Refugees Murdered by the State

Violence, internment and death has met refugees everywhere they turn. The white supremacist fortress commonly known as “Europe” responds to people fleeing devastation with even more devastation. From Greece to Britain, people die every day, trapped between the borders and in the concentration camps of the so-called “free world”. Yesterday, another boat sunk in the waters of the Mediterranean, adding one more tragic case to the litany of crimes committed by the various fascist governments of Europe. Here we publish a statement from the Anarchist Political Organisation, who continue their struggle against this regime of mass murder.

On the morning of Wednesday 14 June, a boat sank off the coast of Pylos. It was carrying refugees and migrants who sought merely to cross to Europe and seek a better future in one of its countries. At the moment, 78 deaths have been recorded and the number is rising. There is no information on the exact number of passengers, which makes it even more difficult to locate the missing persons.

On 31 March, just one month after the mass state murder in Tempe, an agreement was signed to "extend" the Evros fence by 35km, in order to further "upgrade" the protection of the external borders of Greece and by extension of Europe. The push-backs, i.e. the illegal re-routing of migrants, continue on a daily basis. The shipwrecks and drownings of those attempting to cross the sea border continue unhindered. Migrants are piled up in concentration camps and those who were "lucky" enough to stay in a relatively decent accommodation through a housing programme are now thrown out on the street. At the same time, government representatives and the entire state apparatus are quick to deny the New York Times reports that speak of secret prisons in Evros where torture is systematically carried out. The effort to exclude and displace migrants from the social fabric and city centres continues unabated. The asylum procedure is becoming increasingly difficult and the legal arsenal of the state is being upgraded through the proposal for a draft law on the "New Immigration Code". And of course the media, in perfect harmony with the state’s dictates, use the death of so many people to spread once again their racist and xenophobic poison, trying to shift the responsibility for the shortage of ambulances and the general disintegration of the NHS to the migrants!

The miserable living conditions are summarised in the examples of Kara Tepe, Paranesti and all the concentration camps around the country, where people are forced to live in confinement, without electricity, heating and running water, crammed into tents. But even those who manage to escape from the concentration camps are faced with the harsh reality of living as invisible beings in the capitalist centres. One government after another, through their criminal policy of evicting refugee camps, intense pressure to leave their homes and the suspension or frightening reduction of the financial aid and programmes they were receiving, has forced them to live under a regime of humiliation without knowing what the future holds for them. The evictions come one after another, even for those asylum seekers who have received a positive decision, resulting in many of them leaving the country or many individuals and families living in an apartment or even living on the street with no other choice.

The state and capital are letting us know for the thousandth time in the worst possible way that human life has no value whatsoever if you are a poor worker, a migrant or any member of the lower social class. The lives of the oppressed continue to be sacrificed. One more case has been added to the long list of deaths recorded in the midst of a pandemic, in the increasingly frequent femicides and murders of Roma by the uniformed guards of the state, in the huge state-capitalist crime of Tempe that cost the lives of at least 57 of our fellow human beings, in the hundreds of fatal "work accidents", and in the countless murders of refugees and migrants, at land or sea borders, on rocky islets and in concentration camps. The list goes on and on.

It is always power that murders!

The anti-immigration policy and the conservatisation of society did not start yesterday. The regime of exclusion as reflected in the concentration camps and the doctrine of zero tolerance imposed on those who resist is the essence of the state and power. The squeezing of refugees by the squatters, the murders in Moria, the legislative difficulties for asylum seekers, the campaigns against abortion, the announcements for the creation of closed detention camps, the intolerant nationalist rhetoric that is spread in the social body by the state and its mechanisms, cultivate social fascism, aiming at the total subjugation of the social whole. The right to life and dignity is annihilated for those who are left over, for the weak, the poor, the immigrants. Democracy chooses whom it will ignore and whom it will protect, and modern totalitarianism advances. All policies are aimed at intensifying poverty, impoverishment, consolidating social cannibalism among the exploited, the lumpenisation of resistances and subjects, the strengthening of the regime of exception for the populations that are "left over", the erection of the walls against the internal and external enemy. We have been saying for years that the devaluation of human life, advanced by the time-honoured criminal policies of the state and the dictates of capital, are shaping ever more murderous environments. Today, after the mass state murder committed in Tempe, the feeling among the social base is that we have found ourselves in the middle of an undeclared war, that human life has no value whatsoever if you are a poor worker, a refugee, an immigrant or a member of a minority. The lives of the oppressed are sacrificed on the altar of capitalist profitability, which needs state terror to continue the cycle of exploitation unhindered.

Our lives matter! The lives of the workers, children and migrants at the borders or off the Aegean, the lives of the distributors on whose backs the bosses are profiteering every day, the lives of all the oppressed of this world, all matter.

Today, the need to organise and resist state and capitalist barbarism seems far too urgent. To defend our lives and dignity, there is no other way than common, horizontally coordinated, organized action from below!

We must not get used to death, the daily routine of evictions, evictions and auctions, shipwrecks, femicide, rape!

WE MUST NOT LET MURDERERS DECIDE OUR LIVES!

We stand against war, against Fortress Europe and the transnational anti-immigration agreements, against the murder of refugees and migrants, against the fascist policy of the Greek state, against racism, nationalism and intolerance. Social solidarity between oppressed foreigners or locals is our weapon against the exploiters. Locals and immigrants resist the racist death politics of the state and capital, organize and fight together against wars, poverty and the exploitation of man by man.

Solidarity, common struggle, common life

AGAINST PUSH-BACKS, BORDERS, CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND THE MURDER OF IMMIGRANTS!

SOLIDARITY IS THE WEAPON OF THE PEOPLE!

Local Coordination of Thessaloniki | Anarchist Political Organization - Federation of Collectivities