor has also charged them with the anti-hood law, attempt to cause bodily damage, illegal carrying of weapons and illegal use of weapons. Two of the 44 have been also charged with dangerous bodily damage, and one of them with dangerous bodily damage and threat. 8 of them are also accused with insulting the authorities and moral culpability for all the above acts. All 44 remain in custody awaiting their appearance before the state interrogator.

It is estimated by some radical cyrcles that the so-called “autonomous nationalists” are a splinter group of the neonazi paramilitary Golden Dawn which is under the direct control of the state. In this perspective the wave of attacks recently could be part of an inter-fascist antagonism, while the arrest of the 44 could signal a purge of fascists who try to break away from the direct control of the national service of information (EYP).

Arson attacks against the Synagogue in Hania, Crete

This is a translation of a  press release by the Forum of Migrants in Crete.  More about the arson attacks at http://abravanel.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/second-arson-in-hania-synagogue/

Hania, Crete January 18 2010.

Once again racist hate armed the hand of those who target the core of the rights OF US ALL.

The synagogue was for the second time in a few days engulfed in the flames of hatred.

We immigrants of Chania, with different religions, languages, places of origin, condemn all acts of racial hatred and all acts of violence and violation of religious rights. At the same time we fight for those things that are yet to be done  in our area (eg a Muslim cemetery).

Xenophobic, racist messages have been sent throughout Greece recently by both obscure circles and official parliamentary and political spheres, in response to the economic crisis or the new bill on immigration and citizenship; these have become the “official” ideology alibis of the fascist gangs in Chania and all over the country, as well as their political coverage for inciting crimes against immigrants and Greek people who act in solidarity, as well as for attacks on social spaces of resistance, or “different” religions.

They are the same political wings, of course, who despite the ideological alibi they offer for the burning of a Synagogue, they have not a single word to say about the massacre of hundreds of deaths in Gaza, one year ago; not a word for the on-going crime against the people who for so many years are imprisoned and are being murdered in their very homeland due to the criminal aggression of the Israeli ARMY.

We immigrants active in the Forum of Immigrants in Crete, we are determined to stand side by side with every Hania resident who does not want these phenomena to grow roots here; we will struggle to keep our town humane.

Fasco-thugs hit once more in Chania, Crete.

The fasco-thugs in Chania, Crete made one more hideus, cowardice assault (for the previous ones see this and this).   In the small hours of Dec 27 inside a bar in the city’s Venetian Port area (an area with many bars) they beat with  baseball bats and knuckle dusters two Palestinians and one Moroccan guy, as well as a German woman who was in their company.    They only person in that company they did not beat was a Greek woman.   The “hit squad” of the thugs entered the bar prepared and with the sole purpose of attempting the murderous assault they did attempt, without having been provoked in no way whatsoever.

The male immigrants suffered injuries at their head and face, but were not in immediate need of hospitalisation after receiving first aid treatment.  The German woman is at hospital, with very severe injuries at her head and with face virtually deformed.

source: Forum of Migrants in Crete’s blog.

Money for detention centers until “screening centers” come…

source: athens news

THE GOVERNMENT has announced it will pay back all the money spent last year by the country’s border prefectures – including Samos, Lesvos, Chios, Chania and the Dodecanese – to maintain and operate the detention centres for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. The prefectures have accrued some 8.5 million euros in debt.

The decision was announced by Deputy Interior Minister Theodora Tzakri during a meeting with the prefects in Athens on December 7.

“We are very pleased with the minister’s announcement,” Manolis Karlas, prefect of the island of Samos, which lies just off the coast of Turkey, told the Athens News immediately following the meeting. “She promised we would receive all the money owed by the end of the year. A first instalment will be paid next week. This money has been spent to feed and clothe the migrants and to pay for their transportation to Athens.”

Karlas, like the other prefects, is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the detention centres for illegal migrants.

“We have about 80 [migrants] on the island today,” he explained. “But during the summer months the number exceeds 800. And they all need food, clothes and shoes. We feed them three times a day. All this costs money.”

He and the other prefects informed Tzakri that the current situation has forced them to shop on credit and run up huge debts with local merchants.

The number of migrants sneaking into Greece has skyrocketed in the past few years. Official data compiled by Greece’s interior ministry show more than 146,000 migrants were arrested for entering the country illegally in 2008. This is more than double the number recorded three years ago. The government has repeatedly stressed the need for more EU help.

To provide a permanent solution, the Pasok government is planning to transform migrant detention centres into so-called screening centres, where undocumented migrants and asylum seekers will stay for only a few days as their status is being decided. A similar system exists in other European Union countries.

This is a major detour in policy pursued by the former New Democracy government, which had announced the creation of dozens of additional migrant detention centres across the country. It had planned to transform dozens of disused military facilities into detention centres and to detain undocumented migrants for as long as a year or until they were deported.

However, the conditions at many of the country’s existing migrant detention centres have been harshly criticised by representatives of local and international human rights groups, and the current government itself.

During a visit of the overcrowded facility on the island of Lesvos, Spyros Vouyias, the deputy minister for the protection of citizens, condemned the condition of the overcrowded facility on the island of Lesvos and ordered its immediate closure last month.

Using language surprisingly harsh for a cabinet member, he told reporters that conditions there were “appalling, inhuman, a violation of basic human rights”.

Last week, the government announced plans to overhaul existing asylum legislation in order to increase the number of people who may secure refugee status. Greece currently has the lowest rate of refugee recognition in Europe. According to Michalis Chrysohoidis, the citizen protection minister, it is currently 0.03 percent.

Chrysohoidis has also announced that the police will no longer be the sole decision-maker on asylum applications. This will be assigned to a new committee of government officials, legal experts and members of non-governmental organisations. As many as 40,000 asylum applications are currently pending.

From Anti-Immigrant Summer to Zero Tolerance on Election Bait

Text in Greek available here.

On the occasion of the International Migrants Day

Just over a month and half ago Prime Minister Papandreou used the Global Forum on Immigration & Development proceedings in Athens to sketch government measures which would stand for a humanitarian turn compared to the policies and situation of the recent months .  He described as necessary

“[T]o stimulate the participation of immigrants in the political life of the country, through the possibility of Greek citizenship acquisition, particularly of course for the so-called ‘second generation’, in which we are suggesting the acquisition of citizenship by birth for the new person born in our territory.”

For people in Greece, though, the announcement of the Secretary for Home Affairs Theodora Tzakri two weeks later, which made clear that Greek citizenship would be granted only to children born to legal immigrants, came as no surprise.

The doctrine of “Zero tolerance to illegal migration” goes hand in hand with this government’s humanitarian turn… As for what this turn is all about, it aims at incorporating immigrants mostly from Albania, after two decades of overexploitation, and in exchange for votes. A phony exchange indeed.

Along with this, the dividing of immigrants into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘useful’ and ‘superfluous’, ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ becomes more intense, and the system of exploitation grows deeper roots .

As we wrote in our above linked text on the Global Forum on Immigration & Development:

“The aim of developmental policy is to control migration flows (through the FRONTEX patrols and detention centres) as well as to regulate them (through 5-year rotating work permits, the annulment of asylum rights), in order to keep a stable proportion of productive inhabitants within the increasingly ageing, unproductive populations of Europe. In other words, recycling the migrants will keep the indexes of development in check, development being the systematic and bloodthirsty pillage of lives and resources, time and space.

According to the “UN Population Division report on replacement migration”, if the Europeans want to keep their ratio of older people to active workers at the 1995 levels, the Union will need 135 million immigrants by 2025.

This demographic issue is only part of the story, and maybe not the most important. Neoliberalization inside Europe has meant a weakened, destabilized labor force. It’s not just that capital wants selected migrants because it needs more workers, it wants migrants because they are powerless, unorganized, low-paid workers for whom there will be no job security, no health care and no pensions.In other words, they are far cheaper and less troublesome workers”.

Illegal immigrants are necessary because through them the rights of the legal ones are suppressed (there is of course rotation of people in these roles). At the same time, illegal immigration helps governments maintain a useful xenophobic atmosphere to impose authoritarian policies. “Migration management” includes both authoritarian hysteria and humanitarian logistics. The two seemingly opposite positions are the two sides of the same coin of subjugation.

So let’s outline against this backdrop the government’s humanitarian turn after the elections of October 2009…

The Doctrine “Insulated Greece”

The new doctrine was introduced by Minister of Citizen Protection (= Public Order) M. Chrisochoïdis on Tuesday, December 15, at his meeting with the FRONTEX Executive Director J.Laitinen.   The construction of the Southeast Mediterranean FRONTEX Headquarters at the U.S. base of Aktion or at Piraeus has been a permanent request of the Greek government, which proudly stated that 75% of illegal entry arrests at the sea borders of EU for this year took place in the Aegean sea.

A few days earlier in the frame of FRONTEX operations (on Saturday, December 12) officers in Samos island, on no notice whatsoever and violently, carried out with utmost secrecy the transfer of over 85 Afghan refugees from the local detention center to the island’s airport at Pythagorio.  There the refugees were boarded on an airplane which departed for an unknown destination.

The slaughter in the Aegean Sea continues

In less than two months, 16 migrants have died in the icy waters of the Aegean. Most of them were children.

• On Tuesday, October 27, 8 immigrants, three adults and five children, drowned in the east part of the Aegean Sea.
• On Saturday, November 7, the lifeless bodies of six children from Palestine, aged 2 to 12 years, washed up on shore near Bodrum (Alikarnasos), Turkey.  The boat in which 19 Palestinians – half of them children – squeezed themselves on an effort to pass from the Turkish town of Turgutreis to Kos island overturned 500 meters from the shore.
• On Friday, December 11, a boat carrying undocumented migrants sank near the island of Leros. Fishermen found 25 migrants perched on a rocky island and two more lifeless bodies in the sea.

Police violence

Incidents of abuse and humiliation by the police amount to dozens, and most of them never reach the public attention. We report the following characteristic cases:

• In the afternoon of October 22, immediately after the visit of Secretary of State Vougias the detention center in Pagani of Mytilene, police officers responsible for guarding the center abused and beat prisoners, including a 17-year boy, who was evacuated to the Vostanio Hospital, where lesions were diagnosed on his head, back, waist and arms. According to the interpreter, the police promised 350 euros to the victim to buy his silence.
• On the 19th of November in the afternoon a 35-year old immigrant was beaten by two officers serving at the infamous Aghios Panteleimonas Police Station in Athens. Her two year old child witnessed the beating and the arrest, and along with her mother remained under custody at the Kypseli Police Station for four hours! The incident became known only because the woman is married to a famous Greek musician.
• On Friday, November 20 , immigrant detainee Mohammed bin Taher collapsed in the courts of Evelpidon street in Athens. His condition was such that he was taken to hospital by ambulance. As reported by the his fellow detainees (and he later confirmed) Mohammed bin Taher had been savagely beaten by police at the Omonoia Police Station.
• On the 9th of October Mohammed Kamran dies after the treatment he received by the policemen who had raided the house where he and fellow Pakistani workers resided in Nikaia, Athens.

Para-state violence

The para-state mechanism was launched last summer against immigrants and since then it has been working relentlessly despite the supposed change of policy.

• The most recent incident was the attack of last Tuesday, December 15, against the Social Haunt – Immigrants Haunt in Chania, Crete (hometown of the former Minister of Public Order Markoyannakis).  In the same city on December 8 there has been a savage criminal attack against two immigrants by unknown perpetrators. The near-killers attacked the immigrant workers in the back with crowbars, and left them with serious head and body injuries.  One of the 2 victims was among the 15 hunger strikers of last year , who shook the island of Crete with their proud struggle. The intensity of the attacks in Chania definitely is related to the dynamic struggles of immigrants in the city.
• In Athens, brutal attacks against Arab shops took place at the Neos Kosmos district on Monday, November 22, when 40 people holding crowbars and molotov cocktails attacked and injured the employees in two mini-markets, destroyed the merchandise and stole the money of the cashier.

Para-state organized violence encourages and feeds the diffuse social one.

• Thus, on November 8, four immigrants who had been working at olive fields in Messolongi, Western Greece, were attacked with crowbars and clubs and beaten savagely by circa 15 people. The immigrants were transferred to the emergency dept. of the Messolongi hospital. The immigrants had been asking their wages from the owner of the fields in which they had been working.  They were ambushed and beaten in an old warehouse, where they had an appointment with their employer to get their money.

Institutional violence

• In late November the trial of 25 immigrants (mainly Arabs and one Afghan) took place; they had been arrested during the events of December 2008 and had been detained ever since.  All this period they were considered missing.  All of them were sentenced to imprisonment from 7 months to 3 years.  It is characteristic for the fairness of the trial that only one interpreter had been assigned , who translated simultaneously for 24 defendants who were divided in three groups in the court’s room.  The Afghan who did not understand Arabic was seated on the last bench of the room…
• On Friday, December 11, in Thessaloniki, a report was issued by the Hellenic League for Human Rights, about the detention centers in Evros and Rodopi.  The survey took place from the 25th to the 29th of November 2009 and states:

In many cases there is inadequate lighting, ventilation and heating (…)  At virtually none of the premises visited have the possibility to go outdoors on some yard. Even in detention centers where there is an adequate yard, the large number of detainees on the one hand and the lack of personnel on the other allows usually only for some prisoners to have outdoor breaks for a minimum period and not on a daily basis (…)  Food in many cases is inadequate, the quantity and quality in general varies (..). The care taken for sanitation and hygiene conditions varies from inexistent to inadequate (…) The availability of medical and nursing staff is poor and at all cases occasional (…) The detainees were in total confusion regarding their rights, the time of their detention and ill-informed as to asylum procedures; interpreters were not available.

December 18, 2009

Clandestina Network

Group of Immigrants and Refugees, Thessaloniki

New assaults by para-state neo-nazis in Chania Crete against social spaces and comrade’s home – Rally and march tomorrow against rising fascist violence.

Immigrant's Haunt, Social Haunt's entrance after the fire.

Police’s pets, right extremists in Chania, Crete, continue with their aggression.  Yesterday evening, unknown perpetrators threw two molotov coctail bombs against the family house of a comrade who is involved in anarchist and antiracist initiatives, while his family (not he himself) was inside (includng his toddler nephew).  Some days ago, he and a friend had been ambushed late at night by a group of ten and severely beaten.  Info by Chaniotika Nea local newpaper.

The last social space hit by the fasco-group(s) in the town of Chania was the Immigrants Haunt – Social Haunt.    In the small hours yesterday night they broke into the building and put a fire on the entrance.   They signed on the walls with swastikas.   Last week they had painted racist graffiti on the outside walls.

AFTER THE RECENT NEO-NAZI-ACTIVITY, AN ANTI-FASCIST RALLY AND MARCH CALL HAS BEEN MADE BY VARIOUS ORGANISATIONS AND COLLECTIVES  FOR TOMORROW, THURSDAY, DEC 17, 19.00, AT AGORA SQ.

BELOW IS THE POSTER CALLING.

Murderous assaults by neo-nazis in Chania, Crete, and impunity for racist murder perpetrators.

TWO NEW PRESS – RELEASES BY THE FORUM OF IMMIGRANTS IN CRETE ON RECENT PROLIFERATION OF NEO-NAZI ACTIVITY IN CHANIA, CRETE; AND THE PROLONGATION OF A HIDEOUS RACIST CRIME BY THE SYSTEM OF “JUSTICE” IN RETHYMNO

Savage Assault against Immigrants in Chania

Τwo immigrants were savagely assaulted by last Tuesday, December 8, in downtown Chania, at10 at night. The unknown perpetrators nearly killed the immigrants who were sitting on a bench in a square of the city centre.  They attacked them with iron crowbars, all of a sudden and from the back, and behind the bench so that not to be noticed and resisted by their victims . They left them with serious head and body injuries.

One of the 2 immigrant workers happened to be one of the 15 hunger strikers who last year surprised the town with their proud struggle. At the hospital he was able to give us a first description of the thugs. Gym freaks with shaved heads. Figures that allow us to suspect with certainty the neo-Nazis, Hitler-nostalgics, para-state that recently have been trying to make their pittiful presence sensed in the town. The scumbags who in large groups ambush and beat individuals simply because they do not like their face of social and political areas because they classify them as enemies of the homeland and their Aryan race. The same people who appear and “provoke” rallies and marches, who flock and flirt in public with the police, who threaten or beat protesters, because they don’t like demonstrations.

They have long been active in our town as well, and elsewhere in the prefectire, as in Kastelli Kissamou. The names of their leaders have been whispered in schools, football stadiums and cafes.  They recruit and trade in the divisive violence among the the youth whose blood is hot with passion and anger. They complete the work begun by “loyal to democracy” right-wing circles and political spaces. They poison the social body with hatred and preposterous lies for ten years now, with the full support of economic and political power blocs. The neo-Nazis are merely the executive arm of the fascist turn in the society .

After the uprising of December, these processes accelerated. Like everywhere in Greece, so in the ‘democratic Chania’ we have been witnessing a proliferation of attacks against immigrants and struggling people. In fact, the perpetrators have been acting scandalously undisturbed. We have no doubt that the society of labor, work, dignity, the democratic society can deal with them. It must stand against to them, because it is itself the target of fascists. This is what fascists hate and want to discipline, just like their ideological ancestors 70 years ago did.

Chania, 10 December 2009

Innocent by-standers of an assassination!!!

At New Year’s Day 2006, a young Albanian was killed with incredible ferocity -17 stabs – in his house, in Old Town, Rethymno.

His fault was that he was Albanian. His name was Edison Jahai.

The System of Justice in 2009 decided to prolong the crime by judging not guilty 3 of the accused perpetrators considering them “mere bystanders in front of the assassination” (!!!)

The questions raised are obvious:

• Is society to be trained to tolerate injustice?
• Is society to be trained to fear the “other” in order to regard him/her as the absolute root of all evil;
• Is society to be trained not to claim its rights – social, economic, political, labor – and be satisfied with what is minimum and be in fear of losing even this?

We think this Court of Appeals’ decision took this direction.  It is unfair and humiliating for both dead Edison and his family.  It is dangerous at a time when atrocities against wage-workers by trained Nazi stabbers prolifarate. The response to all forms of injustice and all forms of rights violations, all racist murderous attack must be the strengthening of the fight for a society with equality and freedom, with essential respect to life and dignity.

For racism does not only affect its victrims, but also those who tolerate it.

CHANIA 10 Dec 2009