For the second time in a period of months, the Elaiona Prison Council has rejected the request of comrade Pola Roupa – who has already served 7 years in prison – for a permit to be able to see her son for a few days.

Note the political background in terms of sovereignty, both the development of both sessions with questions to Pola Roupa about her ideological-political opinions and their public expression as well as about her political defense in court, and the consequent political underpinning of the support for the rejection decisions on the basis, in short, of the criminalization of political opinion and its public expression as well as of the political stance and revolutionary defense in court.

As clearly stated in the 1st decision (Council Decision no. 20/17/02/2022), the criminalization of the comrade’s uncompromising stance of not renouncing her revolutionary activity and not revising her anarchist position, as defended in her defense in court, arises «After listening to the detainee, from the letters and interviews published recently and earlier, in any case in the time after her arrest, on the internet and in the media.» Moreover, the total criminalization of the anarchist struggle, consistently and through the identification of Pola Roupa with the anarchist space («she has been identified with the anarchist space that develops the action outside the law», as written in the same sentence), on the basis of the public expression of anarchist ideas through counter-information that does not recognize borders «inside and outside the walls», blatantly demonstrates the openness of the regime of exception in relation to the expression of political discourses and attitudes, from the prisoners of the State who continue to resist with coherence and integrity, to the margins of the struggle itself in general.

The above attack by the authorities on free political expression and the anti-state struggle in general, is clearly demonstrated in the 2nd decision (Council Decision No. 54a/19/05/2022), as the only reason for rejection of the decision to grant a license is the circulation – and content of course – of Pola Roupa’s book, «State vs. Commune, Law, revolutions and political «crimes» through the centuries», which collects the historical research of the companion on the political «crime», the origins of the State and its historical role, as submitted to the counter-revolutionary courts, in the context of its political defense. The criminalization of the comrade’s general political stance in the courts, in this case, becomes the vehicle for opening a way to link the special treatment and exemption regime for prisoners with the corresponding potential repressive practices of militants in general, through the criminalization of the dissemination of political discourse from the prison to the outside and vice versa. In this way, and from the criminalization of historical research and the publication of books around revolutionary discourse, an even more dystopian condition than the already existing one of violence and control is taking shape, from the idiom for the case of the imprisoned comrade Pola Roupa, member of Lucha Revolucionaria, one glimpses the dark possibility of extending similar practices of criminalization of thought and expression to prisoners in general, inside and outside the prisons.

The most central point of this particular attack by the State on the comrade and the anarchist struggle in general, is that all of this takes place around motherhood (typified by the prosecutor’s aggressive questioning – as to the very choice of motherhood – as to whether or not the comrade wanted to become pregnant) and the possibility of a child living even a few days with its mother. The encounter of all the above with the core of what feeds our struggles for the future, that is, free childhood, its needs and the continuity of life, demonstrates the brutality with which power attacks life itself and does not hesitate to play its most complex and bloody «games» on the backs of its most organic parts….

Solidarity with comrade Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis

For a free society

Initiative of the comrades

SOURCE: ATHENS INDYMEDIA

TRANSLATION: ANARQUÍA