Call for actions internationally in solidarity with the anarchist hunger striker G. Michailidis (ENG/ΕΛ)

The anarchist comrade and prisoner of the Greek prisons, Giannis Michailidis, is on a new hunger strike since 12.05.2023. Exactly one year ago, on May 25, 2022, he had announced the start of another hunger strike demanding his release, which after 68 days of hard strike, last July, he decided to end, with his health condition reaching a critical point, awaiting the fulfilment of the commitments of senior judges for meeting his demands. A year later, the mockery of the comrade by the scum of the judiciary is ongoing, with his requests for leave or release being rejected one after another and a whole backdrop of interventions by senior judges and other high ranking officials of the Greek state to prolong Giannis’ captivity. Thus, with his health still burdened by the previous strike, the comrade is currently back in the position of using his own body as a barricade in the face of state machinations.

The comrade’s strike last year showed with certainty that there was a central strategy on the part of the state mechanisms to conceal the struggle for his release and to force the comrade into physical and psychological extermination; a dead end in order to lead to a retreat and not to release the comrade. The solidarity actions, the strike itself, were well concealed for most of its duration, thus seeking to have any state response taking place in a shadowy setting of silencing, behind-the-scenes mockery of the comrade and his legal defence by the judicial mafia, which stretched the timeframe for holding any relevant meetings to the limit.

Similarly, the also recent experience of the hunger strike of the captured member of the revolutionary organization 17th of November, Dimitris Koufontinas, which preceded that of Giannis (8 January-14 March 2021), highlighted on the one hand the state’s callousness towards a hunger-striking combative prisoner, and on the other hand showed how the escalation of repression against the solidarity movement, brought the opposite results and that zero-tolerance strategy brought more people on the streets, more stubbornness, more attacks on state and capitalist targets, social exposure and, ultimately, it was catalytic in creating explosive situations where the state’s omnipotence was shattered, as in the Nea Smirni uprising. And this is something that the state murderers have probably “read”. That is why the strategy in the immediate aftermath of last year’s strike of Giannis Michailidis was more akin to a posture of marginalization, targeted non-escalation and silencing, with callousness remaining a common feature. In order to prevent Giannis’ struggle from becoming a social event.

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