STATEMENT OF A TOTAL OBJECTOR TO MILITARY SERVICE IN VIEW OF IMPENDING COURT-MARTIAL AND POSSIBLE IMPRISONMENT
On the 2nd of June 2016, the military court of appeals will review my sentence to 12 months in prison for my second and third refusal to enlist in military service. Given the fact that I do not fall into the legal window of sentence suspension due to having been convicted in the past for my political activity, the sentence of my first conviction for the offense of refusal to serve in the conscription army (sentence to 12 months imprisonment) was paid off in installments with the aid of the solidarity movement. In addition three administrative fines have been imposed of 6,000 euros each for four conscription calls which I have refused.
The endless persecutions, arrests, humiliating transfers, courts-martial and consecutive sentences imposed on Total Objectors to military service are a characteristic expression of state terrorism for which military rule is essential. As I wrote from the cells of the Police HQ where I was held when arrested for the third time for refusal to serve (2/11/14):
«The successive persecutions of Total Objectors for our consistent and politically conscious decision to not serve the most brutal mechanism of authority, aim to curb the anti-militarist, class movement. I do not recognize the right of military-state repression. My detention in a cell, even for one night, is a brutal and unacceptable insult at any notion of freedom and social justice. The resistance against state brutality will not be bent. It will grow and it shall win. Immediate end to the persecution of Total Objectors and an end to arrests.»
Particularly, the imposition of large fines following every new call to enlist is one facet of the economic terrorism and of the larceny that the state is attempting against the class oppressed in times of austerity. The successive convictions to redeemable sentences (sentences that can be bought off) is another point connected to the Greek state’s monetary management of class domination and economic terrorism. The enhanced repression of the military-state rule against the refusal to enlist and its intensification against Total Objectors, who raise the flag of the anti-militarist movement, has the advantage of targeting the resistance to military service with harsh measures while at the same time camouflaging its harshness. After all it seems like the battle against militarism is balanced out since for years now Total Objectors do not serve their sentence in prison. At the same time the persecution of the widespread in society refusal to enlist remains in obscurity since it doesn’t find the outlet of self organized collective force.
In the fall of 2015, on the occasion of yet another court-martial of a Total Objector, I announced on behalf of the Anarchist Collective for the Combative Proletarian Reconstruction an open call for a frontal anti-militarist struggle, referring to the current situation and to the universal necessity of resisting the terrorism of the state-military rule:
«It is no coincidence that the intensification of the militarist reaction goes hand in hand with the stepping up of the militarist policy of the Greek state. The local bourgeoisie is preparing the interstate war for the control and exploitation of the Aegean, masked behind the flag of EEZ (exclusive economic zone). The left wing management, having vouched for the continuation of the nationalist strategy even prior to the elections of January ’15, is now deepening the militarist coalition with the military dictatorship of Egypt and with the Israeli state which acts as the police dog, slaughterer of the Mediterranean east and major exporter of genocidal technology and know-how. The Greek state has recently given its support, as an obedient follower of NATO, to the bloody operations of the Turkish army against the Kurdish autonomist movement and the people of Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The phrase “Greece comes first” used by Simitis (Greek prime minister with the PASOK government from1996 to 2004) a decade and a half ago in order to justify the country’s support to NATO’s bombing in Yugoslavia, sounds like a witty remark compared to the current war strategy of the Greek state.
The slaughter in Eastern Mediterranean is unfolding step by step. At the same time on the borders between Greece and turkey mass murder is perpetrated on a daily basis. The armed mechanisms of the Greek state and the European Union, aided by fascist gangs, are murdering migrants en masse in order to maintain the control of the class border between the privileged castes of Europe and the downtrodden of the capitalist periphery who suffer from interstate wars. If we only saw the interstate war that is coming, without acknowledging the ruthless one sided class war that is already raging, we would be trapped within a nationalist analysis. The Greek territory is already in a state of open war. From the proletarian-social point of view, it is necessary that we actively resist the state-military rule in all possible ways and that we construct a powerful anti-militarist movement. A century ago, when Europe’s social democrats inflamed the first world war and then pushed the Nazi into power, the revolutionary movement called them euro-chauvinist and social-fascists. But back then there was still room for reformist illusions. Today there is no socialist footing for the capitalist war and for nationalism. Class war is revealed in all its rawness. On the one side stand the privileged castes of the bourgeois world. On the other side is the great river of the class oppressed of this planet who are pillaged and murdered in countless numbers for the sake of the interstate capitalist economy. The front line has been carved in blood. It’s time we take our position in battle.»
Today, since the fences and borders cannot hold back the masses of the downtrodden who aspire to a share of the security and the concentrated wealth of the capitalist center, the military-state rule is expanding inland. Concentration camps and impoverishment are the status quo as well as the main tool for preventative repression of the proletarian revolt. As I have stated before, the position of Total Objectors is on the first line of internationalist solidarity, on the first line of the antifascist struggle, on the first line of the collective resistance to economic terrorism, which is founded on the weapons and the prisons of the state, on the first line of workers’ mobilizations, that are cracked down by use of police-military means and enforced return to work. In class struggle there is no room for elitism. From such a position of battle, Total Objection exemplifies the disarmament of state terrorism as well as the breach with individualism.
The intensification of European racism and militarist terrorism arouses an ethical-political duty for Total Objectors: to march head on for the deconstruction of the state-military institutions. And to give ground to combative resistance. We must encounter the political repression against refusing to serve the army, no longer from positions of piecemeal defense and stalling, but from an advanced position that expresses the real intensity of the current class struggle and can pave the way for our counterattack.
So, on the 2nd of June, when I will be tried for the second time on appeal for refusing to enlist for military service, I will stand once again in front of the military judges and I will articulate the polemic of the ones below against the state and its privileged castes. But this time I will not give in to buying off the sentence. Conviction will mean imprisonment; and prison, (where I have been in the past), brings us face to face with a situation of real war, politically, objectively and as a lived experience. And even if the generals of militarist repression give me the chance by setting a usual sentence of a few months, I will go on hunger strike (as I have done before in the dungeons of the anti-terrorist unit) so that the might of the extortionate and larcenous measures against Total Objection is once and for all overturned.
Who will last longer? The proletarian-social resistance or the repressive mechanism? We who have been foreordained as cannon fodder and pieces of meat for the appetite of the masters, have nothing to lose. We are countless and we are already fighting for a world without tyranny. Who in the end will fight for this rotten regime? The power of resistance and solidarity is limitless. It is high time we do away with mandatory service to the state’s war machine.
IMMEDIATE END TO THE PERSECUTION OF TOTAL OBJECTORS
ABOLITION HERE AND NOW OF THE PUNISHMENT OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE FINE
LET’S ACTIVELY CRUSH ANY SERVICE OR COOPERATION WITH THE MURDEROUS MECHANISMS OF THE STATE
Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis (Total Objector) – April 2016