NOT EVEN A SINGLE HOUR IN THE ARMY

Poster for the upcoming antimilitarist manifestations in Ioannina (September 16th–17th, 2011)

Public statement
of military service refusal

To the Hellenic National Defense General Staff and to all military recruitment authorities

What if someone told me, ‘What do you want then; to change humankind?’

I would answer, ‘No, something infinitely more moderate; I’d wish for humankind to change itself.’

Cornelius Castoriadis

My name is Athanasios Karageorgiou. Since 1995 I had refused any service in the Greek army via an official statement sent to the military conscription office of Alexandroupolis (northern Greece), in which I had stated responsibly that I am a total objector.

Also now, that I was ordered to serve mandatory military service and to present myself on September 8th, 2011, at the naval base (aka Skaramaga), I declare that as an anti-authoritarian I refuse to serve any state mechanism of violence; a mechanism of power, absurdness and personality demolition; a mechanism that only serves to exert violence against others and those who are part of it.

I do not participate in it, and I have no obligation to serve fatherlands, religions and all that is behind these.

If there’s a meaning in the word ‘fatherland’ in your non-existent bourgeois democracy, for me there is none.

Public statement by Athanasios Karageorgiou
September 8th, 2011, Exarchia, Athens

source: www.antirrisies.gr