Anarchist Nikos Romanos is one of us. He is one of those who, like us, rebelled against Power, against law and order that wants people to be slaves, subservient and submissive; he is one of those who learned first-hand what “law and order” really means, when he witnessed the murder of his friend Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the dogs of the State, Korkoneas and Saraliotis.
Comrade Romanos is not one of those who seize the homes and assets of the people, as the bank that he expropriated does, action for which he has been sentenced. He is not the one who made the laws that the straight-laced politicians enact, the fathers of the nation who rob and murder the people and the workers to make the rich even richer. He didn’t steal the salary or the pension from any poor breadwinner, as the multinationals, bankers and powerful businesspeople, as well as their servants, the governments and parliamentarians, are permitted by law to do. He is not the one who made the laws that deprive the mouths of the poor of a food bite, the laws that murder thousands of people driving them to suicide, the laws that force people to eat out of garbage and sleep on the streets. Comrade Romanos is one of those who confront the blows with dignity, all the blows inflicted by the subservients of the State and the rich – slaves who are paid seven hundred euros each month to do their miserable job.
Since Monday, November 10th, 2014, the comrade has begun a hunger strike claiming the right to make use of educational furloughs. Nikos Romanos – just like Iraklis Kostaris, who is on hunger strike for the same reason – is one among the dozens of political prisoners and imprisoned fighters who are currently held in Greek prisons, at a time when the policy of social genocide, imposed by the Capital and the State on the occasion of the economic crisis, is linked with the hardening of repression in general but also especially against captive combatants, many of whom are self-admitted members of armed revolutionary organizations, or are being accused of armed struggle. The legislation for type C prisons with special conditions of detention, primarily aimed against political prisoners and imprisoned fighters, falls within this context. Each imprisoned comrade is one of us, so if we consider that the struggle for Freedom connects all of us, the struggle for Social Liberation from the yoke of the Capital and the State, then the claim of one is also the claim of all of us.
Nikos Maziotis, member of the Revolutionary Struggle
Diavata prison