In September begin the first arrests with the pretext of the “dismantling” of the CCF, inaugurating the method of penalizing personal relations between anarchists and distributing arrest warrants like flyers. A tactic aimed at hurting not only the CCF, but the whole of the anarchist movement. Essentially, the oppressive mechanisms will use this specific organization as a reason to attack the anarchist movement spreading fear and insecurity in its interior.
In October of the same year the Ministry of Public Order will be renamed to the Ministry of Protecting the Citizen. A fact which will awkwardly be interpreted as a self-conscious embellishment. But the timing of this name change is not accidental. The period, that is, that the middle class is abruptly losing its privileges and rights deducting the substance of the status of citizen to that of a subject. The ministry in question is responsible now to protect only a small guild of rulers and capitalists who do not want to abandon their privileges.
Within the next few years a lot will change but the most important will be the complete abandonment of the Keynesian model and the transformation of labour from a right into privilege. The authority of Capital is not in a position to offer the middle class dream anything but oppression. The carrots are not even enough for motives any more and only the whip can give a solution.
The breakout of the crisis, which was brewing since the end of the ’70s, leads the capitalistic order, in its attempt to preserve its profits, to tactics of crude accumulation and colonial policies even in the interior of the Western World. Since it cannot achieve profits through the Holly Growth, it indulges in looting. Thus, the authority of Capital is militarized. It militarises labour, by conscripting workers. It militarises the oppression, using the EKAM (special forces) with insignificant pretexts. It militarises Justice, applying special laws for the political spaces which resist.
Special laws, which for the time being are applied on the anarchist movement and tomorrow will be applied onto any Brechtian variation. Special laws, which say that it is enough that an anarchist is targeted by the anti-terrorist force in order for them to be found wrapped in hollow but massive indictments.
My prosecution is placed in this political conjuncture. A prosecution based on the statutory of an anarchist and the tactic of penalization of their personal and political relations.
A prosecution which on one leg, that of participation in the CCF, is “based” on my social contact with anarchist comrade and friend Kostas Sakkas. The interesting part is, that he himself also denies his participation in this specific organization. The antiterrorist also presents me, falsely, offering counter-surveillance measures at Agrinio bus station to another accused for the same case, who, just for history, also denies his participation in the organization.
On the other leg, my prosecution concerns my, by imagination of the anti-terrorist, participation in the robbery of Alfa bank in Paro and the deadly injury of a citizen who tried to stop the escape of the robbers. A prosecution with sole evidence a dna sample taken from a mobile object (hat) near the bank, evidence which does not mean I was present at the robbery and for which I dispute the accuracy of the procedure of collection and analysis of the sample.
On June 10th, therefore, I am called to appear at the 3rd three-member felonies appeals court on Loukareos street (Athens) accused of participation in the CCF and additionally that as a member of this specific organization I participated in the robbery of Alfa Bank in Paros. Charges which I denied since the first moment.
Going against heavy charges in a massive indictment full of guesses by the antiterrorists about my way of life and completely empty, of course, of any evidence.
Trials are not theatrical plays. They are however rituals. Rituals, where the authority of Capital replaces what it defines as Justice when it considers that it has been disturbed. Rituals where social associations are crystallized. In this specific trial, the stakes among others, is so much the institutionalization of the penalization of political spaces and struggles as much as the personal relations of social fighters. The stabilization of a situation, where whoever resists will be liable to authority not only for their identity as a resister but for all the expressions of their social life. Or otherwise the stabilization of a situation, where if someone is an anarchist is on its own a guilt criterion.
All that will be left is that every friendship between anarchists will be characterized as participation and integration in a terrorist organization.