Exclusive interview of Aristides Papadokostopoulos(*) to the left weekly “Dromos” (2/6/2010)

Could you tell us what happened exactly from the moment of the attack?

Just before 5 o’clock on Monday morning, the attack of the Israelis started on international waters, 70 miles off the coast of Gaza. First they attacked the large Turkish ship, which was transferring most of the activists, and afterwards the rest of the ships. The attack kicked off with real ammunition and had as result all these murders. They got on board also on the two passenger boats and on the Turkish boats, and then they came down on us, on the “Free Mediterranean”. We continued to move forward despite the warnings, because Israel does not have the right to run checks and stop ships on 70 nautical miles off the coastline. And this has to be condemned by the international community in its entirety. Israel can not act as the gendarme of the region, forbidding any access to Gaza. The commandos climbed up on board from inflatable boats, they hit us, and led us to a port, Ashdod. From there the psychological war started. The threat was “we deport you now or you go to prison”. We chose, some of us, to leave earlier, so that the matter becomes known in Greece. The others chose to stay there, because they do not recognise any suzerainty of Israel in international waters. The hostages were not illegal; Israel arrested them defying the maritime and international laws. When they brought us in Ashdod, that the following were hit by the Israelis: Vangelis Pissias, Yiannis Karipidis, and two more foreign activists: the American who played in the documentary ‘Gaza We Are Coming’ and the Swedish saxophone player who originally comes from Israel. They hit these ones in front of us. The port authorities, the army, the police, around 500 people were hitting them under conditions of lynching. And it is not an exaggeration when I say that 500 people were brutalizing them.

Press Statement of KOE

The denunciations by the six Greek activists who returned yesterday in Athens revealed that the Israeli neonazis, even after their murderous raid on the ships of the Freedom Flotilla, kept on torturing the hundreds of hostages – among them the 31 Greek activists who are still held imprisoned in the Zionist terrorist entity.

Israel, this vagabond “state” that exists only thanks to the support of the USA and the tolerance of the EU and the rest of the supposedly “civilized” world, is guilty for the ongoing crime. But equally guilty is the Papandreou government, which observes in the most pathetic way the orgy of the Zionist terrorism. Yesterday’s outrageous and shameless claim of the Greek government, that it had warned the… activists about the risks of the trip (!), proves its complicity.

On today’s huge demonstrations and the death of three bank employees

The Communist Organization of Greece condemns the IMF-EU’s government for its policy of annihilation of the society and the orgy of repression unleashed against the people. The death of the three bank employees because of fully condemnable acts provokes sorrow and anger, which are added to the wrath felt by the whole society against the government of the Quisling Papandreou.

This cynical government, assisted by the mainstream Media that remind us of the dictatorship’s TV, has the cheekiness to put the responsibility for the death of the three employees on the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, on the mass movement and more concretely on the Left. It is Papandreou himself who is igniting the tension and the violence because of the measures adopted by his government. No matter how many excuses he will invent in the Parliament, no matter how many appeals for social consent he will make, Papandreou will remain in history as the would-be gravedigger of the Greek people.

Athens and the whole country lived the biggest demonstrations of the last 30 years, with half million marching for six hours in Athens alone. The people demands that Papandreou and those MPs who intend to vote in favor of transforming the society into a human waste bank, account for their crimes. Those who handed over the country and the people to the hyenas of the capital and of the markets, those who attempt to condemn the workers and the youth to extermination, will account to the people.

The police attacked brutally the biggest demonstrations of the last 30 years; it transformed Athens into a huge gas chamber, and also attacked brutally the marches in Thessaloniki and Patras. The Minister of Repression shall account for this!

We hold accountable as well the owner of Marfin Bank, this unsolicited “savior of the Nation” who obliged his employees to remain inside the concrete branch, despite the fact that he knew the danger was imminent. Obviously, human life is cheaper for the capital than the daily profits of a bank branch.

The coordinated effort of the government, of the right-wing opposition and of the extreme right-wing to exploit the death of the three employees in order to stop the torrent of the popular anger, will not go unanswered. The wrath and the despair that coexist in society will send to hell Papandreou and any MP who will vote in favor of the Greek people’s annihilation.

Athens, 5 May 2010

Communist Organization of Greece

The Communist Organization of Greece (KOE) salutes the combative mass demonstrations that took place yesterday afternoon and today morning all over the country against the new measures adopted by the government of PASOK. These demonstrations must become the starting point of a great uprising of all the workers and of the whole people, obliging the government to pay dearly its effort to impose the barbaric measures imposed by Brussels. Today the Greek people, demonstrating in their dozens of thousands with such an impressive and militant way, send a clear message to the government: The new anti-people measures will go, or this government will go!

The Communist Organization of Greece condemns the coward attack of the special police forces against Manolis Glezos, the 87 years old Hero of our National Resistance against the Nazi Occupation, outside the entrance of the Parliament, which resulted to his injury and hospitalization in Intensive Care Unit. Seven decades after his legendary and symbolic blow against the Nazi Occupation (*), Manolis Glezos is aggressed by the political servants of Brussels and Berlin!

The Communist Organization of Greece also condemns the unprecedented attack of the special police forces against the Parliamentary Group of SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left) while the MPs were coming out of the Parliament with their own banner in order to meet the demonstrators. The out of limits behavior of the police forces corresponds very well to the equally out of limits economic and social suffocation imposed on the country by the government of PASOK.

Communiqué of the Communist Organization of Greece on the new anti-people measures adopted by the Greek government [*] - March 3, 2010

After the prime minister delivered, yesterday, a hypocritical and cheap speech about “our fatherland” which is at war with “bad guys” who steal the public wealth (!), today he ordered the government’s spokesman to proceed to the most nightmarish statements ever heard by the working people.

The Papandreou government sinks the country. They confiscate the salaries and pensions. They steal our income through exorbitant taxation. At the same time, they don’t take even 1 euro more than before by the rich. They don’t cut back even 1 euro on the military expenses and armament orders. They don’t ask even 1 euro more from the banks, the biggest robbers of the people. The Papandreou government succeeded, in a very short time, to become even more antipopular than the much hated right-wing governments of Mitsotakis and Karamanlis.

Never before, during the whole post-war era, so much lies were told in such a short time span. The Papandreou government, after giving up the power to the money-markets and to Brussels, now behaves as Berlin’s Gauleiter. The government had the possibility to borrow money with lower interests; to tax the big capital; to exact support from Brussels; to defend the already exhausted and impoverished society. Instead, the Papandreou government chose to be applauded by the Financial Times, Goldman Sachs, Frau Merkel and Mister Baroso. And, as today’s statement by Merkel shows, the liquidation of the Greek people will take place without any financial compensation by the EU.

The general strike of 24 February and the mass rallies organized in Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras and dozens of cities all over Greece gave a strong message of resistance against the EU, the PASOK government (and its reactionary anti-people alliance with the right-wing and the extreme right-wing), and the mainstream Media that continue their dark propaganda in favor of the destructive, medieval neoliberal policies imposed through the EU Stability Pact.

The mass participation in the strike and the rallies, despite the bourgeois campaign to promote the all-out attack against the people as “inevitable”, proved that the working people and the youth are in a process of realizing that the EU and government projects can be upset, and raise the expectations for the better organization and development of the people’s resistance. The fact that the leaders of the two trade union Confederations (GSEE for the private sector and ADEDY for the public sector) were obliged to call this general strike under the angry pressure of the workers shows this gradual change of the masses’ conscience, and the workers’ will to fight against the EU-government measures.

Mr Ambassador,

You are certainly aware of the situation of 11.000 Palestinians who are jailed in your prisons. You are also certainly aware of the inhuman and cruel treatment most of them suffer, often placed in isolation, been tortured, or deprived even of the most basic necessities and elementary rights. Among them is Mr Ahmad Sa'adat, General Secretary of PFLP and elected member of the Palestinian Parliament, who was abducted by your army. Because he has refused to submit to the inhuman regime that your government reserves to the Palestinian prisoners, Mr Sa'adat has been put in even more strict isolation, which he challenges tomorrow in the Israeli courts.

We will not try to convince you that the Palestinians, as all peoples on this planet, are entitled to determine themselves their fate, to be free, to return to their homes, and of course to struggle in order to secure these universal rights.

The Communist Organization of Greece unequivocally condemns the arrest, on 13 October, of ten members of the Basque pro-independence movement, including Arnaldo Otegi, leader and spokesperson of Batasuna during the last peace process in the Basque Country, Rafa Diez, former National Secretary of the Trade Union LAB and Rufino Etxeberria, member of the Negotiation Committee during last peace process.

This new, deeply antidemocratic attack against the Basque pro-independence movement is the last in a series of continuous, desperate and impressively unsuccessful attempts of the Spanish State to “resolve” the Basque conflict through the means of increasingly harsh and violent repression.