Thessaloniki: The Struggle Through the Eyes of Terra Incognita Squat

By: fawda - September 28th, 2020  Filed under: Interviews, News

This interview with members of Terra Incognita Squat reaches us by submission. The squat was invaded by the police on August 17, 2020, equipment confiscated, and the squat sealed off. Comrades issued a call for international support. This interview goes into further detail about the work and political objectives of the nearly two decade project.

Question: What is the goal of Terra Incognita squat? When did it establish its presence?

Answer: Comrades, greeting from the distant grounds of the western metropolitan areas. 17 years ago, our squat and political assembly found their roots in the results of the anti-globalization movement with the demonstration against the session of G7 during the summer of 2003 and the defense of the 7 arrested comrades after the events of the anti-session. The positive results of the struggle for the release of the arrested revolutionaries finds the anarchist movement of Thessaloniki in a moment of peak which seeks the territorialization of our anarchist ideology through the creation of stable reference points of expressing and referring to radical perceptions and choices of fighting against the state and the capital. Terra Incognita is the result of the need for a stable center of organising and supporting the struggle with all means, a choice that we would like to believe was consistently supported during these 17 years. [Read More]

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Athens: Notara 26, five years of solidarity and resistance

By: fawda - September 24th, 2020  Filed under: News

The story has been told many a times now. We have heard, witnessed, and lived it in the past five years. In 2015, with the onset of mass migration and what was called the “refugee crisis” we saw the political, social, and urban landscapes of many places change—including Athens, Greece. The events touched and affected the public and private lives of many. The beginning of Noara26 points to one of those moments. A time when a group of people, with ideals and politics of self-organization, collective action, and solidarity were moved to occupy an empty public building in the city’s downtown and to create a place of shelter and safety for thousands of refugees who were abandoned in the streets of Athens.

This September marks the fifth year of our squat’s existence. It is true that we can mark this date in our calendars and remember it as a day of creation and celebration. But the lessons we have learned, the joyful moments we have created, the memories and lives we have shared, the challenges and struggles we have faced and overcome as community are unmeasurable and exceed the limits of time. [Read More]

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Athens: Call for international solidarity for a trial on September 18

By: fawda - September 16th, 2020  Filed under: Communique

On September 18, the trial against two comrades from Berlin and two comrades from Athens will take place in Evelpidon Court in Athens. On November 26, 2017, the four persons were arrested during the eviction of Gare Squat, in the Athens district of Exarcheia. Among other charges, they are accused of trespassing, attempted serious bodily harm, refusal of forensic identification and possession of explosive materials and explosive bombs. This eviction was the first of three in which the four comrades were detained for 4 days. They were released on conditions or bail and now, almost three years later, have to appear in court. [Read More]

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Chania: Rosa Nera evicted, the struggle is just beginning

By: fawda - September 15th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Rosa Nera is an autonomous, anti-authoritarian political collective and since 2004, has squatted and given its name to the historical building that was formerly known as the “5th Army Division”, declaring it, for the first time in its history, a liberated space.

The squatted building of Rosa Nera, was built around 1880 by the Turks as a palace for the local pasha. It continued to house different representatives of the authority, the latest being the local military command, during the military dictatorship of Papadopoulos.

In 1985 the building passes from the ministry of defense to the ministry of education, which offers it to the Technical University of Crete, under the condition that it would be used solely for educational activities. Nevertheless, from 1985 till 2004, the building was totally abandoned.

In June 2004, the building was occupied and revived. It was transformed from a ruin that was falling apart, into a political, cultural and social activities center, as well as a house. Everything was accomplished with collective work, collective will and collective financial support. That means that the people did it all, by organizing themselves through horizontal and non-hierarchical procedures. [Read More]

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Thessaloniki: Libertatia squat raided

By: fawda - August 28th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On Sunday 23 august at 10:30 in the morning, several squads of cops raided the Libertatia squat in Thessaloniki. More precisely, during the reparation of the building’s roof that had been burned down by fascists, the cops broke the door’s padlock and raided the squat where they arrested 12 people that were inside. After that, for one more time, they stole several building tools and other necessary material for the reconstruction of the roof, as they had done one month before, when they raided the squat together with Ephorate of Modern Monuments-assistants and had taken a part of the squat’s equipment for the rebuild project. Right after the raid, comrades that were rallying outside the building, came in and re-occupied it. Other than the 12 arrested people, the cops held two more comrades that were standing outside the building and released them a couple of hours later. The arrested comrades spent the whole day both in Toumba’s Police Department and the General P.D. Of Thessaloniki where they have been released late at night, The accusations that have been charged to the comrades are : illegal working, damaging a monument of cultural significance and disobedience. It is also worth mentioning the disgusting tentative of the police and some media to connect the accidental arrest of a woman for drugs possession with the 12 arrested comrades. [Read More]

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Athens: 10, 100, thousands of squats. One year of resistance against state terrorism

By: fawda - August 26th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Today marks one year since the armed hooded men of Chrysochoidis invaded the refugee squat of Spirou Trikoupi 17 and the neighboring Transito squat. It was early in the morning when they forcibly pulled out families with young children from their beds–people who after much hardship and suffering had found a place to grow roots again in these buildings. They took them from their home and distributed them in miserable camps to live in the dirt and with indifference in canvas tents. Since then, a barrage of state terrorist attacks on refugee and political squats has led to evictions, snatching of people, beatings, and arrests. The refugee squats have functioned for many years as unprecedented experiments of practical anti-racism and anti-fascism, self-organization, and solidarity. These spaces have given thousands of people the opportunity to regain their stolen autonomy and the right to define their own lives away from human guards and charity contractors. And almost all of them were evicted. Families with babies, single women, LGBTQI+ people, the sick and disabled, survivors of torture were all brutally detached from their daily lives and relationships and were trapped in nothing but state mercilessness. Political squats that formed cells of social action in neighborhoods, challenging the prevailing ideas of tourism, private property, and commercialization, which turned cities into concrete class pyramids of solitary depravity and social rivalry, were also evicted. [Read More]

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Thessaloniki: Political statement of the squat Terra Incognita. International call for solidarity

By: fawda - August 21st, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

In the morning of 17th of August Terra Incognita gets TEMPORARILY evicted by the repressive forces of neoliberalism. Police forces intrude in the building and conduct researches for hours and confiscations. Days after the eviction the squat still remains open with cops celebrating TEMPORARILY their capability of violating every corner of our liberalized grounds.

For over 16 years Terra Incognita consituted a meeting place for hundrends of people of the struggling social basis. With constant events, direct acts, demonstrations and conflicts Terra Incognita was present in moments of the violent struggle against the violence of the state, the benefits of capitalistic monopolies, against the violating authority of fascism and patriarchy, against any type of discrimination and speciesism. In the grounds of the self-organised structures of self-education, solidarity and mutual aid of the squat all the “known-unknown” strugglers of freedom met and will continue to meet. Liberating and equallity-based relationships were constructed, subversive plans and operations, dreams that day by day found and still find a space of moral and physical substance. For 16 years the squat proves itself to be the flesh of the flesh of the multiform struggle against any type of authority and opression, without prioritizing or distinguishing the means that contribute to the spreading of libertarian ideas and the organization of social and class-conscious counter attack. Because for us this is liberation. [Read More]

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Thessaloniki: Terra Incognita evicted

By: fawda - August 18th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

This morning (17 August), around 5 am, the uniformed scum of the greek police invaded Terra Incognita in Thessaloniki, which is a building that has been occupied since 2004 and constitutes a landmark of struggle and the anarchist movement in the city.

The cops proceeded to evacuate the building, while technical and material equipment was confiscated and a large part of the resources within the building have been withheld.

More specifically, equipment from the following anarchist infrastructures housed within the squat, was confiscated: the medical -first aid infrastructure, the gym, the library and the printing infrastructure, as well as a large archive of posters and other printed material that date decades. [Read More]

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Athens: Solidarity action for Dervenion 56. An international call for solidarity

By: fawda - July 4th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

On friday 26 june, in Exarchia, the Greek state evicted and sealed Dervenion 56 and the building at Dervenion 52. An immediate gathering of solidarity was held on Exarcheia square for several hours. In the evening of the same day, a solidarity march was held with the participation of 300 people. The march ended at the Dervenion squat, barricades were set up around the perimeter and then comrades broke the concrete blocks of shame. Police never came and after some hours the protesters left. Riot cops made again an operation the next morning, building again a concrete wall in front of the squat’s door. According to information, in the following days, various solidarity actions followed, a demonstration took place on the main shopping street of Athens, Ermou, where slogans were shouted, and apparently some people attacked multinational clothing companies in Ermou in the occupied -by the police-, center of Athens. Even the rich yuppie nephew of the Prime Minister, the mayor of Athens, Costas Bakogiannis, could not escape the anger caused by the evictions. The pioneer of violent gentrification and his bodyguards were attacked with coffees and other items by dozens of people at a local religious festival. In the following days a march was held again at Exarcheia where comrades demolished the walls of the sealed migrants’ squats at Themistokleous 58 and Spirou Trikoupi 15. All these days, texts of solidarity were written and banners were put in various locations in Greece. [Read More]

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Thessaloniki: Two anarchist comrades arrested

By: fawda - May 29th, 2020  Filed under: News

In the early hours of wednesday May 27th 2020, in Thessaloniki, Greece, two anarchist comrades were arrested on an attempt of incendiary/explosive attack on the house of Dimitris Stamatis, the ex member of New Democracy (the Greek governmental party) and now president of the Deposit and Loans Fund.
As Greek media report, the one comrade was seen by civil cops passing by and checking the house in Kalamaria district; then the other comrade was caught at the moment he was going to plant the incendiary/explosive devices. The first comrade was caught a few hours later in Thessaloniki, riding his bike.
There was a big police research operation in the comrade’s house, and also in other comrades’ houses. More specifically, 4 squatted houses in Ano Poli district were thoroughly searched and, furthermore, there were totally 10 comrades prosecuted, who were left free some hours later, as nothing was found against them. [Read More]

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Greece: Repression and Resistance during the Pandemic

By: fawda - May 20th, 2020  Filed under: News

In coordination with the anarchist media collective Radio Fragmata, we present the following report from Greece about the ongoing efforts of the Greek government, along with business owners, police, and fascists, to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to intensify repression—and the efforts of anarchists, migrants, prisoners, rebel workers, and others to fight back and open up spaces of freedom.

These updates are adapted from Radio Fragmata’s monthly contribution to the “Bad News Report” podcast about the current situation in Greece. We hope to spread awareness about this situation and to bring more listeners to the podcast itself; we recommend the “Bad News” report and the Anarchist/Anti-Authoritarian Radio Network as a whole. [Read More]

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Greece: Call for financial support. Solidarity Fund for imprisoned and persecuted revolutionaries

By: fawda - April 26th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

The basic aim of the structure is to ensure decent living conditions for the imprisoned comrades through a process that would take place within the political movement; thereby taking the material dimension of solidarity a step beyond close family, friendly and comrade relationships, as well as to help with the immediate coverage of emergencies (such as court expenses and bails for the persecuted). Yet, the actions of practical solidarity and the building and development of communication bridges and united struggles between those inside prisons and those outside of it, remain as priorities of the people who form and sustain the structure. In this current circumstance, especially in light of the new facts about the virus spreading and the restrictive measures imposed by the state on this occasion, it is again extremely difficult to secure the resources to support the material needs of the ones within the walls. Perhaps it is more difficult than ever. The slogan “no one left alone in the hands of the state” is becoming more crucial and tangible these days than ever. We urge you to defend it once again in practice. Factual solidarity will again be our weapon. [Read More]

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