Despite the relative calm of Christmas, new explosive material was added to the flames of Greece in revolt by a new crime perpetrated by the same class forces of capitalist exploitation and oppression: the night of December 23, when the militant trade unionist among immigrant workers Kostadina Kuneva was returning home, she was attacked by hired killers who threw to her face sulfuric acid. She lost immediately one eye, she is disfigured and now she is struggling for her life in the intensive care unit of Evangelismos Hospital in Athens.
Kostadina is an immigrant worker from Bulgaria, and the general secretary of PEKOP, the All Attica Union of Cleaners and House Personnel, organizing immigrant women working as cleaners. Kostadina was leading the struggle against the company OIKOMET owned by Nikitas Oikonomakis (a capitalist boss who is also a leading member of the ‘Socialist’ PASOK)that hires immigrant women as teams of cleaners and “rent” them to public services, first of all to HSAP, the oldest part of the Athens-Piraeus metro. OIKOMET refused to pay the workers the “Christmas gift”, a supplementary salary for the Christmas days, which is legally obligatory for the bosses so far. Kostadina Kuneva refused to accept any sell out of the workers and the management tried first to intimidate her by firing her mother and latter by all kinds of physical threats. The criminal attack by sulfuric acid was a premeditated crime to terrorize not only Kostadina but also all immigrant workers who fight back against super- exploitation, and even, in a minor scale, they have participated in the December revolt. Kostadina Kuneva was among the class struggle trade unionists that took part in the occupation of the GSEE headquarters. Her union together with the union of the “delivery motorbike boys” (whose secretary is cde Kyriakos Moutidis of EEK) are the two trade unions who officially took the decision to participate and sustain the 3 days occupation of the palace of the trade union bureaucracy demanding a General Strike and the release of all arrested in the revolt following the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos.
In protest for the murderous attack against our sister and comrade in battle Kostadina Kuneva, the headquarters of HSAP (the metro line where she was working as cleaner) in Omonia, central Athens, were occupied by radical workers and youth and a series of solidarity actions were decided in a general assembly.
For those trade unions/unionists wishing to express their solidarity to Kostadina Kuneva the e-mail of her trade union is: pekop1999@gmail.com The web site of the union is: www.pekop.formyjob.net. (Please, communicate these messages of solidarity to us as well, to eek@ath.forthnet.gr)
Tomorrow a march is organized in Athens by the general assembly of the occupation in HSAP in solidarity to Kostadina. The same day- Sunday, December 28- militant workers will protest in the streets against the opening of the shops in Sunday (until now this was forbidden in Greece), and picket lines will be formed.
So even in a chaotic way, the revolt against police repression after the murder of Alexis is broadening to involve also struggles both of Greek and immigrant workers against over-exploitation as well as against the terrorism of the capitalist bosses.
December 27, 2008
____Savas Michael
