Interview: Greek Trotskyist facing charges by Nazis A Greek Trotskyist is facing charges after a complaint by the fascist party "Golden Dawn". The slogan "smash fascism" is considered an incitement to violence. An interview with Savas Michael-Matsas (66), a Greek-Jewish Trotskyist and a leading member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece.
A trial organized by the Nazi “Golden Dawn” in Greece
Savas Matsas, a Greek Jewish Marxist intellectual, and Secretary General of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece, will go on trial on 3 September 2013. He is being accused of “defamation” against the Greek openly Nazi party, the infamous “Golden Dawn”, for “instigation of violence and chaos” and “disruption of the civil peace” because, four years ago, in May 2009, the EEK has issued a leaflet calling for participation into an antifascist demonstration of protest against a murderous attack by the Nazis against the immigrant communities in Athens covered by the Greek police.
The events leading to this trial are noteworthy to be described in more detail.
In December 2008, an important youth revolt had shaken the entire country following the murder of a 15 years old adolescent, Alexandros Grigoropoulos by two police guards. The revolt continued nearly for two months, in what Dominique Strauss Kahn, head of the IMF at that time, had rightly described as “the first political explosion of the current world financial-economic crisis”. In spring and summer 2009, the right wing Karamanlis government had launched a counter-offensive to check the social unrest by organizing continuous pogroms by the police assisted by the Nazi “Golden Dawn” (then still a marginal far-right extremist group) targeting the immigrant communities and the left. In the December 2008 revolt the immigrant workers played a rather secondary if not a marginal role in the events, with one great exception: during the revolt, on the eve of Christmas 2008, a still unpunished gang of thugs paid by the bosses attacked with vitriol deforming a Bulgarian immigrant, a woman, a worker, and an active trade-unionist Konstantina Kuneva . Kuneva became the symbol of the revolt and of unity of all workers independently from national or ethnic origin.
It is not an accident that other women trade-unionists coming from foreign countries, like the Polish Monika Karbowska, became later in 2009 the specific target of police arrest and of show trials.
The police pogroms against the immigrants reached a climax in spring 2009, in Athens, in the neighbourhood of Aghios Panteleimonas, where the “Golden Dawn” murder squads terrorised the immigrants with the cover and in coordination of the local police. Left organizations had called for anti-fascist demonstrations. The EEK too took part and issued a leaflet calling on the people to participate. The leaflet signed by the EEK as party was also published in the party newspaper Nea Prooptiki and presented in the party’s web site. This is the “crime” for which the General Secretary of the EEK is accused and put on trial.
In May 2009, leading members of the ‘Golden Dawn”, including Ilias Panagiotaros, now a member of the Greek Parliament, and Themis Skordeli( a woman with dark connections with the underworld, accused for the assassination attack of an Afghan immigrant but who never was presented to court for a trial until now), posed a lawsuit against all the spectrum of the Greek left, from the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and SYRIZA to the extra-parliamentary left, ANTARSYA and EEK, all the immigrant associations, and independent personalities like the Dean of the National Technical University of Athens Constantinos Moutzouris (accused to allow the alternative web site Athens.Indymedia to broadcast from the space in the campus).
The lawsuit remained in the darkness until late 2012, after the Greek elections of May and June 2012, when, the Golden Dawn was catapulted to Parliament from the margins of political life and the shadow of the State repressive apparatus. In November 2012, at the day celebrated nationally for decades now as the anniversary of the 1973 youth revolt in the Athens National Technical University(Polytechnic) against the military dictatorship of the colonels, the Greek Police, after receiving orders from the judiciary, started interrogations for all the accused in the Nazi lawsuit of 2009. In June 2013, from the dozens of the accused in the legal action of 2009, and interrogated in 2012, only Savas Michael (Sabetai) Matsas of the EEK was called to trial on 3 September 2013, together with the former Dean, C. Moutzouris.
Simultaneously with this preposterous “legal” action, the Nazis have intensified a non-stop, vicious anti-Semitic and anti-communist campaign against the Secretary of the EEK, accusing him of being “an instrument of the World Jewish Conspiracy to foment civil war among Greeks to impose a Judeo-Bolshevik regime in Greece”. Pictures of Savas Michael are presented combined with anti-Semitic insults and openly death threats: “Crash the Jewish vermin!”
Although there is a powerful wave of solidarity for Savas Michael both in Greece and internationally, including many Jewish people, the “official” leadership of the Greek Jewry, the Central Israelite Council of Greece (KISE) refused until now to make the slightest public statement on this vicious attack on a Greek Jew, obviously because they disagree with his political views . There is even something more sinister: the current Chairman of KISE in a recent interview in Jerusalem Post defended the credentials of Adonis Georgiadis, a vicious anti-Semite and a fascist well known in Greece, who after being for years a leading member of the far right LAOS has jumped to the right wing New Democracy party and became now a minister of Health in the Samaras government. This includes other notorious fascists like Makis Voridis, personal friend of Jean Marie Le Pen and former leader of the youth organization of the dictator Papadopoulos! The “Judenrat” mentality and practices did not end with the Third Reich.
On August 29, a press conference is organized to take place in the headquarters of the Union of Journalist in Athens (ESHEA) to present the case, the political implications of this trial and the solidarity campaign escalating all over the world.
August 2, 2013
Savas Matsas, a Greek Jewish Marxist intellectual, and Secretary General of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (EEK) of Greece, will go on trial on 3 September 2013. He is being accused of “defamation” against the Greek openly Nazi party, the infamous “Golden Dawn”, for “instigation of violence and chaos” and “disruption of the civil peace” because, four years ago, in May 2009, the EEK has issued a leaflet calling for participation into an antifascist demonstration of protest against a murderous attack by the Nazis against the immigrant communities in Athens covered by the Greek police.
The events leading to this trial are noteworthy to be described in more detail.
In December 2008, an important youth revolt had shaken the entire country following the murder of a 15 years old adolescent, Alexandros Grigoropoulos by two police guards. The revolt continued nearly for two months, in what Dominique Strauss Kahn, head of the IMF at that time, had rightly described as “the first political explosion of the current world financial-economic crisis”. In spring and summer 2009, the right wing Karamanlis government had launched a counter-offensive to check the social unrest by organizing continuous pogroms by the police assisted by the Nazi “Golden Dawn” (then still a marginal far-right extremist group) targeting the immigrant communities and the left. In the December 2008 revolt the immigrant workers played a rather secondary if not a marginal role in the events, with one great exception: during the revolt, on the eve of Christmas 2008, a still unpunished gang of thugs paid by the bosses attacked with vitriol deforming a Bulgarian immigrant, a woman, a worker, and an active trade-unionist Konstantina Kuneva . Kuneva became the symbol of the revolt and of unity of all workers independently from national or ethnic origin.
It is not an accident that other women trade-unionists coming from foreign countries, like the Polish Monika Karbowska, became later in 2009 the specific target of police arrest and of show trials.
The police pogroms against the immigrants reached a climax in spring 2009, in Athens, in the neighbourhood of Aghios Panteleimonas, where the “Golden Dawn” murder squads terrorised the immigrants with the cover and in coordination of the local police. Left organizations had called for anti-fascist demonstrations. The EEK too took part and issued a leaflet calling on the people to participate. The leaflet signed by the EEK as party was also published in the party newspaper Nea Prooptiki and presented in the party’s web site. This is the “crime” for which the General Secretary of the EEK is accused and put on trial.
In May 2009, leading members of the ‘Golden Dawn”, including Ilias Panagiotaros, now a member of the Greek Parliament, and Themis Skordeli( a woman with dark connections with the underworld, accused for the assassination attack of an Afghan immigrant but who never was presented to court for a trial until now), posed a lawsuit against all the spectrum of the Greek left, from the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and SYRIZA to the extra-parliamentary left, ANTARSYA and EEK, all the immigrant associations, and independent personalities like the Dean of the National Technical University of Athens Constantinos Moutzouris (accused to allow the alternative web site Athens.Indymedia to broadcast from the space in the campus).
The lawsuit remained in the darkness until late 2012, after the Greek elections of May and June 2012, when, the Golden Dawn was catapulted to Parliament from the margins of political life and the shadow of the State repressive apparatus. In November 2012, at the day celebrated nationally for decades now as the anniversary of the 1973 youth revolt in the Athens National Technical University(Polytechnic) against the military dictatorship of the colonels, the Greek Police, after receiving orders from the judiciary, started interrogations for all the accused in the Nazi lawsuit of 2009. In June 2013, from the dozens of the accused in the legal action of 2009, and interrogated in 2012, only Savas Michael (Sabetai) Matsas of the EEK was called to trial on 3 September 2013, together with the former Dean, C. Moutzouris.
Simultaneously with this preposterous “legal” action, the Nazis have intensified a non-stop, vicious anti-Semitic and anti-communist campaign against the Secretary of the EEK, accusing him of being “an instrument of the World Jewish Conspiracy to foment civil war among Greeks to impose a Judeo-Bolshevik regime in Greece”. Pictures of Savas Michael are presented combined with anti-Semitic insults and openly death threats: “Crash the Jewish vermin!”
Although there is a powerful wave of solidarity for Savas Michael both in Greece and internationally, including many Jewish people, the “official” leadership of the Greek Jewry, the Central Israelite Council of Greece (KISE) refused until now to make the slightest public statement on this vicious attack on a Greek Jew, obviously because they disagree with his political views . There is even something more sinister: the current Chairman of KISE in a recent interview in Jerusalem Post defended the credentials of Adonis Georgiadis, a vicious anti-Semite and a fascist well known in Greece, who after being for years a leading member of the far right LAOS has jumped to the right wing New Democracy party and became now a minister of Health in the Samaras government. This includes other notorious fascists like Makis Voridis, personal friend of Jean Marie Le Pen and former leader of the youth organization of the dictator Papadopoulos! The “Judenrat” mentality and practices did not end with the Third Reich.
On August 29, a press conference is organized to take place in the headquarters of the Union of Journalist in Athens (ESHEA) to present the case, the political implications of this trial and the solidarity campaign escalating all over the world.
August 2, 2013
