Solidarity with the Belgrade Five

September 09 2009 Infoshop News

A campaign is underway to show our solidarity with the 5 anarchists held in Belgrade and to demand their release.

To briefly summarize the situation: 5 anarchists have been in custody since Sept. 3/ 4. The judge ordered them detained at least 30 days to prepare the charges/ case against them. A sixth person is on the run and is being sought.

The prosecutor would like to charge them with "international terrorism" in connection with a direct action made at the Greek Embassy in solidarity with Thodoros Iliopoulos. In this action, two Molotov cocktails were thrown, but there was practically not even any damage. The charges are completely excessive. On top of this, Serbian authorities know that a couple of people were elsewhere at the time (because they apparently had their phones taps), but try to charge them as ringleaders anyway.(Just like in Haymarket, anarchy is on trial.)

A couple of demos already have been made and some others called for this week and next week.

It's worth pointing out that this is connecting to an overall pattern of criminalizing protest. In Warsaw last year we protested on 9/11 at the American Embassy against the state's attempts to make terrorists out of the arrested at the RNC, and this year on this date we are going to be at the Serbian Embassy for a very similar reason.

In the meanwhile, while symbolic acts of resistance and attacks on state property and capital are made into "terrorism", the world governments remain the largest terrorist organizations in the world, killing civilians around the world and supporting murderous social and economic policies.

Take a minute to send a protest to Serbian authorities. You can use the online protest here:
http://www.asi.zsp.net.pl

(You can change the text or the recipients of the protest.)



Poland, Statement was made by the local (Warsaw) ZSP* for the protest demo at the Serbian Embassy about the arrest of anarchists in Belgrade

Date Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:54:36 +0300

The authorities in Belgrade have been holding our five of our comrades for a week now. A
sixth person is reportedly arrested as well, although the police, with their typical
games, will not confirm this publically. We demand their immediate release.---- The
repressive nature of the state is evident. All who oppose its power, violence and
repression or its legal support of forms of mass exploitation are potential candidates for
arrest. It does not matter if you actually break one of the state's laws designed to
protect its own power or not; the state can always find somebody to accuse when they need
to show off their power to crush their opponents. ---- In recent years, when many of the
states have embarked on a self-righteous and hypocritical "war against terror", across the
globe the concept of "terrorism" is being broadened by governments in attempt to terrify
citizens and misled them.

In the Belgrade case, the prosecutor has also branded the arrested as "international
terrorists", a false accusation stuck on people which may follow them their whole lives.
This is a hard accusation for social activists, some of who have publically denied any
knowledge of the acts they are accused of. As members of Anaracho-Syndicalist Initiative
have rightfully pointed out, the action in question, where allegedly somebody threw
Molotov cocktails at the Greek Embassy in Belgrade, is merely a symbolic attack against
the property of the state in retaliation for its real acts of violence.

Terrorism is, on the other hand, more characteristic of the murderous acts of the state.

Our demonstration takes place on Sept. 11, a date almost synomous with the word
"terrorism". A terrorist act took place that day": hundreds of random people were killed.
However such acts take place on a more regular basis, for war is terrorism. Murderous
social and economic policies are also terrorism, albeit in a sanitized form. Millions of
people die from war, poverty and social displacement and the governments of the world are
looking for terrorist threats elsewhere. In this way, people's attention is diverted.

Last Sept. 11, we also had to protest, that time at the American Embassy since the
authorities there tried to infamously charge protestors against the Republican National
Convention in a similar way to our Serbian comrades. We see a clear pattern in this
repression.

In the meanwhile, the Serbian state acts as if the main source of terror in their country
is a group of workers' activists. The state has a long list of terrorist acts to account
for itself. Besides the real crimes against humanity directly sponsored by the state in
the recent past (a long list of war crimes and the brutal repression of demonstrators in
the country), we can add the state's role in creating unbearable working conditions for
hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands who became victims to corrupt
privatizations who have not been paid for their work in a long time. In light of the real
misery that state has inflicted on hundreds of thousands, we should rather remind people
of who has been the real terrorists.

In the meanwhile, the state always looks for easy targets to villanize and for people
inconvient to them which they can take off the streets.

We say:
Enough Political Repression and Enough State Terrorism

Free the Belgrade 6 Now
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* An antiauthoritarian anticapitalist syndicate