LETTER FROM COMRADE CHRISTOFOROS KORTESIS IMPRISONED FOR THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE CASE 18/11/10

Seven months after my arrest and the well advertised TV, and not only, delirium of the authorities and the antiterrorist police, I am still imprisoned for participation in

Revolutionary Struggle. I am convinced that my persecution has a clear character, with an obvious target the penalisation of the political movement to which I belong, my comrade and friendly relationships, and at the same time the exemplification and terrorisation of wider parts of society who are already fighting, or will choose to resist, the current economic and social conditions of oppression, imposed with an increasingly intensified pace.

To clarify my position, from the first moment of my arrest I said I am an anarchist. I deny to renounce my political identity and for years now conscious choice to openly participate with hundreds of comrades in all social struggles. I deny to renounce my comrade and friendly relationship -as many comrades- with Anarchist fighter Lambros Foundas. The ‘strong’, ‘incriminating’ evidence that the prosecution throws against me, is as follows a fingerprint of mine on a political pamphlet in the house of L.Foundas and an alleged visit to the house of a friend and comrade, co-accused, of mine. My application for release was denied because of the fingerprint mentioned above and one more ‘strong piece of evidence’: a fingerprint of a co-accused of mine on a ‘suspicious’ object in my house, a dvd of an american movie.

Since when is it illegal to possess and exchange leaflets with a political antiauthoritarian content? Since when are visits to friends’ houses persecuted? What morbid imagination baptises the house I’ve lived in permanently in nea filadelifia, a ‘safe house’? Let’s get serious. For those that forgot or for those that don’t know, forbidding people to go out after 10pm, gathering in groups of 3 or more, to freely distribute pamphlets with a political content, belongs to other regimes, which those as well (accidental? I don’t think so) call themselves democratic.

My refusal to give a DNA sample is due solely to my political beliefs and values and not dictated by any fear to prove my ‘guilt’, as its being implied. Of course I refuse to cooperate with the authorities and repressive mechanisms in their attempt of biological (and any other) data basing with obvious aims.

At this point I would like to clarify that I am not possessed with the logic of victimisation, since I have no illusions about democracy, neither about the ‘fairness’ of Justice. As an anarchist I do not condemn any form of struggle – postering, actions of counter-information, political texts, occupations, protests, dynamic actions, ex-appropriations, urban guerrilla warfare- which historically have been chosen and used by fighting people (anarchists, communists, wider resisting parts of society).

I am not willing to give away to the authorities any information of my personal life and no ‘print’ of my comrade relations and my political choices.

And the carousel of the targeting not only of specific people but ultimately of the concept of comradeship itself and the choice of solidarity is widened. Dozens of comrades from the antiauthoritarian movement are called as witnesses with always the same reasoning (fingerprints on books, CDs, doors and windows…now in the houses of friends and comrades imprisoned for participation in Revolutionary Struggle) culminating in the indictments of four more people from the friends or even the family of the arrested!

The attack of the Regime- with its current spokesmen the ‘antiauthoritarian’ PASOK (governing party) and the fellow governing parties- of course is not aimed exclusively to the anarchist movement, but the generalised explosions that are being prepared by wider social parts as healthy reactions to the economic misery (wage and pension cuts, of working relationships, thousands of layoffs etc.) and the complete degradation of human dignity. The images of the violent treatment of the strikers, unemployed, worker protestors, (gathering of workers at the acropolis and outside ministries) are neither fragmented actions, or ‘unfortunate’ incidents of police brutality.

The state arms not only its repressive (hundreds of new recruits to the security forces) but also its legal arsenal. How else can you interpret the new antiterrorist law that baptises ‘terrorism’ even syndicalist actions (with obvious target the basic unions and not of course the ‘militant’ GSEE), the participation in dynamic protests and brings back the anonymous prosecution witnesses- does this remind anyone of those collaborators with the hoods and their fingers stretched out? Who exactly does the infamous ‘dogma of security’ want to protect with the police filled cities and neighbourhoods, if not the system itself? And who purposely cultivates the fear (e.g. of a coming bankruptcy for which everyone supposedly has a responsibility!) in order to obtain a social consensus insidious plans?

Christoforos Kortesis

court prisons of Corinthos.