We won’t ask permission to fight!
NAR of Communist Liberation - Greece
The law passed by the government puts under draconian restrictions, effectively abolishing, the right to demonstrate, allowing only demonstrations allowed by the police and the government! "Forgetting" that the right to demonstrate is a fundamental democratic right and cannot be exercised with the permission of the government, against whose policy it is usually manifested. If the provisions of the proposed law had been valid, the great strikes and anti-memorandum struggles of workers and people in the period of 2010-2015 would never have happened, the assassination of Alexis Grigoropoulos in December 2008 would have passed in silence, the rallies of the working people for wage increases, unemployment or environmental issues would have been banned. Even the daily struggle of trade unions, student associations, local collectives will encounter great difficulties.
The new reactionary law imposes a police-state and treats free expression as a nuisance, as a disturbance of socio-economic life, trying not to be "disturbed excessively", with the sole criterion that of the profitability of capital. It conveys many of the provisions of the junta period in Greece (1967-1973) to the present, but mainly expresses the present and the future of totalitarian capitalism of our time, where the iron heel of an only-by-name democracy seeks to crush every workers' and youth’s right at work, in education, in life, in freedom.
"The junta did not end in '73", is a slogan that was heard again and indeed Athens had a long time to experience a day resembling the Junta, with brutal police repression against thousands of protesters. Tens of thousands of people and youth who demonstrated actively and decisively on the 9th of July, the day the law was voted, told the government that the right to demonstrate is not negotiable and their law will never be implemented.
We denounce the barbaric, unprovoked attack by police repression forces, carried out under the responsibility and command of the “New Democracy” government, against the large demonstration of trade unions and left-wing, communist organizations. At this operation of violent repression, we witnessed unprecedented brutality, as in addition to the use of chemicals, tear gas and beatings, a cold-blooded raid was carried out during the demonstration, by a motorized battalion of special police forces. Dozens of injured were taken to hospitals, several with broken ribs and other serious injuries, as they were trampled by the motorbikes. Dozens of arrests and detentions took place, including members of NAR (New Left Current), nKA (youth Communist Liberation), ANTARSYA and other leftist organizations.
The government carrying out this level of repression, has deliberately sought to try out how the law will be implemented. In reality, however, they did the opposite: The fighting forces of the left demonstrated en masse and combatively in the streets all around Greece, stating clearly that they are not going to worship the new doctrine of imposing "law and order."
NAR of Communist Liberation - Greece, July 2020