Exarchia: Statement of solidarity from the Union Communiste Libertaire

Elected in early July, the new right-wing government in Greece, led by Kiriakos Mitsotakis, had a clearly repressive program against migration and against the anarchist movement, a major player in solidarity in Greece. On the morning of Monday, July 26, a large number of police forces cordoned off the Exarcheia neighborhood and evacuated four occupations. In response, a demonstration and a general assembly were scheduled for the evening.

From 6 am, a huge contingent of different police units (anti-riot, military police, intelligence, anti-terrorist …) gathered around the Exarcheia neighborhood and closed the streets nearby. This Monday, at least four occupations were targeted by this police operation. Street Spiro, Trikoupi, two occupations that housed people exiled from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Turkey were evacuated and walled off in the wake. 143 people were arrested, including 35 minors, including babies. All these people were taken to a prison for migrants, supposedly to check their administrative situation. We do not know, for the moment, what will happen to these people.

At the same time, the police raided two anarchist squats in the neighborhood, GARE and ex-squat Rosa de Foc. While this last building was empty, they arrested at GARE three comrades including two Greek and a 65 year old Frenchman. While the government and the Greek bourgeois media persist in assimilating anarchist movement, migrants and drug dealing with Exarchia, the searches only allowed the seizure of … a computer and a mask. Several comrades also report unceasing controls and police violence for several days now.

The declared goal of the government is to expel all 23 occupations of the Exarchia district. A police unionist has described the residents of the Exarchia squats as “harmful dust” and “waste” that he intended to clean up, which sums up well the state of mind of the Greek Right in recent weeks. Moreover, other places, squatted or not, in Exarchia and its surroundings are in the viewfinder of the Greek state, either for their support to migrants or for their participation in the social movement. Thus, the new government has passed a law that simply abolishes university “asylum”, which has limited since the fall of the dictatorship of the colonels in 1974 the possibility of access to campuses for law enforcement agencies.

Many places and collectives and many people in situations of administrative distress and housing are still under threat, after this police attack of Monday, August 26th. A demonstration was called the same evening at 18h, from an emblematic place among those who have been living exile at Exarchia for years (Notara 26) and a general assembly should follow in the Polytechnic, close to the neighborhood.

The Greek movement is organizing to resist but it needs strong international solidarity, which reminds the Greek state that the emancipation movements of the whole world are currently watching it. L’Union Communiste Libertaire supports the occupations of Exarcheia in struggle and calls for strengthening their resistance by all possible means.

L’Union Communiste Libertaire, August 28, 2019