MARCH 8 – GATHERING AT KORYDALLOS WOMEN’S PRISONS, 7 PM
FIRE TO PRISONS, STATES AND PALACES – DOWN WITH PATRIARCHY
For the past year and a half, our comrades Marianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta have been imprisoned behind the bars of Korydallos, accused of participation in a terrorist organization, awaiting their trial. On October 31, 2024, an explosion in an apartment cost the life of our friend and comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris and seriously injured Marianna. This marked the beginning of the “Ampelokipoi case” and the subsequent witch hunt against anarchists. Despite being severely injured, Marianna was arrested and taken to prison just one day after her surgery, while Dimitra turned herself in to the Greek authorities a few days after the incident (comrades Dimitris, Nikos Romanos, and A.K. were also arrested). The imprisonment of our comrades is the result of yet another poorly constructed scenario by the anti-terrorism police, aimed at targeting anarchist action and thought, repressing solidarity, criminalizing comradely relationships, and spreading a climate of fear and repress anyone who chooses to struggle.
Beyond anarchist action, the reasons that lead women, femininities, trans and non-binary people to prison are multiple, as are the oppressions they face: class, racism, patriarchy, exploitation, and more. In women’s prisons, gendered and class oppression takes extreme forms.
The lack of medical care, deprivation of freedom, overall precarity, and experiences of violence are often compounded by the role of caregiver for families outside prison. At the same time, prisoners are forced to buy overpriced cleaning products from the prison shop, in a futile attempt to deal with appalling hygiene conditions (bedbugs, mice, animal droppings in food, etc.). Those without support networks or financial means have no access to adequate medical care. Even external pressure and the public exposure of prison conditions fall into a void, leaving prisoners at the limits of survival. We do not forget the Covid period, when in these hellish prisons conditions led prisoners to cry out: “We are prisoners, not sentenced to death!” These conditions are neither new nor unique, either in Greece or worldwide.
Especially in times of war, capitalist crisis, and the rise of fascism—such as the one we are living through today—the lives of prisoners become even more precarious. We hear with rage and sorrow about the torture, humiliation, rape, and killings of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Today, as states and bosses carry out a new and ongoing massacre of the exploited across the planet, with the Middle East once again in flames; as laws in Western states are being tightened (such as the new Penal Code in Greece); as resistance against rising fascism is punished with heavy prison sentences (imprisoned FINTA people in Budapest and Germany); as democracies never forget and take revenge (the imprisonment of Daniela Klette in Germany); as solidarity and protest are repressed without pretense (England and Palestine Action); as migrants—if not murdered at the borders (Chios, Pylos, Evros)—are persecuted as new scapegoats (ICE in the USA and asylum revocations in Greece); as women’s resistance is brutally crushed (death sentences for women in Iran)—today, as the world of power bares its teeth in the most savage way, the hellish prisons fill and multiply.
For all these reasons, on March 8 we do not celebrate—we struggle against the patriarchal, state-capitalist system that feeds on exploitation and torture and is built upon the fear of imprisonment. We struggle alongside our comrades inside the walls for the demolition of the most sadistic human invention, the prison. Because freedom and dignity are not demands—they are a struggle for life.
From Israeli cells to Italian, Turkish, and Chilean high-security prisons, to German and British prisons and all the hellholes of this world—let us tear down the walls and patriarchy.
We consciously stand beside our comrades Marianna and Dimitra.
MARCH 8 – GATHERING AT KORYDALLOS WOMEN’S PRISONS, 19:00
FREEDOM FOR THOSE IN THE CELLS
AGAINST PATRIARCHY AND ALL AUTHORITY
ARSON AND FIRE TO ALL PRISONS – SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE WHO STRUGGLE
KYRIAKOS XYMITIRIS PRESENT
Anarchists