After four years of political hostage-taking, all 61 activists who were arrested and prosecuted for their participation in the demonstrations of December 6, 2020 in Athens, which – under the pretext of the pandemic – had been banned by the ND-government, were acquitted. The court (Single-Member Court of Appeal) decided to acquit all 61 fighters, as it considered the charges of “dispersal of an infectious disease” and “disloyalty” to be legally unfounded.
This is an important development, a political victory, both for the people’s, labor and youth movement in general, and for the KKE (m-l) in particular, as among the persecuted were 11 of its members (after the death of its secretary, Andrea Voyatzoglou, who was also arrested and prosecuted). It is about the victory of a struggle fought stubbornly and consistently for four whole years, with the aim of denouncing the policy that attack democratic rights and civil liberties, that outlaws and suppresses the struggles, that targets and persecutes those who struggle, resist and demand.
A constituent and crucial element of this struggle was the broad wave of solidarity that manifested itself over the years, with dozens of resolutions issued by unions, collectives and political organizations, but also with the presence of dozens of defense witnesses. It was this wave of solidarity that underlined and highlighted the political weight that trials like this have for the movement at the expense of struggles and activists, especially in the current period of the fascisization of political life, the hundreds of prosecutions for political and trade union activity, the targeting of political spaces and political organizations. The KKE (m-l) wanted to highlight this political importance all these years through the broad mobilization of all its forces to drop the charges. The broad solidarity shown and the final outcome of the trial are a political justification of all these efforts but also of the political logic that the KKE (m-l) believes should characterize every such struggle.
The 11 members of the KKE (m-l) also highlighted their political identity and the political nature of the arrests and prosecution in the trial, also recalling that during these four years of political hostage-taking, the state machinery used the charges that weighed on the persecuted to support additional tactics against them, as happened in the case of unionized teachers.
The political victory of this struggle and the acquittal of the persecuted is a positive legacy for the movement and as such must be utilized. Particularly, in the trials that are to be held in the next period in various cities of the country (e.g. Thessaloniki and Chania) with corresponding charges and similar pretexts. But, under no circumstances should there be complacency. The system’s attack on rights and freedoms continues and intensifies. The mechanisms of the bourgeois state are becoming more and more hostile to the people and the working class. The legal arsenal of the bourgeoisie is constantly strengthened and reactionary, in a direction where the struggles and claims of the people, workers and youth will be considered “by definition” illegal. And the only way to break this climate, to cancel the state’s methods and to overturn the anti-people policy, is the mass popular and labor mobilization, the militant defense of the rights of the people and the working class, the guarding of political and trade union freedoms.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
No comments:
Post a Comment