From our Diary of Struggle
New Year’s Eve
Perhaps we did not succeeded to burn again the hated Christmas tree of the right wing Mayor of Athens as it was done before Christmas, but we successfully organized a major intervention in Syntagma Square, in Athens in front of the Greek parliament, where thousands of people, mainly very poor immigrant workers were assembled having no other opportunity to enjoy any New Year Eve: a strong group of comrades of EEK assisted by NAR comrades of the Antiwar Internationalist Movement have raise banners in Arabic and in Greek in defense of the heroic Palestinian people of Gaza, for the immediate stopping of the massacre, for Freedom to Palestine and for the Right to return of all Palestinian refugees in their homeland. Our slogans attracted many Arab immigrant workers, and thus the rally of solidarity had a hard core of 300-400 people while our slogans were echoed by thousands in the Square. The Mayor’s speech of announcement of the New Year 2009 was greatly disturbed and he was obviously annoyed, so he had to declare his hypocritical “support” to the Gaza people. The police tried to intimidate us unsuccessfully, but no clashes took place.
At the same time, about a 1000 anarchists had their own successful New Year’s Eve in front of the Central Prisons of Korydallos. The prisoners, who had in November their own revolt, demanding human conditions, were assembled behind the bars of their windows, and cheered their supporters outside the prison and repeated the slogans against police repression.
January 2, 2009
Two doctors of EEK, comrade Katerina Matsa and myself, visited in the Intensive Care Unit of the Evangelismos Hospital, in Athens, Kostandina Kuneva, the heroic Bulgarian immigrant worker and militant trade unionist who was savagely attacked by sulfuric acid on December 23, 2008. It was not solely and act of obvious solidarity but we wanted to have a full medical picture of her condition. We fully respect the medical duty for secrecy for the patient but this time any silence of what REALLY happened and for its horrible consequences is complicity with the criminals. Already we have a lot of evidence that the State, the bosses, the Mafiosi, the gangsters controlling the import of immigrant labor and imposing to them real slavery, many other reactionary forces, including the trade union bureaucracy, want to cover up the truth and to put an end to the growing movement of solidarity which unites the revulsion of the barbaric attack on Kostadina with the killing of young Alexis on December 6 by the police.
The truth is the following: Kostadina not only has lost one eye, has the other eye also severely damaged and the face burned; the more important is that the entire upper digestive system- the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, even the duodenum- has been burned by the sulfuric acid. The tracheal tree is also severely damaged as well as the larynx.
Two conclusions have to be drawn with general human and political importance.
First, the killers did not just throw the sulfuric acid to her face but they obliged her by force to shallow it by the mouth; the burning of the face and the eyes was a “collateral damage” while she was, probably, fighting her aggressors (who have to be more than one to do such a horrible thing.) The killers acted to kill her, not just to intimidate her. To kill her and to terrorize her union and all the class struggle trade union movement. The method, very unusual in Greece, has all the characteristics of Mafia contract killers. But the police only now, ten days after the crime, started some interrogations with the main hypothesis that she was attacked by … a lover!! We remind you that Kostadina is a long standing class struggle trade unionist, secretary of PECOP, of the All Attica Union of Cleaners and House Personnel, leading the battle for the rights of the terribly over-exploited cleaners (mainly immigrant workers who are hired by private companies and rent to public services paid with peanuts for 7 hours while only 5 hours are recognized on paper).
The second conclusion is that with such extensive damages, particularly in the digestive tube, her life will be, if not in immediate danger, an indefinitely real torture for the rest of its time. It is the workers movement in Greece and internationally as such who has to take the defense of Kostadina and of all workers, immigrants or not.
January 3, 2009
At noon a 2.000 strong demonstration took place in Petralona, the neighborhood of Athens where Kostadina Kuneva lives, organized by an Initiative of the local population.
At 15.00 pm, a 4.000 strong demonstration in defense of the Palestinian people of Gaza, organized by trade unions and left organizations, marched from the Athens University in the center of the Greek capital to the US and Israeli Embassies. Stones and a few Molotov cocktails were thrown and the riot police attacked the entire march with massive use of tear gas preventing the bulk of it to approach the Israeli Embassy.
Returning from the demonstration, at 19.30 pm (Greek time) we learned the news that the long expected land invasion of Zionist tanks and ground troops to Gaza has started. We already discussed and decided more solidarity actions. The first is a new demonstration tomorrow afternoon.
HANDS OFF GAZA!
Zionist troops out from Gaza, NOW!
Freedom to Palestine!
January 3, 2008
__Savas Michael
