Stylianos Glykofrydis should have been a really prominent man during his times, while he had served as director and general supervisor of prisons. He had been calling the government to fight against communism “imitating straightly or in a milder way the acts of Hitler” while in 1936 proposed for the Communists waiting for a trial to limit their rights during the visiting and the courtyard time (toavoidcontactwithotherprisoners “that lead to the well-known and unwanted results”).
The thoughts, the perception, the proposals of Stylianos Glykofridis certainly were not left untapped by the modern state.
After our kidnapping, mine and Kostas Barlis’, from Exarcheia on the 4th of January, we get led to the offices of the antiterrorist unit. While my comrade was being set free, they announce the arrest of mine after 48 hours. At the same time, the chief of the Greek Police states cynically that I was arrested “because I was set free about the case of Efeteio”. Namely for a case for which I have been called and examined by the 8th regular investigator judge and I have been released after her decision. The truth is that they are interested in keeping me as a hostage exactly because I am an anarchist. Because during the last 15 years I am active in this radical political part. Inmy case, it is not simplyattempted only theupgrading but also the development of the repression method of criminalizing friend and comrade relationships, the results of which are experienced lately by dozens of fighters. In my case, the antiterrorist unit moves to build up relationships which do not exist in reality while I do not even know personally my co-defendants. After my pre-jailing, while the hooded antiterrorist units were talking more often with the investigator judge than my lawyers were, I get led to Grevena jailhouse, a detention establishment of C Type. Despite that according to the penal code “In C Type jailhouses are kept without communication with prisoners of other categories, prisoners who serve penalty of life-time imprisoning or temporary imprisoning for at least ten years and are accounted as particularly dangerous for the smooth co-existence in other types of jailhouses”. An isolated jailhouse, with law buildings and high walls in order to cut from sight anything from the environment, with cameras and electronic security systems everywhere. A static and stony construction that wants to deprive any exoteric stimulus, to flatten your personality, to destroy you mentally. Obviously, while following orders they put me in a “security” sector, without being asked for something like this from mine, without being threatened by anyone and despite my continues applies to get out of here. The result of this deliberate persistence is to impose on me an aberrational status quo of absolute isolation, trying to – up to a level – to raise my request for my transfer to Korydallos jailhouse.
The economical policy definitely includes as a supplement also a new “quality” of state repression. Today that capitalism can not hide its real face, the social consent can be approached only through violence. Through the courts’ decision that judge the workers’ strikes as illegal, through water cannons, through threatens for levy en mass, through tear-gases, through “antiterrorist” operations. Through the callouts for self-control and through the screams of journalists. Only and only through these methods, the Greek state will become a successful experiment, that will turn the country into a region-part of strong Europe and make it an economical paradise for the bosses. With a population keeping holding on, waiting for someone to come and save them and the persons who are counted as left-over crowding in front of soup-kitchens or inside the jailhouses. Already, since the beginning of the 70’s, the “antiterrorist” policy has overcome the traditional anticommunist policy. It has turned into the answer coming straightly from the status quo, into the repression of an enemy who was everywhere present, diffused, flexible and not specific and static like the formal Communistic Parties or the Soviet Army in Eastern Europe. Already, the new enemy was found among the dynamic and polymorphic movements, among the proletarian parts that do not get homogenized, among the urban guerilla. So today, when more and more actions and political practices are under the targeting of the Counter Authority for Crimes of Special Violence, the “antiterrorism” for the Authorities is something to be commanded in order to keep the people’s rage encaged inside the limits of a pretended realism and conformism. That’s the reason of the persecutions with doubtful DNA samples, of the cascade upgrades on the “terror-law”, of the “wanted” callouts, of the special offences (ιδιώνυμο) against comrade and social relationships, of the continues surveillances, of the hundreds of fighting persons who are judicial hostages and the dozens of persons who are kept inside the jailhouses, of the mass media propaganda that talks about “terrorists” and “co-transportingvessels”… All these, in order to lend fake meanings on words, to isolate and finally smash the internal enemy. To smash all these people who stir up the class hate and escalate the national division, all those who boost solidarity, self-organized action and clash with the status quo.
The bet for us on the time of our seasons is, more urgent than ever, to determinate the line of history. Because Capitalism, its total poverty and misery that are imposed, is not a one-way direction.
Christos Politis
Grevena Isolation Jailhouse
8th January 2011
The thoughts, the perception, the proposals of Stylianos Glykofridis certainly were not left untapped by the modern state.
After our kidnapping, mine and Kostas Barlis’, from Exarcheia on the 4th of January, we get led to the offices of the antiterrorist unit. While my comrade was being set free, they announce the arrest of mine after 48 hours. At the same time, the chief of the Greek Police states cynically that I was arrested “because I was set free about the case of Efeteio”. Namely for a case for which I have been called and examined by the 8th regular investigator judge and I have been released after her decision. The truth is that they are interested in keeping me as a hostage exactly because I am an anarchist. Because during the last 15 years I am active in this radical political part. Inmy case, it is not simplyattempted only theupgrading but also the development of the repression method of criminalizing friend and comrade relationships, the results of which are experienced lately by dozens of fighters. In my case, the antiterrorist unit moves to build up relationships which do not exist in reality while I do not even know personally my co-defendants. After my pre-jailing, while the hooded antiterrorist units were talking more often with the investigator judge than my lawyers were, I get led to Grevena jailhouse, a detention establishment of C Type. Despite that according to the penal code “In C Type jailhouses are kept without communication with prisoners of other categories, prisoners who serve penalty of life-time imprisoning or temporary imprisoning for at least ten years and are accounted as particularly dangerous for the smooth co-existence in other types of jailhouses”. An isolated jailhouse, with law buildings and high walls in order to cut from sight anything from the environment, with cameras and electronic security systems everywhere. A static and stony construction that wants to deprive any exoteric stimulus, to flatten your personality, to destroy you mentally. Obviously, while following orders they put me in a “security” sector, without being asked for something like this from mine, without being threatened by anyone and despite my continues applies to get out of here. The result of this deliberate persistence is to impose on me an aberrational status quo of absolute isolation, trying to – up to a level – to raise my request for my transfer to Korydallos jailhouse.
The economical policy definitely includes as a supplement also a new “quality” of state repression. Today that capitalism can not hide its real face, the social consent can be approached only through violence. Through the courts’ decision that judge the workers’ strikes as illegal, through water cannons, through threatens for levy en mass, through tear-gases, through “antiterrorist” operations. Through the callouts for self-control and through the screams of journalists. Only and only through these methods, the Greek state will become a successful experiment, that will turn the country into a region-part of strong Europe and make it an economical paradise for the bosses. With a population keeping holding on, waiting for someone to come and save them and the persons who are counted as left-over crowding in front of soup-kitchens or inside the jailhouses. Already, since the beginning of the 70’s, the “antiterrorist” policy has overcome the traditional anticommunist policy. It has turned into the answer coming straightly from the status quo, into the repression of an enemy who was everywhere present, diffused, flexible and not specific and static like the formal Communistic Parties or the Soviet Army in Eastern Europe. Already, the new enemy was found among the dynamic and polymorphic movements, among the proletarian parts that do not get homogenized, among the urban guerilla. So today, when more and more actions and political practices are under the targeting of the Counter Authority for Crimes of Special Violence, the “antiterrorism” for the Authorities is something to be commanded in order to keep the people’s rage encaged inside the limits of a pretended realism and conformism. That’s the reason of the persecutions with doubtful DNA samples, of the cascade upgrades on the “terror-law”, of the “wanted” callouts, of the special offences (ιδιώνυμο) against comrade and social relationships, of the continues surveillances, of the hundreds of fighting persons who are judicial hostages and the dozens of persons who are kept inside the jailhouses, of the mass media propaganda that talks about “terrorists” and “co-transportingvessels”… All these, in order to lend fake meanings on words, to isolate and finally smash the internal enemy. To smash all these people who stir up the class hate and escalate the national division, all those who boost solidarity, self-organized action and clash with the status quo.
The bet for us on the time of our seasons is, more urgent than ever, to determinate the line of history. Because Capitalism, its total poverty and misery that are imposed, is not a one-way direction.
Christos Politis
Grevena Isolation Jailhouse
8th January 2011
