On Thursday 20th
of December at 7am,
riot police
forces raided
at Villa Amalias squat
in
the center of Athens under the pretext of
an anonymous complaint. Policemen detained eight comrades which have
been transferred to the police headquarters. The police searched the
place in presence of a public prosecutor and a witness from the
squatters for several hours and after the end of the search the
comrades were all arrested and charged with felonies. Police officers
sealed the squat and since then the building is guarded all the time
by riot police squads. From the first moment hundreds of comrades
gathered outside the squat responding to the call for solidarity. The
same morning several comrades went to the Athens town hall in order
to make an intervention to the municipality authorities and the
mayor. Later an assembly took place in a nearby university in order
to be organized a solidarity movement for the release of the arrested
squatters and against the evacuation of Villa Amalias. As a first
step a spontaneous solidarity demo consisting of 1000 comrades took
place that night in downtown Athens which ended near the squat. On
Friday 21th
of December the arrested comrades were transferred to the courts by
heavy armed policemen and were examined by a public prosecutor. His
proposition was to be charged with the felony of manufacturing
explosive materials and some misdemeanors which means that on Monday
24 of December they should go to the examining magistrate, who is
responsible for the final indictment. Until then they will remain in
the police headquarters.
Villa Amalias squat has been an alive
political and cultural space for the past 23 years. All these years
the squat has hosted a lot of political events and assemblies as well
as concerts and theatrical plays. A housing collective, a printing
collective and a library were also parts of it. Villa Amalias squat
is an emblem of the squat movement, a center of the anarchist
movement and an outpost of the social and class struggle in Athens.
Thus will remain!
Hands off squats!
Immediate release
of the Villa Amalias squatters!
Group
of libertarian communists (Athens)
FIRST
VILLA AMALIAS STATEMENT
Villa Amalias statement: we are, and we shall
remain here.
Today, on December 20th, 2012,
the police raided Villa Amalias. Under the pretext of a
complaint for drug dealing, they searched the building in the
presence of a district attorney. Their findings are ludicrous.
Nevertheless, according to Dendias [translators' note: the minister
of public order] these prove that Villa was an “epicentre for
lawlessness” for 22 years and that the law, thanks to the “brave
political will of [PM] Samaras” was finally restored.
What
logical leap may brand empty beer bottles as “materials for the
construction of molotovs?” Is it strange to have a large number of
empty beer bottles in a place that hosts a concert [gig] space and a
café? What comprises a “flammable material”? May they be
referring to the cleaning liquids for the printing press that
operates in the squat? Should we talk about the gas masks that should
be carried by every demonstrator that respects their health? Should
we talk about the elementary means of self-defense (the mock flash
bangs, slingshots etc) in a space that has repeatedly been attacked
by para-statist gangs (arsons, stabbings, beatings) with the apogee
reached in 2008, when the then minister of public order
Markogiannakis visited the “residents” of Agios Panteleimonas and
a few minutes after he left, we were attacked…
Under
the pretext of the search, then, they materialise a long-standing wet
dream of theirs: their raid into a space that is one of the spatial
symbols of all those who stand in hostility against anything that
represents sovereignty, imposition, sterilization, indifference,
surrender, subjection. In this they are right. That’s who we are.
Us and the thousands of demonstrators, the people in struggle,
squatters, strikers, people fighting in the streets. We are the
homeless, the punks and the rebels, the vegetarians and the
feminists, the nocturnal ones and the workers, poor and the
aggrieved, the victims of racism and the avengers of injustice. The
minister called us an epicentre of lawlessness…
And now
we should talk seriously. Villa Amalias is an organising proposition
which had to be dealt with at the time of the cannibalism
of the memoranda. The onslaught of capital against the world of
labour presupposes the destruction of all of its structures: the
depreciation of everything that trade unions had gained, whatever
structures of solidarity and dissent, the self-organised incentives:
everything is targeted. The far-right agenda that has prevailed since
the outbreak of the crisis commenced with the statement concerning a
[supposed] hygiene bomb by Loverdos [trans. note - Loverdos was
minister of health at the time and claimed that the 300 migrant
hunger strikers comprised a “hygiene bomb” in the centre of
Athens] against the hunger strikers of Ypatia. It continued with the
targeting of migrants (at the Evros border wall, concentration camps
and the Xenios Zeus [anti-migrant] operation), the pillorying of
addicted seropositive women, aided by the far-right violence against
migrants, homosexuals and street traders. The torturing of
anti-fascists at the police HQ after the anti-fascist motorcycle
demo, the attacks against squats and the harsh repression against any
labour or social demand, leave little doubt for the fact that the
enemy has put together a solid block; a block against which we must
now resist.
For the
past 22 years we have been in a building that was abandoned for
decades. We maintain it and breathe life into it. We are a squat that
always has its doors open to groups, individuals and incentives that
promote the anti-commercial culture, human dignity, social,
anti-fascist and class struggles. Villa Amalias is giving a fierce
fight –– not in order to protect a dozen pillars, but in order to
protect our desires, our dreams and our hopes for a more free life
for everyone.
We call
everyone who identifies part of themselves in the years-long
operation of the squat to partake in this crucial struggle with us.
This is
the windmill that the executors-don quixote’s have attacked, even
though it is ideas that they are after. These are what are lawless
and illegal for them. Their witch-hunt will bring them nightmares in
response.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE VILLA
AMALIAS SQUATTERS
STATEMENT
BY THE VILLA AMALIAS SQUATTERS IN THE POLICE HEADQUARTERS IN ATHENS
The Villa Amalias squat has been an open political, cultural and
social space, as well as a housing collective, for the past 23
years. In all these years there have been plenty of active groups in
the squat including groups on theatre, concerts, musical studio,
stained glass, kids’ space, dancing, foreign languages, computing,
printing press, screenings, lending library, vinyl exchange – while
the squat has also hosted plenty of political and cultural events by
other groups. Apart from these activities inside its building, Villa
Amalias has also contributed to the resolution of neighbourhood
issues by participating in the residents’ assembly of Victoria
square and by organising open, outward looking activities in the area
– including open mic interventions, free markets, collective
kitchens and kids’ events at the square.
In all these 23 years, the Villa Amalias squat has formed
multiform qualities that reflected the equally multiform composition
of the subjects and groups comprising it – and which in turn derive
from the wider squat movement, from the Anarchist and
Anti-authoritarian space and from the movement for class and labour
antagonism. These qualities have materialised through the
co-organising and participation in demonstrations, interventions and
mobilisations concerning labour, antifascist and antiracist
struggles; solidarity to persecuted squats, to migrants and
persecuted comrades, to university and high school student struggles
as well as the to struggles for the reclaiming of open, public
spaces.
The squat’s building was abandoned since 1973 and it had been in
a horrendous state. Since 1990, which is when it was
occupied, it has stayed alive and maintained thanks to the financial
contribution and personal work of the squatters themselves as well as
all the comrades in solidarity.
The apparent owners of the building ( the municipality of athens,
which has has some enormous property wealth and the school buildings’
organisation) are both renown for cases of expropriation of private
property and illegal declassification [of listed buildings]. The most
extravagant case of such was the enormous Haragioni building at
the junction of 3d September and Ioulianou street, which
turned overnight from a plot designated for the construction of
a school building into a shopping mall.
In contrast to them, who see buildings and spaces as yet another
arena for profit, the Villa Amalias squat and its activity is a
concrete example of its premise for the creation of free social
spaces that oppose financial exploitation of any kind; that are set
upon anti-hierarchical, self-organised, solidarity and horizontal
structures; that respect humans and support those at the bottom end
of the calss pyramid, to which we also belong.
This is why the maintenance of the building, as mentioned above,
is undertaken by the squatters and those in solidarity with them –
in the last 4 years in particular, after the two murderous arson
attacks that the squat received from para-statists, whether waged or
not. These particular attacks caused gross material damage which
nevertheless did not form an obstacle in Villa continuing its action.
To the contrary, they boosted the morale of the people that comprise
it. With the aid of all comrades, the facade of the building on the
side of Cheiden Str was renovated while the restoration and further
improvement of the building have commenced with the aid of architects
and civil engineers.
The continued attacks are not the only ones that the project has
been subject to in all these years. Due to its location but also due
to its ideological values and political characteristics, Villa has
oftentimes found itself targeted by the state and parastate alike. In
all these attacks we always responded with our words, publicizing the
events and propagandizing our positions and our beliefs through
open social interventions.
On 20/12/12, at 7.00 am, men of the state security raided our
Squat under the pretext of an investigation concerning “drugs”
and “explosives”, following a supposed anonymous complaint. They
arrested 8 people who were inside the Squat at the time, of which
three were guests. They confiscated objects from the squat which the
state security then used as evidence for the fabrication of charges
including felonies and misdemeanors - charges
that we reject. Especially when our felony acts are based on some
empty beer bottles and on a tiny amount of petrol that was discovered
next to the heater.
For us, this move is an explicit political choice by the state. At
a time of financial and systemic crisis, the state launches an attack
in all directions, degrading the life of those from below and trying
to wipe out any cell of resistance and of creation of negation: this
may translate in the botching of labour rights, in the promotion
of racist ideals that contribute to a fascist turn of society, in the
creation of conditions of insecurity aimed at us accepting the
constant surveillance of our lives, or in the persecution and
slandering of political spaces and subjects that rise against all the
above.
WE DENY ALL CHARGES
OUR WORDS ARE OUR WEAPONS
WE SAID IT BEFORE AND WE’LL SAY IT AGAIN:
“WE’VE BEEN GAME ALL THESE YEARS AND THE END IS STILL NO-WHERE
IN SIGHT”
SOLIDARITY TO ALL SQUATS (AND TO OURS)
22/12/12
The arrested of Villa Amalias
