A letter from Christoforos Kortesis, an imprisoned comrade

On 10th April, 6 people were arrested and taken to the Police Headquaters (GADA). I was one of them. We didn’t know why we were detained, and when we insisted to contact lawyers the cops told us that we couldn’t, because this was a case of adduction. After 56 hours – during which we were not even allowed to contact each other – we were taken to the courts on Evelpidon St. facing the charge of participation in the “Revolutionary Struggle”. The timing of my arrest coincided with the prime minister’s announcement (Papandreou) that Greece will possibly take a loan from the IMF. There is obviously no room left for coincidences here, as is also the case with the police raid in the alleged “Halandri safehouse” and the arrests, by the former ruling party Nea Dimokratia, of comrades only a few days before the elections of 2009.
Following our arrest, we were hardly surprised to see that instantly the leading role in misinformation was taken on by the usual tele-nosy parkers – among all the scum. They presented evidence that was not even written in the legal brief, and started to piece together a puzzle which went as far as… attacking the Twin Towers!!!
Soon afterwards, our guilt was taken for granted in the media that started competing who will be the one to give out more information on our personal lives; who will be the first to take photos of the apartment-safehouse and tell what motorcycles we prefer, what time we go to bed, what time and how many times we make love and things of this sort: nothing more than offerings on the altar of spectacle. However, none of this comes as a surprise to me. I am well aware that mass media in our ‘democratic’ society play exactly the same role as the ministries of propaganda used to play under totalitarianism.
People in Greece will inevitably realize that nothing has changed in their everyday life, even after those blood thirsty terrorists got arrested. If before capitalists were offering the remains of their affluent buffets to the people, at this point they will stop doing even that. But in those times of acute economic crisis and social despair, people can end up doing things that before we could not even imagine. The massive rebellion that spread all over Greece after the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, two years ago, was just a hint – offering hope for some and despair to others… Repression now will be harsher than ever aiming primarily at breaking the most radical part of society, its greatest internal enemy, the anarchist anti-authoritarian movement. That is why, at the same time as unemployment in general exceeds 15%, Chrisochoidis intends to employ even more people to join the security forces so as to ‘combat’ the growing menace of terrorism, while the only goal is to enforce the defensive lines of the state establishment.
But it is exactly at this time of crisis that we are presented with unique possibilities and diverse social groups can be radicalized. It is exactly at this time of crisis that tones of explosives are accumulated at the foundations of the capitalist establishment and the only thing missing, comrades, is to put fire on them!
On the other hand, I am not going to talk at all about the accusations laid upon us, since innocence and guilt give and go depending on the side that we have chosen to take in life. If the cops, the journalists, the politicians, the bankers, or the judges consider someone as guilty in the name of bourgeois democracy, then, all of them are guilty in the name of public justice.
In the same sense, I am not going to talk at all about the conditions of detention throughout those first days at GADA. As an anarchist, I consider myself and my comrades prisoners of war. This war, which Chrisochoidis became able to see only some months ago, has been actually conducted with rage during centuries between any kind of masters and the masses of revolted.
Everyone has already chosen sides and when some realize that they are at the wrong side of the camp, then, it will be too late…