.::: FLTI :::.

Greece - May 12, 2022

Immediate freedom to Giannis Michailidis, political prisoner in the jails of Greece, on a hunger strike since 5/12/2023!

LETTER FROM THE COMRADE GIANNIS, FROM THE PRISON OF KORYDALLOS

Huelga de hambre del 12/5/23 del anarquista Giannis Michailidis

Recognizing that there are social issues more important than my release from prison, I am making a second attempt to publicize the dirty war I have received from government and judicial mechanisms. I will refrain from going into what had happened up to this time last year to avoid tedious repetition. I will pick up the thread from the suspension of the hunger strike last July. A misguided choice that came after unrealistic promises on the part of the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court judge who is the umbilical cord between the judiciary and the government to immediately grant my request on the extortionate condition that I would first suspend the strike and that this would not be exposed..

According to him, I had to suspend the strike, make a new application for suspension in Amfissa and he would pick up his phone as long as it did not become public, otherwise the agreement would cease to be valid. I made the mistake of assuming they would fulfill their promises because they would calculate their exposure, which in a controlled media environment proved to be a disastrous illusion. My isolation under the special detention regime of the Lamia hospital, which cut me off from my close comrades, contributed to this false choice as I was unable to consult the only people who had both the facts and the political acumen to recognise in time that this was a fraud.

The result was that I lost another year of my life, slowly and agonizingly waiting for the decisions of the judicial councils. Unexplained bureaucratic delays of the decision that would supposedly release me in September, until December. At this point I should have already started anew, but realizing the blow to my credibility as I was drawn into the State trap, it was not an easy choice at all. So I decided to wait until the statute of limitations had expired on the trumped-up case that was used as a pretext to have my licenses cut off, postponing the next battle. They then took every care to deprive me of any legal right to any leave, educational or tactical, that could possibly pave the way for my bloodless victory. At the same time, the tribunals demanded statements of legitimacy by asking me questions along the lines of “does your ideology allow you to never again violate the law?” And the renunciation of ideas and partner relationships is made a condition for an eventual release, which if so, may it never come.

Now, from the intervening events, I clearly understood the role of this Supreme Court judge who I wrongly thought would count on its prestige when he put it in tatters by covering up and concealing the wiretapping scandal on behalf of the Prime Minister, while from the dirty role he played in ending my strike to get the government out of trouble, I can assume that various scandalous decisions of the self-styled judiciary were implemented in the previous period.

The latest act in the succession of dead-end waiting was my transfer to Korydallos prison for educational reasons, finally answering the repeated requests that have been pending for over 3 years.

Coincidentally, my transfer was announced as soon as I informed people close to me that I had already decided to start a hunger strike while in Malandrino prison, resulting in its postponement. This was followed by the rejection of the educational leave to which I was entitled on Friday 12/5/23 on the cheap excuse that I had been in Korydallos prison for too short a time.

My immediate reaction was to restart a hunger strike on the day of the rejection. As soon as I was informed, a barrage of promises began which resulted in me postponing the announcement of the strike until today in the hope of seeing something materialize.
After this treatment I have no choice, of course. Even if I had, I would not have to choose it. I owe it to myself to be politically present and attempt to repay the cost by exposing the government gang of racketeers intertwined with the self-styled justice system. And because my word, even if it succeeds in breaking the wall of silence, will be refuted, the very choice to continue and escalate the hunger strike will highlight the issue, but also distinguish the lie from the truth. That is why everything will be said at the right time.

At the moment when the killers in *ties are bragging about their exploits, let the vindictive treatment I am receiving be the occasion for a struggle that will recall the institutionalized injustice of all these years: the defiant release of rapists because they belong to the friendly entourage of government officials. The kids murdered by the police whose killers didn’t even get a day in jail for appearances’ sake. The migrants and refugees drowning at Europe’s fortress borders with systematic pushbacks.

The total destruction of entire ecosystems, as in Northern Evia. The elderly murdered by the dismantling of the health care system in the midst of a pandemic. The lost childhoods because an authoritarian government chose curfews over strengthening the health care system.

And of course the success of incarceration was confirmed on a mass level by the increase in youth aggression. After all, how right Foucault was when he wrote that prisons are factories for the breeding of crime. I would add that they simultaneously strip crime of its intrinsic anti-authoritarian characteristics to incorporate it into the dirty underground economy. After all, what statistics prove that the prison institution has any social utility? It is simply a deterrent to maintain the established order of inequalities. A tool so that wealth is never taken out of the hands of the occupiers.

For the reasons I have given, I am starting a new hunger strike for my release. Against the State and its appointed bureaucrats, who are making a career on the backs of me and every wretched prisoner, simply because they were appointed judges. In my case, special anti-terrorism laws required that I never be tried by a jury, but that I serve more than ten years in prison from cumulative sentences. Yet this is what they have the audacity to call justice. Decisions made by appointed government officials at the dictates of a system that determines their careers.

In concluding this brief first statement I feel the need to clarify that I understand that my case is much harder to support this time. Mainly because of my own mistake in accepting the blackmail offer to suspend my strike last year in order to be released from prison. So I understand anyone who will view my new effort with caution. However, I want to position this strike, not as a stake of an exclusively individual demand, but as a contribution to highlighting systemic injustice at a politically critical time. As a trigger for a struggle that promotes direct action and participation, against the mentality of delegation promoted by the system of representation.

Until the destruction of the last cage

Giannis Michailidis
E’ Fifth Ward of Korydallos Prison

New address:

Giannis Michailidis (Γιάννης Μιχαηλίδης)
E’ Fifth Ward of Korydallos Prison ( Ε’ πτέρυγα Φυλακών Κορυδαλλού)
T.K. 18110
Korydallos
Athens
Greece

Call for actions internationally in solidarity with he anarchist hunger striker G. Michailidis

The anarchist comrade and prisoner of the Greek prisons, Giannis Michailidis, is on a new hunger strike since 12.05.2023. Exactly one year ago, on May 25, 2022, he had announced the start of another hunger strike demanding his release, which after 68 days of hard strike, last July, he decided to end, with his health condition reaching a critical point, awaiting the fulfilment of the commitments of senior judges for meeting his demands. A year later, the mockery of the comrade by the scum of the judiciary is ongoing, with his requests for leave or release being rejected one after another and a whole backdrop of interventions by senior judges and other high ranking officials of the Greek state to prolong Yiannis' captivity. Thus, with his health still burdened by the previous strike, the comrade is currently back in the position of using his own body as a barricade in the face of state machinations.

The comrade's strike last year showed with certainty that there was a central strategy on the part of the state mechanisms to conceal the struggle for his release and to force the comrade into physical and psychological extermination; a dead end in order to lead to a retreat and not to release the comrade. The solidarity actions, the strike itself, were well concealed for most of its duration, thus seeking to have any state response taking place in a shadowy setting of silencing, behind-the-scenes mockery of the comrade and his legal defence by the judicial mafia, which stretched the timeframe for holding any relevant meetings to the limit.

Similarly, the also recent experience of the hunger strike of the captured member of the revolutionary organization 17th of November, Dimitris Koufontinas, which preceded that of Giannis (8 January-14 March 2021), highlighted on the one hand the state's callousness towards a hunger-striking combative prisoner, and on the other hand showed how the escalation of repression against the solidarity movement, brought the opposite results and that zero-tolerance strategy brought more people on the streets, more stubbornness, more attacks on state and capitalist targets, social exposure and, ultimately, it was catalytic in creating explosive situations where the state's omnipotence was shattered, as in the Nea Smirni uprising. And this is something that the state murderers have probably "read". That is why the strategy in the immediate aftermath of last year's strike of Giannis Michailidis was more akin to a posture of marginalization, targeted non-escalation and silencing, with callousness remaining a common feature. In order to prevent Giannis’ struggle from becoming a social event.

By the time this text is written, the current strike of Giannis Michailidis, already in its 3rd week, is being completely silenced.

Transferred just west of Greece and in another similar experience of struggle, in Italy, from October '22 to April '23, for 6 months, the imprisoned anarchist Alfredo Cospito conducted a very long and difficult hunger strike, being together with comrades outside the prisons in a very hard struggle demanding the transfer of the comrade out of the torturous 41bis solitary confinement regime. The common characteristic of this struggle for the first 1.5 months of its conduct, with those mentioned from the Greek prisons, is its total silencing by the propaganda mechanisms of the Italian state and the media.

However, there was a key moment that changed the social correlations and brought the comrade's struggle to the forefront, making it a key point of public debate in Italy for months, resulting in the exposure of the attitude of the Italian state and, more generally, of the conditions under which the prisoners of the 41bis regime are tortured on a daily basis, making the extermination of the comrade under shadowy conditions impossible and the whole management of the case more "sensitive". The key moment, therefore, was three very close attacks that took place outside Italy, targeting the Italian diplomacy. One was in Athens, where there was an arson attack on a vehicle belonging to the diplomat, an employee of the Italian embassy in Athens, Susana Slain, which was in the garage of her house. At the same time, in Berlin, an attack was carried out on the Italian diplomatic car belonging to the embassy official Luigi Estero, while that evening the façade of the Italian consulate in Barcelona was smashed and slogans were written in solidarity with Alfredo... From that point onwards, the comrade's struggle managed to invade the news, shedding light on the multiform solidarity actions of anarchist comrades, and thus constituting a now open blackmail on the façade of Italian democracy. To such an extent that in an Italian television programme, a representative of the ROS (the "anti-terrorist" police department) openly states that their attempt to isolate comrade Alfredo and his ideas has had the opposite effect, since the diffusion of his speech and anarchist actions has escalated rapidly, causing great social polarisation and threatening social peace.

With these in mind, to set it shortly, this call is mainly addressed towards comrades who don’t live in Greece. It’s a call for immediate escallation of the solidarity actions, by mainly targeting directly the Greek State and branches of the Greek capital. It is a call to the comrades to act by any means, contributing in this way to the destruction of the silencing strategy and of the exhaustion of the comrade. Direct gatherings and attacks at embassies, at the houses of diplomats and consuls, at companies of Greek interests, interventions at the airport desks of Greek airlines or during events taking place abroad, related to Greek institutions, as well as whichever other action each one can imagine in this direction, could contribute to the destruction of the state’s strategy, by causing internal issues to it’s mechanisms and disrupt the international image of the greek government. Let’s not wait for the worsening of the health condition of the comrade, let’s act directly and spread the threat of the anarchist solidarity.

The comrade Giannis Michailidis is struggling in order to break the captivity regime which is imposed on him. He is not begging, he is instead attacking the image of democracy with the means he has under the condition of incarceration. He is struggling to regain his freedom. We want our comrade alive, healthy and free. We hope that this call can be a contribution to the formation of these conditions, so that we, out there in the streets, can take over all this effort of this struggle, without letting anymore the state murderers driving our comrade to the direction they want.

SOLIDARITY MEANS ATTACK

DIRECT RELEASE OF THE ANARCHIST COMRADE

HUNGER STRIKER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS