Athens: Casting out the ‘human garbage’

Here we highlight some of the most recent attacks against the most vulnerable parts of Greek society. These are only a few of the cases that occur daily in the city of Athens; the birthplace of ‘culture and democracy’, as the travel agents call it. A war has been declared against the poor, immigrants, drug addicts and homeless, which grows more acute and intense every day. The mechanisms of the municipality, the state and parastate groups, in full cooperation, apply their repressive measures to keep the streets clean of ‘human garbage’.

On Tuesday, November 8th, at about 1pm, a squad of riot police (MAT), in conjunction with Athens municipal police forces, attacked dozens of immigrant street vendors outside the Law School (Nomiki) downtown. The forces of repression, under the orders of the Mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis (who was supported as candidate by PASOK, the Democratic Left, the Ecologist Greens and other ‘progressive’ political forces), brutally beat the immigrants, who were selling their goods in Akadimias Street. Some of the students then left the faculty to protest against the murderous attack, and small-scale clashes occurred.

That same morning, a dozen fascists attacked the house of a Syrian middle-aged man in the district of Neos Kosmos, not far from the centre of Athens. The fascist gang used bats to smash the home’s windows, while shouting racist slogans against Kurds (!) and threatening that if they do not leave the neighbourhood they would come back to burn them.

On Thursday, November 10th, 2011, members of the neo-Nazi organization Chrissi Avgi (Golden Dawn) appeared in the district of Victoria, which since last May has become a theatre of racial violence against immigrants and refugees, threatening that they would launch another attack the next day. This time the threat from the neo-Nazis was directed at an internet café belonging to some Egyptians. The fascists ‘informed’ people in the neighbourhood that they would smash the café in the coming days, and ‘notified’ them at the same time, to close their shops if they also did not want problems. The reason given for this intimidation was the fact that the owners of the café ‘had the audacity’ to put the Greek flag and the Egyptian flag together in their windows.

Earlier that day, at 9.25am, a cleaning service worker from the municipality of Athens attacked a homeless man at 20, Agisilaou Street, in the centre of the city. As the testimony of an eyewitness reports, the municipality worker began to spray water from a high pressure hose at a man who was sleeping under cardboard boxes. When the person who reported the attack protested against this inhuman act, the worker began to shout curses at the man who was sleeping in the street, and continued to spray water on him. In addition, the worker responded to the person (who reported the attack in solidarity), saying, ‘if you had feelings of humanity, you would bring the man — probably suffering from hepatitis — home to take care of him yourself’…

In the video you can see a very similar attack by a bastard cop, in 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frF2yIXBggc&

We are faced with attacks against the lower classes that are not some isolated incidents, but part of a coordinated operation of the bosses and their lackeys to impose misery and bring about death. New austerity measures will bring more widespread crackdowns. The fascists in the government and the parastate gangs in the streets will do everything they can to keep us silenced and terrorized. For us there is only the way of fighting back by any means.

Solidarity among the oppressed
Death to the State and its minions