The daily arrests and brutal treatment of ‘undocumented’ migrants in the framework of the Greek police’s mass pogroms under the welcoming name ‘Xenios Zeus’, which include beatings, humiliations and tortures in police vans, in the dungeons of police stations and the notorious ‘detention centres,’ are an integral part of the modern totalitarianism that imposes poverty and social cannibalism, orders the civil conscription of strikers (i.e. the forced return to work), inflicts repression on protest mobilizations, raids squats, and attacks self-organized social ventures.
Lately, dozens of ‘undocumented’ migrants are being transferred and literally stacked into the police station of Drapetsona in Piraeus, remaining imprisoned for months on end, where they suffer appalling conditions, lacking sanitation, nutritious food and yard-time, while being confronted with the usual brutal, misanthropic and racist treatment by police officers. In addition, their temporary custody is extended every three months without any formal justification other than their ‘crime’ of not having residence documents.
For this reason, migrant detainees have been on successive hunger strikes in that police station, protesting the unimaginable conditions of incarceration and the consecutive decisions for three-month extension of their custody. For example, 70 migrants have been on hunger strike since March 14th, 2013. As a result of this joint protest, the hunger strikers were dispersed by several transfers to other police departments where the cops once again treated them with insults, bullying and threats. The particular hunger strike began after the unexplained decision for another three-month extension of custody against two migrants, who are locked up for 9 months already in detention cells. The case of a Palestinian refugee is indicative of ill-treatment against the hunger strikers: Ahmed Faraj, who fainted during the eighth day of hunger strike (22/3), was evacuated to hospital because the cops gave him shampoo saying that it was medical syrup.
We will neither get used to, nor accept the ugliness of this world. We oppose the plundering, impoverishment, brutality, racism and repression with resistance, self-organization and solidarity, with common struggles of native-born and migrant resisters against the system of exploitation, exclusions and submission. Hands off the wretched and the fighters!
Resalto anarchist space (Keratsini)
Update: In the morning of April 6th, comrades from Resalto anarchist space, as well as the Gastarbeiter collective for autonomy took to the streets in an unannounced demo, protested outside the police station of Drapetsona and marched in the wider neighbourhood, in solidarity with migrant hunger strikers. Photos/video here.