Statement by Olga Economidou to the court for the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire escape plan trial.
I did not come to this court room today to offer my apologies. I do not stand here and apologize to you because I do not regret anything. Even if I could turn back time a thousand times, I would still make the same decision. The desire for freedom cannot be put on trial or imprisoned.
I am an unrepentant anarchist member of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and together with my comrades we have claimed responsibility from the first moment of our conception. Then, as now, the organization has claimed responsibility for the project to escape from the cells of democracy and for everything that was needed to implement our plan.
This is not the first time that the conspiracy has been judged within these specially designed court rooms, because the action is a living part of the continuing history of armed revolutionary organizations.
This political judgement is the response of power to bury the practical question of armed struggle that we have chosen. Faced with the power’s monopoly of sadistic violence, the anarchist urban guerrilla is our necessary response.
In this era of totalitarianism, where power has permeated every aspect of individual existence, what prevails nowadays is a normalized absence of freedom, a velvet-gloved slavery that has been labeled democracy that is passed from generation to generation as a tradition.
During the era of the junta there was no curfew, today democracy grants 1 kilometer of freedom, as in the case of Evi Statiri and exile to Salamina for Athena Tsakalou. The persecution of the relatives of political prisoners, as in the case of Christos Polydoros, Athena Tsakalou and Evi Statiri is a repetition of the fascist practices used by the military junta against the relatives of political prisoners.
Once there was the fear of iron chains, now there are the gold cages of consumption where artificial needs and desires are selected on a voluntary basis.
Once there was censorship, now the television screens are filled with disinformation, lies, distortion and selective omission of facts all in the name of freedom of speech. The tanks of the military junta have been replaced by the riot police of democracy to safeguard the interests of capital and to establish economic tyranny.
This political totalitarianism and it’s horrifying games of repression have given birth to a society that is dominated by the endless terrorism of the state apparatus. All moderate resistance is ineffective. The struggle for freedom will only be won through revolutionary violence. This is why the option of anarchist struggle and armed violence is as relevant as ever.
My decision to escape was and still remains a deliberate political decision. It is an act of war to continue what I began, for the continuation of the revolutionary action of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.
I have already escaped from the hypocritical morality, restrictions and rules of this culture that stinks of defeatism and death. The path of permanent attack is the path that I have chosen and there is no return ticket.
No truce. No remorse.
Olga Economidou,
member of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / FAI-IRF
(via Contra Info, translated by Sin Banderas Ni Fronteras and Insurrection News)
