May 5, 2010, has been etched into Greeek society’s memory as a day of widespread social revolt, a day that condensed a vast wave of resistance to and rejection of the austerity regime imposed through the memoranda. It is a day that the political and economic bosses, the state and capital, are trying to bury and erase from the movement’s historical memory.

Sixteen years later, the state gang of the unrepentant is pulling a closed case back out of the drawer—a case that resulted in the conviction of the employers—and launching yet another witch hunt. Selectively and hypocritically exploiting the current circumstances, following the recent developments in Thessaloniki, they are attempting to conflate unrelated events, sixteen years apart, linked only by their association with anarchist activity.

Thus, on July 10, yet another pogrom began, with raids on comrades’ homes and the arrest of two of them, while an arrest warrant was issued for another person who has lived abroad for years. They are reviving the narrative of terrorism in order to change the agenda, amid government discussions about early elections, in an attempt to distract society.

They speak about the value of human life. But do all lives count equally?

At the very same time, a 20-year-old has been declared brain-dead after being shot by the Hellenic Police during a pursuit, while eleven workers are hospitalized with severe burns—three of them intubated—following an explosion at an industrial facility in Aspropyrgos. One of the workers later died.Two more moments in an ongoing social and class war. Two more entries in the long record of violence committed by the state and the bosses.

The disproportionate violence of a system that, no matter how much it claims to defend life, is in reality the force that has historically spread exclusion and marginalization, deprivation and poverty, misery and exploitation, migration and displacement, war and death.

And the truth is that, looking back, the record is a grim one: the five women workers killed at the VIOLANTA biscuit factory in January 2026; the 57 people killed in the Tempi train disaster in 2023; the more than 500 people—how many exactly, and who were they?—who died in the Pylos shipwreck in 2023; and the hundreds killed in workplace accidents in the past year alone.

No matter how many crocodile tears they shed, they cannot wash away the blood of their crimes. No matter how many imprisonments, frame-ups, acts of torture, and instances of state vengeance they unleash against the movement and those who struggle. Life and resistance will continue to breathe through the social and class struggles of every era, on every front. It is through these struggles that society remains alive, standing tall against this dystopia.

For days, we have listened to their version of events. Now it is our turn to speak.

Against the monologue of state propaganda and the slander spread by its informers, we are the ones best placed to speak about the political history of our comrades. It is a history rich in collective struggles and selfless action aimed at overthrowing state-capitalist barbarism: school students’ struggles against the education reforms “Arsenis law”1996-1997; mobilizations against the Iraq War, 2003; the student movement of 2006–2007; occupation projects and political activity in neighborhoods; struggles in defense of nature; labor organizing and workers’ demands. We belong to the same political generation. We grew up together, and we never wanted to become bosses or “golden boys,” nor party officials.

Not for a single moment did we accept a life of austerity imposed on those at the bottom so that a privileged few could grow richer. Along this path, we stood side by side countless times. One of those moments was the mass revolt of half a million demonstrators in central Athens on May 5, 2010, against the imposition of their antisocial austerity memoranda.

We stand unapologetically beside our friends and comrades—people with names and histories, lives and dreams—who have always been invaluable companions on our journey. It is a life inspired by the values of solidarity, resistance and self-organization, a life of which we are proud, just as we are proud of our comrades. The integrity, fighting spirit and political commitment of our people stand in absolute contradiction to the accusations leveled against them, accusations associated with indifference toward the value of human life.

Those who dared to harass and terrorize the families of our comrades will pay. The sick government and media apparatuses attempting to build their pre-election “law and order” agenda on the lives of our comrades, and on the criminalization of an entire resistance movement, will be defeated.

We belong to a movement that has paid dearly, in every possible way, for choosing to persist, resist, struggle, and fight: arbitrary eighteen-month pretrial detentions, years of judicial persecution and imprisonment, torture and repression, and even the blood of our own comrades.

Our accounts with the system of injustice and barbarism remain open.

We were, we are, and we will continue to be an enormous thorn in the side of every form of power.

ONLY THOSE WHO RESIST, STRUGGLE, AND FIGHT CAN HOPE

Text in Greek: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1641975/