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The Committee of Solidarity to George Balafas
was created in November 1995
immediately after his conviction an sentencing
to ten years imprisonment.
The Committee was composed by activists of the
politically far - left as well as the anti-authoritarian movement. The
Committee is surrounded by forces of what may be called the wider left
while there is also the significant presence of comrades that in the last
decade have become victims of persecution by state suppression. The Committee
is part of a sequence of collective action and direct confrontation, groups
that have played a leading role in the fight against state repression and
especially in the movement of solidarity toward political prisoners both
during the period of political change in Greece (1974) as well as in the
respective period from 1985 until now.
The movement of solidarity toward political prisoners
in Greece - and especially toward those accused of armed activity - constituted
the previous component of the anti-authoritarian movement. It generated
a large number of massive and militant strife (demonstrations, occupations,
hunger strikes, e.t.c.). It won significant victories in setting free many
fighters as it discredited the authority of the state together with the
worth of percecuting authorities and of course it radicalised the consciousness
of significant parts of Greek society. Part of this tradition is the Committee
of Solidarity to G. Balafas, as among other things the majority of people
that surround it have actively participated in
the anti-authoritarian struggle of the previous years.
The "political spot" of the Committee may be
found in the following:
It denounces; the upgrading of state repression
with the pretence (or not...) of the need to crack down terrorism; the
subdjucation of Greek authorities - and the government in general- to the
USA; the continuous and careful machinations of the judiciary power not
only as far as the case of G. Balafas is concerned, but against all those
it considers "enemies of the state" or "enemies of the society".
The Committee is also fighting to expand the
solidarity towards G. Balafas
and to include his case among the targets and
the mobilisation of the wider
social movement and to prove the expediency that
fabrication against him
and to succeed in his liberation.
The Committee's core of action is composed of
interventions of social character (gatherings, concerts, demonstrations
e.t.c.) of course without downgrading the legal backing of this prisoner,
the surrounding of his case by wider social and political forces - as long
as they accept the framework that himself and the Committee have set up
- and the briefing of society through the media. In this first year of
its operation the Committee has organised solidarity actions in many cities
all over Greece. The most significant of these is the great concert of
solidarity that took place in May 1996 in Athens and ended up in a march
of a thousand people to the Parliament and the American Embassy. The Committee
has also given several press conferences and published texts in major newspapers.
It has also collected signatures of support from hundreds of leading unionists,
mayors, artists, and university faculty.
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