Showing posts with label Niko Romanos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Niko Romanos. Show all posts

Wednesday 7 December 2016

We Will Not Forget.


 


 In memory of Alexia Gigoropoulos.

      Anyone who is aware of the murder of 15 year old youth, Alexis Gigoropoulos, by a police officer in Exarchia, Athens, in 2008, would be well aware that the people of Athens would not allow the anniversary of his cold bloodied murder to go unmarked. Every year since his murder in 2008, large protests against police violence, have take place on December 6th, in towns and cities across Greece. That evening in, December 6th. 2008, Alexis, like so many youths, was hanging out with his friend Niko Romanos in an open air cafĂ© in Exarchia. Because of a few words of banter from the youths, a police officer drew his gun and shot 15 year old Alexis, who died on the street in the arms of his friend Niko. Niko went on to become a very committed and involved anarchist, and is now in prison. The state, by its actions, always breeds hate against the state.
 Niko Romanos after his arrest.
     So it would be expected that this year, like the previous years, is no exception, and the people of Greece will shout loud and clear, we do not forget, we will not forgive.


Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday 30 December 2015

Requiem For A Journey Of No Return.


       In Athens on December 6th. 2008, young 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead in the street by a cop, dying in the arms of his young friend of the same age, Nikos Romanos, who is now in a Greek prison.
    This event sparked some of the largest and most widespread riots seen in Greece, 
     Nikos has never spoken publicly about that night and the death of his friend, until now. 
      His public article, "Requiem for a Journey of No Return" can be read on Contra Info.
This is a small extract from that public letter written from prison:

  ------The most ridiculous part of it all is the fact that the propaganda mechanisms of domination attempt to portray murders committed by cops as isolated incidents caused by deranged personalities, as accidents that always occur due to negligence.
     Police murders are neither isolated incidents, nor a Greek phenomenon. They are an extreme manifestation of the democratic imposition upon social margins, poor-devils, delinquents, insubordinates, migrants. Furthermore, police murders confirm that the liberatory war exists, whenever they target insurgents who arm themselves and fight domination with the flame of freedom burning in their hearts.
     These killings are a logical consequence of cops’ perceptions of their role, perceptions with which these individuals are indoctrinated to staff the repressive machines that shield the social machine’s orderly functioning.
     Police firearms do not go off with murderous intentions only in Greece; they murder 15-year-olds in Turkey because they participated in anti-government demonstrations, they murder 16-year-olds in Italy because they didn’t pull over at a police traffic stop, they murder mothers and children in Palestine, they murder dozens of African Americans in the US on purely racist motives, they murder migrants in Sweden’s suburbs, they murder youth in England’s poorest hoods; they murder repeatedly and serially in all corners of the planet to impose social peace.
      And if the examples I’ve brought are known to many, because they have been linked with small-scale and large-scale uprisings in response to statist murders, they do not cease to be a mere drop in the ocean compared to the storm of murderous crackdowns launched by security corps in defence of capitalist domination.
     If we close our eyes and ears to the ceaseless flow of dominant propaganda, we’ll be able to listen to the thousands of anonymous deaths in police stations, terrestrial and maritime border areas, concentration camps, psychiatric institutions and prisons, war zones across the Middle East, and sweatshops that exterminate contemporary slaves. Anyone can hear the cries of people who are being tortured in police cells, who commit suicide in a confinement facility out of desperation, who are sunk by coast guard cops and drowned in the cold waters of the Mediterranean Sea, who are crippling their bodies over multinationals’ production machines in third world countries, who are buried under rubble after blind aerial bombardments conducted by capitalist empires.--------
Read his full account HERE:
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk