The Solidarity Fund for Imprisoned and Persecuted Activists was born sixteen years ago within the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement. From then until today, the Fund has maintained an uninterrupted and multifaceted presence in the history of the movement in Greece. Over the years, dozens of comrades have taken part and actively participated in the Fund’s open, nationwide assembly, while today the Fund consists of two separate assemblies, in Athens and Thessaloniki.

Throughout these years, the Fund has provided material support to dozens of political prisoners as well as persecuted activists. Moreover, it has managed to do so continuously and on a monthly basis. Beyond providing financial support to imprisoned comrades, captives of the social and class war, the Fund has consistently sought to support politically those comrades who find themselves behind prison walls, through events across Greece, solidarity actions, and a presence at court proceedings.

The Fund’s resources come from the concrete solidarity extended by our political movement—in Greece and abroad—to imprisoned comrades. Through our publications and the various events we organise, we seek to raise the funds necessary to provide monthly financial support to our imprisoned comrades. At the same time, a significant part of this material support comes from contributions by groups, collectives and individuals both within and outside Greece.

In this way, the Fund is another link between the movement and political prisoners, one of the structures that the movement itself has created as a stable point of reference for the multifaceted solidarity it has consistently shown towards them.

This is precisely what we seek to reaffirm through this open call for support for the Fund. It is this longstanding, direct and unmediated form of support for the Fund and for political prisoners that we seek to strengthen as much as possible.

For quite some time now, increasingly authoritarian state policies concerning public spaces and universities have sought to severely restrict the organisation of public fundraising events, with the financial exhaustion of the movement and its people constituting a strategic objective. The world of struggle continues to resist this with all its strength and remains present in the spaces it has won through decades of struggle. Yet the pressure, the difficulties and the uncertainty remain. And, inevitably, they also affect the Fund.

At the same time, the intensification of repression, together with harsh, anachronistic, counter-revolutionary and class-targeted criminal and penitentiary codes, seeks—where political persecution is concerned—to intimidate and imprison activists, or to keep captive for many more years those who are already behind prison walls.

Comrades, this call is being written at a time when the Greek state—amid a broader period of preparation for war, shifts in the international political landscape and the reorganisation of repressive practices by bourgeois democracies—is seeking to intensify its attack against the internal enemy, both as a continuation of and in parallel with its all-out assault on the social base.

The neoliberal far-right government that came to power seven years ago proclaiming the end of the “ideological hegemony of the Left” appears determined to further intensify its relentless persecution of the most radical political currents and, in particular, the anti-authoritarian movement. Within the current political and social conjuncture—and in the midst of a pre-election period—it seeks to divert attention away from poverty, scandals, the wholesale destruction and exploitation of the natural environment, and deaths caused by employers and the state, by once again playing what it has always considered its strongest card: the doctrine of “Law and Order”.

Among many other consequences, the conditions that we, as a radical movement, are called upon to confront today are materially reflected in the rapid increase in prosecutions, arrests and, ultimately, the imprisonment of activists, primarily from within the anarchist movement.

In just the past few months—following the six pre-trial detentions in connection with the bank robbery in Tithorea, the three pre-trial detentions in connection with the incendiary-device attacks against New Democracy officials in Thessaloniki, and the two pre-trial detentions in connection with the Marfin arson case—the number of imprisoned comrades has more than doubled.

It is evident that the need for political, moral and financial support for persecuted and imprisoned activists has now become particularly acute, with nothing to suggest that these needs will not become even greater in the immediately foreseeable future. It is therefore equally evident that the antagonistic movement is called upon to respond to this intensified situation with even greater commitment, consistency and responsibility. One of the fields in which an important political struggle will unfold in the coming period will be that of concrete solidarity with political prisoners.

The Solidarity Fund is, and inevitably will remain, one of the structures that will seek to rise to the demands of these difficult circumstances and continue providing political prisoners with stable monthly support.

We believe that strengthening the Fund at this particular juncture is a crucial political imperative and one of the responses that must be given to the state’s plans. Our desire, and the purpose of this call, is to mobilise as many people as possible to support the Fund financially, either individually or through collectives, thereby establishing as stable and direct a relationship as possible with the Fund.

Each and every one of us, individually or collectively, can stand in solidarity—in this way as well—with the struggle to provide political and material support to our imprisoned comrades. We must make concrete solidarity and the necessary financial support for political prisoners the concern of as many people as possible: a collective concern for us all.

Comrades, within this framework, we call on everyone—in Greece and abroad—to contact the Solidarity Fund, to support it financially in a direct and unmediated way, to participate in its events, to support its publications, and to organise autonomous initiatives to raise funds in its support.

We call on people within the movement to support the Fund politically as well, by participating in its open assemblies in Athens and Thessaloniki.

At a time of extreme intensification of repression and state attacks against the structures and people struggling against the injustice and brutality of the capitalist world, we can once again bring solidarity to the fore as one of the bulwarks raised against domination, both now and in the future.

We support political prisoners
Materially – Morally – Politically

Solidarity – Comradeship – Struggle against State and Capital

Solidarity Fund for Imprisoned and Persecuted Activists