On the sunny afternoon of 28/2/2021 we gathered together with about 20 people and with the support of the “Antifascist Initiative in Heidelberg” and the “Red Help’s” local group in Heidelberg-Mannheim, at the Heidelberg market square to show our solidarity with the hunger and thirst striker Dimitris Koufontinas and to demonstrate about the arbitrariness, the vindictiveness and the authoritarian behavior of the Greek government. The German comrades, who are confronted with similar problems here, were partly surprised by the extent of institutional repression structures and state chicanery, which constitute the normality in Greece. They included us in the Heidelberg movement from the very beginning and massively supported us in our every step as a group and in organizing this rally, for which we would like to express our most heartfelt thanks.
Many passers-by, including many Greeks, were also interested and briefly interrupted their free afternoon to listen to one or more of the speeches, and to ask about details on the individual topics. A few of the extremely conservative Greeks of our region, also left such desperate comments, while passing by, as “Most Holy Mother of God! Not here too!” , “Shame on you!” or a father to his little daughter “Look. The good policemen will now clear out these bad people”. Of course, we were not “cleared out”, as it is always the case in Greece by now, and we were allowed to show these people, not only that protest is a right, but much more, what international solidarity means.
Addendum: Koufontinas‘ situation worsened in the days after the rally, and he expressed his determination to continue several times. “I don’t want to die, but the way the situation is right now, they don’t give me a choice”. His lawyer waged her own battle for her client at the judicial level, despite the missing documents. The result? All the courts in the country have declared themselves unfit to judge, proving that the government is allowed to act beyond judicial scrutiny. Meanwhile, the solidarity protests continued, growing more intense and eventually merging with protests against the new education law and university police. There were ever growing demonstrations every day across the country. After a boy was beaten up by a gang of cops for no reason and without provocation on March 7th, there were again massive protests against police violence. Therefore, on March 14, Koufontinas decided to end his strike after 65 days. As he said himself, he saw the purpose of his strike, to highlight the arbitrariness of the state and to call for resistance, as fulfilled, since the resistance against the police state of Greece became much greater than his personal concern. Since then, his health has stabilized somewhat and he is now on the long and difficult road to recovery. It is hard to judge this outcome. He has lost, because the government did not take a step back, and not only can they continue their revenge against his person, but the situation could be even aggravated for other prisoners who would want to use hunger strikes as a last resort. However, he has also won, not only because he is alive, but also because through his strike he has shown everyone what kind of state Greece is, and what the future could still bring. We as Fytili wish him a speedy recovery and support his upcoming struggle for release.
Programme:
Opening speech by Fytili on the general situation in Greece.
Speech by a comrade from Alexandroupoli on the general situation in Greece
Speech by Fytili on the situation of Dimitris Koufontinas and short analysis
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Short break
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Speech by the Red Help‘s local group in Heidelberg-Mannheim in solidarity with Dimitris Koufontinas and other political prisoners.
Speech by the Antifascist Initiative in Heidelberg in solidarity with Dimitris Koufontinas and about the conditions of repression in Greece.
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Short break
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Speech by Fytili on people arrested for solidarity with Dimitris Koufontinas
Closing speech: The farewell message of Dimitris Koufontinas
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For the speeches in German see hier.
