State terrorism: Torture on the back streets of Athens.

On Thursday 27th of July around 2 in the morning in Athens, on Bouboulinas st. in Exachia neighborhood, a squadron of greek cops kidnapped and tortured an anarchist immigrant. Straight away they began to torture me with a barrage of kicks, using racist and fascist insults. Meanwhile, the police stated that my offense is that I am an anarchist and belong to a known political group of Exarchia. Then the squadron of riot cops forced me into a dark alley. They laid me on the ground and they tried to break my ribs by kicking; I placed my hand on my ribs to protect them. They took away my hand from my ribs and tried to break my fingers with their shields. In order to protect my fingers, I pulled my hand under my belly. At that moment, they hit my ribs again to break them. This action lasted a long time, until one of the cops proposed to break my wrists. So they placed my hands on the curb stone to break them with batons, but I managed to pull my hands away. This escalated their anger, and by saying fascist and racist insults, they all started to beat me. They beat me for more than one and a half hours. All the while they were taking several photos of me getting beaten up, as well as when I was lying semi conscious on the street. When cops realized that my body had been seriously damaged and I was not able to move, they started to play a game with me, telling me “you have ten seconds to leave from here, if we catch you again, we will kill you”, and two cops moved a little bit ahead of me to catch me again. They hit my knee several times with batons to make sure that I can not escape. When one of them turned to look behind him, with all of the pain that I had, I started running. One of the cops tried to catch me again but I could escape by running up Tositsa and seek help at a nearby house of comrades.
Solidarity paramedics came immediately and after examination, told me I should go to hospital. There they found that aside from severe bruising all over my body and head wounds, I aslo had a fructured spinal joint.
Exarchia, as an area with self-organized projects and revolutionary struggle, is under constant attack from the state because it is part of international social struggle against capitalism, mafia, terrorism and generally the system. Exarchia is a zone of defense where different groups exist together to fight for freedom and equality against the oppression of the system. By mutual cooperation we can meet the needs of each other without any authority. For this struggle the state beats us.
The state by placing permanent police forces in the perimeter of Exarchia has made a kind of border between us and the rest of Athens, so it is as if they put us in a kind of prison. At the moment we have no other way to resist this prison except riots against the military check points. One of the reasons that the cops wanted to break my wrists is because as they said, I am one of those who participate in the riots. Many persons usually participate in these clashes with the police forces, because they do not want to be in prison, because they do not want control from any authority.
As an immigrant anarchist I understand that the struggle for freedom is common between locals and migrants. For this reason I work towards unity and making collective body between locals and migrants. We will not fight only for immigrants but for everyone, because we understand that our pain, our problems are the same.
Immigrants are under constant attack from the state and facists and it does not matter what kind of goverment is in power, whether it is ultra-right or leftist goverment. SYRIZA present themselves as supporters of immigrants but the reality is they imprison migrants on mass scale, every day they deport and kill people at the borders. We know that all authority is our enemy.
In Exarchia today immigrants are under increasing threat of repression. Recently they began to make police sweep operations on the square arresting any migrant that is there. At the same time there are groups in Exarchia who act like police, using the same tactics, like pogroms on the square against migrants. Such as a group known as security team, military part of the political group “Antiauthoritarian Movement” (AK), who have relation with the government and present themselves as supporters of immigrants, but instead they use immigrants as a cover for their mafia business. As an immigrant I have to say to such groups: stop using our name for your dirty business.
It is clear that cops and mafia work together for the same purpose: control and the crushing of resistance.
The message of this violent attack by the pigs was: to terrorize immigrants, anarchists and those who actively resist and fight the police. We shall not kneal down. The state’s violence make it more clear that our struggle is just.