Athens: CCF imprisoned members Gerasimos Tsakalos and Panagiotis Argirou declare hunger strike

‘The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction’

Each of us knows that to get his life in his hands, he must refuse the dialogue and the illusions of democracy and come into conflict with the Power, having his knife between his teeth.

From the first moment of our imprisonment, we chose not to surrender to the dictatorship of the penitentiary system. From the first moment, the State and the antiterrorist unit’s Tagmatasfalites (security battalions) sent specific commands to the prison service, in order to give special treatment both to us and the other CCF comrades.

We are already a half years in prisons. From the early days of our arrest I, Gerasimos Tsakalos, was moved to Malandrino prisons and I refused to stay in the special protection ward, I got a disciplinary transfer from Corinth prisons and later, with the comrade Panagiotis Argirou, we came to verbal and physical clash with prison guards when we refused to accept the humiliating strip search they wanted to enforce on us.

Also, so far we have been moved over twenty times due to emergency transfers — with special bulletproof trucks, ΕΚΑΜ (special suppressive antiterrorist units), special units for prison transfers, antiterrorism task forces — from and to Koridallos prisons, in Athens, for the ongoing new prosecutions that ‘arise’ from the terror-interrogators (Mokkas, Baltas) concerning the anarchist guerrilla action of CCF.

Currently we are once again in Koridallos prisons due to the prosecutions of the 250 incendiary and explosive attacks by the Conspiracy, prosecutions which now skillfully emerged. Especially this new persecution, which takes place shortly before the general elections — as in the case of Halandri — coupled with politicians’ statements about ‘cracking down the hoodies’, is part of a wider anti-anarchist campaign initiated back in 2009; more so since, other than us, people who have NO relation whatsoever with CCF are summoned for these interrogations, including, among others, the anarchist Stella Antoniou whose applications for release on bail were denied one after the other by the judicial authorities, despite her serious health problem —facts on which we reserve the right to take a position in the near future.

Well then, patience has its limits and wrath remains infinite, so we declare that from Sunday, April 8th, we start hunger strike requesting our final transfer and placement in Koridallos prisons, to put an end to our repeated vindictive transfers and our physical and psychological wear and tear.

For us, the hunger strike is not a passive resistance or a peaceful protest, in order to elicit the sensitivity of coward bureaucrats of the Power, or the humanism of progressive apologists of the system.

It’s a way to re-define our body ourselves, outside prison guards’ authority. Perhaps this is the sweetest contradiction for an anarchist urban guerrilla, because in our fight for freedom prison is often the price we pay, and the danger of death always lurks in the struggle for life.

But what never changes is that we remain forever anarchists of praxis. An anarchist of action remains an anarchist even without a pen and a gun, if he/she holds the weapon that contains everything else. ‘A determined conscience that says, I fight until the end.’

Gerasimos Tsakalos, Panagiotis Argirou
Members of the imprisoned cell of CCF/FAI-IRF
Koridallos prisons, 6-4/2012

PS. We send our solidarity to Spyros Dravilas, who also went on hunger strike (from 4/4 in Domokos prisons) and is one of the few prisoners that do not constitute one more statistic of the passive mass ‘residing in prisons’.

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