Speech of the General Secretary of KKE, comrade Al. Papariga, delivered in the big rally organised by KKE in Athens on 8th December, after the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the police

Dear comrades,

Yesterday, dispassionately and consciously but with emotion, anger and indignation we decided this militant protest. Because, when a policeman shoots dead a 15 year-old boy sitting in a square, the response must be the mass, political and organised mobilisation. The death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos is a murder; it is not an accidental or isolated event. It is a “chronicle of a death foretold” caused by the state violence and repression that regard as an enemy the people and the struggle for their rights; they hate strikes, demonstrations, occupations, any form of struggle.

Protagonist in this rally is Alexandros whom we have got to know, unfortunately, because of his death. This demonstration is also dedicated to all those Greek and immigrant workers, victims of exploitation and war, who have experienced the police violence, to those who have faced the storm of blackmail and intimidation. This demonstration is also dedicated to the school students and university students who are prosecuted because they demand free and public education, to the students who face the threat of being charged and prosecuted while their parents and their teachers are asked to snitch them. It is also dedicated to those who have been persecuted by political violence and military intervention in their countries and came in Greece illegally, to all refugees and other prisoners who have suffered physically torture by police officers.

We also devote this demonstration to the victims of employers’ unaccountability and indifference, to workers who died in workplaces .The working accidents are also murders.

We dedicate our struggle to all Pakistani immigrants who became victims of the wildest abduction, not for ransom but in order to exert political pressure and intimidation.

All workers, employees, small traders, poor farmers should be at the front line of the protests, and declare that they have the right to go on strike, to occupy buildings, schools etc and use any form of struggle based on the decisions of the organised mass movement especially now that the attack against the people’s rights, the living standard, education and health-care system intensifies. No consensus, no participation to the social dialogue with those who are responsible and elaborate new plans against the people. No indulgence to those who ruled yesterday, and today are shedding crocodile tears.

The stance of PASOK and ND that blame each other for the deaths caused by violence is outrageous. The fact that during the governments of ND died more protestors than in the period of PASOK governments has no meaning at all. What is important is that they use violence, Acts of Legislative Content and blackmail, in order to beat the organised movement and the spontaneous struggles as well.

When violence targets the struggles, it is for sure that it will affect as well all these that are not interested at all in politics. Violence has no limits, death is thus not accidental.

Now we should all raise our voices in order all the laws that PASOK and ND governments have voted to be abolished in the people’s conscience and in practice:

• The EU terror-laws.
• The legislation of PASOK government on the use of weapons by policemen that permits the excess use
• The enlargement of the powers of National Secret Servicesby the New Democracy’s government in 2005.
• The establishment of monitoring systems and cameras both by PASOK and ND.
• The gradual involvement of the Armed Force in issues of the so called internal order.
• The joint agreements with the EU and USA
• The promotion of law for the restriction of demonstrations by PASOK.
• The Schengen Treaty.
• The repression by the municipal police that uses also dogs, based on the latest draft law.

Dear comrades and friends

Yesterday, we heard controversial comments by several journalists and political actors. They equated the blind violence of the hooded persons to the anger of the people, granting indulgence to actions that enable the government and any kind of anti-peoples’ government to implement its own repressive laws and that of the EU as well against its own people, to create new bodies of repression, legal or illegal ones.

At the same time they were trying to stand by the shop-owners whose shops have been destroyed. All these journalists and political actors appeared to support both sides. Moreover, some of them praised the so-called “anti-power” forces. What would you say if a widow of a worker killed in a working accident torched the house of the employer who was responsible for the accident? Would you regard her as a hero or would you argue that she has no right to take the law on her hands, that the state has laws etc? If the children of workers who lost their lives in working accidents set the factories, and the properties of the employers alight, would you justify them? Definitely not!

Let’s be honest. The core of the so-called “anti-power” forces is, free to defame the organised struggle and movement and appear as a painless substitute for class struggle. All this “anti-power” forces are painless for those who are not interested to change the bourgeois power, but only to change its political staff.

KKE has a long history and has been tested in all forms of struggle; it has struggled without a mask and of course without the support of the establishment. We know which way of struggle is required in every stage of the struggle.

We support any form of struggle that boosts and strengthens the movement. Nevertheless, we condemn ND and PASOK because they breed and organise the state violence. Because they pretend that they don’t see the mechanisms that abet harmful situations such as those that we have experienced for many years with the so-called “well-known or unknown” hooded persons, in order to use them as pretexts and arguments for the legalisation of the violence against the people.

“Well-known and unknown” forces are trying to corrupt the pure spontaneity of young people, their will to revenge for injustice by sending them to the opposite direction. Let young people overflowing with dynamism due to hate they feel for injustice to consider, whether they take any kind of revenge on the bankers and banking capital through burning banks. Let young people who want to punish the offenders consider, whom they really damage when they burn cars and shops of innocent people.

We know very well that many of these youths will come to be mature and think calmly. They will turn against the right direction, effectively and without mercy for the offenders.

But let all the supporters of European integration, those are constantly dreaming the ballot box, think seriously, whether and how much they contribute to an effective movement when they “caress the ears” of the anti-power verbalism and the petit-bourgeois “anti-power forces”. Except if they know well how to turn tail and flee in order to support the management of the system.

Dear comrades and friends,

These days could give us an opportunity for the reconstruction of the movement, now before it’s too late.

When we talk about the peoples’ movement we mean that workplaces, schools, classrooms, neighbourhood, farmlands, of small shops should become fortresses for action. We mean a movement based on each work branch, each class and stratum, a movement of the working class with the popular strata. It must be emancipated from the monopolies power and not generally an anti-power movement, it must be determined to fight against the imperialist commitments and plutocracy.

No one can miss and cannot be absent in the big demonstrations tomorrow for a 100% successful strike on Wednesday!!

It is our responsibility to escalate these struggles, in order to become stronger regarding the platform of demands and the forms of struggle. These struggles should give courage and strength to the people and the youth and spread terror to the ruling class and its parties, to the state violence mechanisms and the employers. The people should have courage against the monopolies power, for the peoples’ power and economy. At this direction, against the real offenders will the communists invest their power, creativeness, anger, militancy and sacrifices. We will devote ourselves to the big struggles against the real offenders!