‘’One return ticket to prison’’
On 19/07/2011 the pawns of political and economical elite, honoured their firm position by standing as a protective spear for their institutional chiefs. 130 years total sentence for three explosions, without evidence, witnesses, or actual perpetrators; shocked parents, friends, journalists, criminal lawyers, intellectuals and even political factors. For those who still had illusions, the democratic mounds, the concept of “justice”, the pretexts and balances are all gone.
The fact that this sentence hasn’t surprised me, it doesn’t mean that I won’t have an opinion about the reasons that led to it.
A trial that even though wasn’t identified by the system at first place as political, it was crystal clear that both the process and the decision will depend exclusively on that. A pilot trial with a clear message to those who resist. An exemplary trial for those who in spite of the times do not grovel. A reference point but also the continuation of the broader repressive policy.
We are experiencing a capitalistic totalitarianism that bluntly is constantly heading towards fascism. From the financial and existential annihilation of the low-paid classes, the decisions about mobilization to criminalization of every strike; from organized nationalistic pogroms on immigrants, the brutal violence exerted by the defence battalions on demonstrations, the raids on squats, the police raid to “clean-up” the Constitution Square, the elimination of the asylum; from the persecutions of protesters within the frame of the so-called EU anti-terrorism policy and the constantly updated terror-laws, to dozens of political prisoners scattered in all prisons of Greece. An exceptional court martial indicative of what follows…
However where the manipulated sense impose the compromise with the imperatives of the system, the “absurdity” of resistance to the end makes the temptation to fight for freedom and choose dignity necessary.
So 11.5 years for dispatches of anti-terrorism authorities and the voracious thirst of television’s directorial board for a communicative war. 11.5 years because the stand of repentance remained vacant. My sentence has nothing to do with the footprint in the bathroom, nor with the broken motorcycle in my backyard, but with those elements that I stated from the beginning: my comradely and friendly relations along with my political identity that has remained intact till the end.
Thus, having been ‘’released’’ on 24/3/2011 due to the lapse of 18 months, reporting twice per month to the police station, attending each hearing of the trial until the day of decision, they “considered” that I was a suspect of escaping (unlike the proposal of even the prosecutor) refusing to grant me thus the suspension deterrent until the appeal.
Thus being once again imprisoned, with their vindictive fury not being totally drained in the courtrooms, decided this time to offer me ‘’hospitality’’ in the maximum security prison of Grevena. From the very first time the pawn of the anti-terrorism sergeant Giannis Ramogiannis tried to make my “stay” unfavourable. From acting like a bully, he and his trustees, during a control conducted on me during my entrance into the prison -with threats like “I’m in charge here” and “you don’t know where you came, here is Grevena and we will fuck you up if you make a sound”-, forcing me to take off my underwear with the binge contribution of several human-guards -a measure that is solely intended to insult the dignity of the prisoner- to the refusal of the prison council to allow me open visiting hours to see my family close up, always of course according to the underneath the table “friendly” opinion of the sergeant, who when I asked him why the only answer he was content to give me was that since I don’t have children, my request cannot be approved. A prison in the middle of nowhere, that with its architecture is trying to shed you by depriving you of any external stimulus. My visual field is captured at 20 meters seeing only cement and bars and the sounds are absent making me to recall even the noise of the city. 500 km away from Athens, they thought that with me it would be appropriate to take revenge now also from my closest people, forcing them to actually travel 11 hours per day to find themselves beside me, risking in this way to be nailed to the columns and the hinders of the nationwide highway.
And of course the applications for work are postponed to an undetermined future, actually doubling this way my sentence. The fact that the system imposes on me a prison within the prison and a sentence within the sentence is not a sufficient condition for me kneel. To small shops and pawns of anti-terrorism but also to all others who are preparing the garrotte for my moral and physical annihilation as well as to my closest people, all I can say is that I have nothing to fear of the unseen courts of their democracy, where the hierarchical scale meets with insolence and cynicism in the dens of Katechaki avenue, climbs to the top floors of GADA (central police headquarters in Athens) and the departments of political superiors.
For me the sentence is not unbearable nor the prison bars. Unbearable is the retreat and obedience that go together with the bars on the soul.
The struggle continues
Panagiotis Massouras
Political Prisoner
Wing A2 – Grevena prison
