No cover-up for the torturers of Vassilis Manggos

On October 21 the trial against three police officers for the beating of the comrade Vassilis Manggos (which took place two and a half years ago) will take place in the court Volos. Vassilis was beaten and arrested by the MAT (anti-riot police) and the OPKE (anti-terrorism unit) during the attack on the demonstration in solidarity with the arrested of the long march the previous day, against the construction of a new plant designed to convert commercial waste into fuel.

Taken to Volos police station he was insulted, humiliated, beaten and tortured by the guardians of the law, who late at night released him in a semi-conscious state with six broken ribs. Three days later he denounced in a text the torture and beatings he suffered that scarred him for life and led to his death a month later.
After two and a half years the local judiciary finally decided to send three accused police officers to trial, but for one minor offence, that of grievous bodily harm. In addition, it took no account whatsoever of the request submitted by Vassilis’s parents, and the testimonies of dozens of people present at the scene of the arrest. This shows that this trial is a farce, whose only purpose is to unmask a few of those responsible for the beating of Vassilis, and cover up the torture he suffered. This is yet another case of judicial mafia, hatched by the judiciary against its own people, a judiciary that supports LaFarge’s colonialist plans – AGET and at the same tinme has declared war on the inhabitants of Volos.

At the local level, the imposition of commercial activities at the expense of people and the environment is evident, with the municipal authority of Beos, and their respective governments, completely subservient to the dictates of capital. The privatisation of public social elements, such as water in Stagiatis, is one of the great scourges of our region. Officials chosen from the ranks of cops and businessmen, with the support of the judiciary, undermine with every means and downgrade the region’s water to sell it to unscrupulous private entrepreneurs and monopoly giants. Through the use of mafia practices, the municipal authority is seeking to suppress the local community’s struggle against privatisation. A thorn in the side of their plans is the organised resistance of residents.

The project to install a floating platform of thousands of cubic metres of liquid natural gas (LNG) in the port of Volos adds to the total disregard for the environment by placing a bomb just a few metres from the centre of our city.

At the same time, in the area south of Peilio, the installation of wind farms is going full steam ahead, once again exploiting the supposed energy advantage as a source of renewable energy, complementing the general environmental deterioration and future destruction of a wider area through the plundering of natural resources and the environment. Society and local collectives fighting for the protection of the environment and quality of life are up against the entire state apparatus of repression, the judiciary and the local parastate. From mafia practices, to manipulated trials, to police operations, the local community is experiencing a situation of terror, culminating in a series of trials involving several active struggles which took place in October (Stagiatis, rubbish heaps, wind turbines set on fire).

The snake of bourgeois justice has always only bitten the weak, the poor, the oppressed and especially those who choose to confront the existing system of exploitation. A justice that shows its utmost ferocity when it comes to dealing with militants, carrying out judicial coups, handing out charges and years in prison at will, imposing extreme restrictive conditions, denying benefits and the release of political prisoners, and much more. At the same time, it frees rapists, hitmen in uniform, fascists, mafiosi and all those close to power (more authoritarian scum), while turning a blind eye to the dozens of scandals and financial crimes of their respective rulers. We should have no illusions about the nature of Greek justice and its role, which is to perpetuate capitalist exploitation and oppression.

At a time like the present, when the attack on society is growing, when fundamental social rights and achievements are being trampled underfoot, when poverty is reaching more and more people and the legitimacy of the regime is beginning to waver, the decisions of bourgeois justice confirm its structural usefulness for the system. The doctrine of law and order, authoritarianism, massive repression, police arbitrariness and the perpetuation of a regime of exception would be impossible without state-sponsored judicial crows. All this with the sole purpose of defending a system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, at a time of increasing capitalist crises (economic, environmental, energy, geopolitical, etc.)

In recent times, various resistance movements against these plans are being created in various social spheres. In addition to the collective and organised effort to blackout and vilify the system’s media, the various fronts of struggle are trying to build dikes against the abyss of the ultra-right and the neo-liberal onslaught. A mosaic of resistance is on the march, from the dockers of the COSCO, to the workers of LARCO and Malamatina, struggles to defend areas from industrial plans, student community mobilisations for free universities and environmental defence movements (Skouries, Agrafa, Mesochora, etc.) up to the struggles of the political prisoners. The connection of all struggles is not only obvious but necessary: environmental demands, class conflicts, anti-patriarchal, anti-war and anti-imperialist struggles, individually and as a whole, constitute a crucial brake on the advance of the state and capitalism towards impoverishment and exploitation.

In the face of the harsh reality that is presented to the eyes of the officers of the night, the business groups, the industrialists, the local gentry and the central power at the service of international capital, we oppose it with a thirst for life. Organising horizontally and anti-hierarchically in every neighbourhood, in every workplace with the grassroots unions and in every demonstration and sector of our lives, reinforcing the concept of solidarity, re-appropriating public spaces, rejecting State violence, uniting our voices with the common goal of putting an end to the endless thirst for profits of States and capitalists.

The trial of the 3 cops that starts on October 21st, and the methods that accompany it, are a fundamental part of the repressive policy of the State. A politic that targets the enemy within, the world of struggle and anyone who seeks to overthrow the existing system of exploitation. We must reveal the truth from the lie, not let oblivion prevail. We owe this to the memory of Vassilis. We have an obligation as fighters to fight for everything that Vassilis fought for, and that cost him his life. In times when resignation seems to dominate, when insoluble problems for their survival are weighing on people’s shoulders feeding frustration and a tendency towards individual solutions, we must rise to the occasion. The city we live in has a history of struggle behind it, the legacy and experience of which should not be overlooked. The local population knows how to fight and has proved it against both wind and tide.

LET’S NOT ALLOW THIS JUDICIAL FARCE TO PASS
LET’S STOP THE INCINERATION OF WASTE NOW
JUSTICE WILL BE DONE IN THE STREETS

Pan-Hellenic March, Saturday 15th October, at 12.00 in Freedom Square

Gathering, Friday 21st October at 9am at Volos court

Anarcho-communist initiative in Volos against the cover-up of the case of Vassilis Manggos