International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker G. Michailidis
“After 8.5 years in prison, after all these arbitrary actions against me, I decided to put an end to my 11 years of suffering, by putting up a mound against the practice of preventive imprisonment, or else the additional punishment of escape with legal loopholes. After 5 more months of preventive detention, I am starting a hunger strike for my release. This choice, with the deep motivation of the much desired freedom, I intend to support it with the same consistency that I have supported my choices so far and for which they are avenging me.”
Giannis Michailidis, preventively imprisoned in Malandrinos prison, 23/5/2022
Throughout his life, Giannis Michailidis, has been an integral part of the struggles against the state and capital from an anarchist perspective. He participated from a young age in anarchist student groups, in demonstrations against the Iraq war, in anti-state/anti-capitalist demonstrations of the 2004-2006 anti-globalisation movement and was arrested during the conflicts. He participated in the 2006-2007 student struggles against the reactionary reforms in higher education (privatization of universities, abolition of university asylum, etc.). He fought against the plundering of nature and was arrested in an intervention against the deforestation of Mount Parnitha in 2007. He was an integral part of the December uprising, when police officers murdered in cold blood the anarchist 16-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the Exarchia area. He was present in the battles against the memoranda in 2012 and chose to expropriate the bloody wealth of the banks, remaining steadfastly committed to the vision of the overthrow of the state and capital, holding a militant – feisty stance, against the police-judicial complex, the material expression of state terrorism. Continue reading Greece: International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker G. Michailidis →
The punitive mechanism and its illusion of its penitentiary character collapse in the face of the fierce resistance of the prisoners where they consciously choose to stand up against the conformity, discipline and compromise that domination tries to impose.
Comrade Giannis Michailidis, without renouncing his political identity, without signing statements of repentance, is fighting a long and difficult struggle for his freedom against the special regime of exception that the judicial process, bourgeois justice, has formed. Prison is a mechanism of coercion, the ultimate mechanism of control and recording, a system of surveillance and extermination, of forced transformation of character, but Giannis has endured.
Continue reading Text of imprisoned comrades for Giannis Michailidis (Greece) →