Received on 25.09.17:
At dawn on 17/9, the 16-year-old Kostas B. was brutally beaten by police officers and arrived at the intensive care hospital KAT. The political leadership of the police, the Ministry of Public Order and the SYRIZA-ANEL government covered for the police, presenting the incident as a traffic accident, but a series of facts and testimonies refutes this Besides, if a traffic accident had occurred during an escape attempt of the sixteen-year-old, as is said, why did he not go directly to the hospital with an ambulance, but instead ended up in GADA[police headquarters] in handcuffs and with the police dragging him as he could not walk?
This happened after an anti-fascist demonstration on the anniversary of the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, which originally started at the US Embassy as an intervention in honor of Heather Heyer, who was murdered in Charlottesville, USA, at an anti-fascist demonstration, and then the demonstration went to the headquarters of Golden Dawn in Mesogeion. There clashes started with the police forces guarding the offices of Golden Dawn.
The conflict with the repressive forces extended to Alexandras Avenue and Exarcheia during the retreat of the protesters. There were attacks on MAT[riot police] in Exarcheia. At the end of these events, K.B fell into the hands of the police in Exarcheia, where he was beaten. This ended for the sixteen-year-old with being transferred to the intensive care hospital where he is still hospitalized. This is one of the most important incidents of police violence. It’s an attempted murder. But as with such events and since there was no immediate social and political response, the government covered up this murderous attack. It is not the first time that such a murderous police assault in Exarcheia is covered up. The media reproduced, of course, the government and police version of the events, which was dominated by the lie that the extremely serious injury of K.B was caused by an accident. The absence of an immediate reaction to this state crime has emboldened the repressive mechanisms that have pushed a prosecution for felonies and want to take DNA while he is in intensive care. The absence of immediate reaction legitimizes the crime and paves the way for more.
The cops once again paint their hands with the blood of a young man who was very close to death. Not from a cop’s bullet, but from a beating. And once again, he is a sixteen-year-old.
15-16 years is a critical age for the youth in Exarcheia when they are either murdered in cold blood by cops, such as Kaltezas and Grigoropoulos, or receive murderous beatings by law enforcement officers. In every case these are the “ordinary rioters and thugs of Exarcheia” (as the state calls them).
This murderous attack has taken place in a political and social context that is dominated by the social and political lull in the struggles and by the long-term implementation of the social euthanasia policies for large sections of the population in the name of the system’s exit from the economic crisis. On the other hand, we have the unfulfilled necessity of resistance from the youth, but it does not find political space to form a constitutive force of anti-regime reaction, with the resulting resort to insurrectional bursts which are represented as a response to the erosion of the political ground in the space from those tendencies which function as a rear guard of the government, keeping the political and social conflict at a low level, eroding consciousness with illogical conciliation, retreat and defeat all across the spectrum of struggle. Within this historical context for society and the space the fact is that this murderous assault took place, with silence and lack of political reaction to this important event. Still there was a central anti-fascist commemoration for the anniversary of the murder of Pavlos Fyssas and against the governmental fascism represented by the government of Trump.
In Greece, the left-wing government of Syriza covers its own fascism behind “politically correct” terminologies. The social fascism of Syriza with the extermination of the economically weak, with the third memorandum and the fourth, which it does not name as such but is existing and practised, and with the social and class conflict from the social base being hit at its nadir, finds a place to launch murderous attacks without cost to itself. This murderous attack on K.B. remains not only unanswered but neither was there an attempt at a large spread of counter-information against the fact that it was criminally covered up by the government, this not only legitimizes the crime but also guarantees its repetition.
No murderous attack by the state should remain without a corresponding answer.
