Today, on December 6th 2020, 12 years have passed since the murder of the 15 year-old student Alexis Grigoropoulos, who was shot dead by the police officer Korkoneas, under the state's responsibility. This murder didn't only shake Greece, but peoples all around the globe.
This murder was the straw that broke the camel's back and brought about a youth uprising, since they saw their own reflection in the face of Grigoropoulos, given the fundamental crisis of the capitalist-imperialist crisis, with a future that is both uncertain and without any prospect. School and university students as well as broader parts of the Greek youth were daily protesting and organising demonstrations, take-overs and assemblies in schools and universities. In front of the beating, the tear-gas and the arrests they were more and more infuriated, because they understood more and more that Alexis Grigoropoulos' death was not an accident, but the real face of this rotting system.
Ever since on December the 6th demonstrations take place, organised by left-wing and other progressive forces of the movement, around the country. So, even this year, despite the difficulties posed by the coronavirus pandemic, demonstrations were organised all along Greece, by the CPG (m-l) and other organisations of the extra-parliamentary Left, respecting all the sanitary, self-protection measures and the distance between persons as they have been doing up to now. The CPG (m-l) wanted to highlight through these demonstrations some other political aspects as well; those of answering the government's policy and struggling for those measures, none of which was taken for the sake of the people's health. The only measures taken have to do with repression, such as fines, more policing and dropping democratic rights, such as assembling above a certain number of persons which was processed through an unofficial coup-like decree. Therefore it is obvious that Alexis' murder was in harmony with the policy of the system and the capital that care about no human lives, only about profit and exploitation.
So this year the system and the New Democracy government, on the pretext of the pandemic threat, prohibited demonstrations and assemblies on December 6th, stating that they will make no step back against «violators» of this ban. Exactly the same as they did with the antiimperialist demonstration in memory of the Polytechnic Uprising on November 17th and those of the strike on November 26th.
However their announcements didn't instill terror on the organised Left. Particularly the CPG (m-l) attempted to walk the road and defy the terrorising, despite the thousands of policemen in the centre of Athens, despite the surrounding of the organisation's political bookshop «Out of the walls». The organisation's members and the Generall Secretery of the party faced arrests and crackdown by the riot police forces, who took 12 of them to the General Police Headquarters of Attica, alongside tens of other militants of the Left.
In Thessaloniki at least 4 demonstrations took place, organised by forces of the left and anarchist collectives, and police hunted down and apprehended demonstrators just after the protests. One of these demonstrations took place in front of the French Consulate, showing international solidarity to the struggling French people and the French youth.
The crackdown in Crete was equivalent, with intense police presence in both its major cities, Herakleion and Chania, with arrests and apprehensions; among them members of the CPG (m-l) too.
Therefore it is hypocrisy at least that the government which uses its cronies to gather tens or hundreds of people inside the police departments, the government which has criminally degraded the healthcare system, the government and the system that work to maximize poverty and misery, to talk of a supposed sanitary danger of the demonstrations. These demonstrations take place so we can defend our lives and this is a problem for them, this is why all the mainstream Media slander them madly.
We call upon all of the people to fight and denounce this outbreak of state terror whose only goal is to frighten the employed, the youth and the people, in order to be able to promote further its wild class offensive against their interests. Because they know that the people's rage is getting larger by the day, especially while the victims of the system's criminal handling of the pandemic grow daily.
Organising, resisting and struggling are the weapons and the answers which can give rise to better days for the people. Against all their efforts to strike fear, until victory and their overthrow.
- We demand that all apprehended, are freed immediately!
- We demand the immediate repeal of the junta-inspired prohibition of demonstrations!
- We honour Alexis' memory through mass struggle!
Athens - December 2020
CPG(m-l)
International Bureau
