We demand the immediate release of Kostas Sakkas
"Kostas Sakkas is on hunger strike for 36 days. He has been held in preemptive detention for more than 30 months. His ongoing detention is violating the Constitution and the legislation, which do not allow for more than 18 months of imprisonment without a trial.
Kostas Sakkas is accused of arms possession and participation in the organization “Fire Cells’ Conspiracy” despite that both himself and the arrested members of the organization deny it. In an official announcement, the governing party of New Democracy is accusing Sakkas of “anarchism”, in an attempt to penalize his ideas.
At this point, his health is considered to be in a very critical condition, as the doctors have stated that they consider not only the possibility of permanent health damage, but also his death, as a potential outcome of the hunger strike. He is determined, though, to go forward with it, until the end.
Despite the above, a decision issued last week by the Judiciary Council of the Appeals’ Court stated that his preemptive detention can be continued. The Amnesty International, the Lawyers’ Boards and many other relevant institutions have identified many shortcomings in the legal procedures that were followed.
The Greek State, blindly following the Troika’s diktats, appears once again ruthless and insensible. Having adopted a strategy of extreme repression in order to apply a disastrous neoliberal economic policy, it once again chooses to ignore its own legislation and is ready to let a human being die in prison, without even officially confirming what he is accused of.
The Greek state promotes a logic that permits it to penalize any kind of struggle, to invade the homes of anti-mine activists in Skouries, to send the riot police inside the Rectorate of the Athens University in order to arrest protesting students, to condemn a whole society in “slow death” through the extreme austerity measures. It is this exact logic being applied in the case of Kostas Sakkas.
Because the Greek government’s disastrous economic policy and frontal attack to labor rights cannot be applied without extreme forms of repression and liberties’ suppression.
We won’t let them murder Kostas Sakkas! We won’t allow them to kill the Greek people!
We demand the immediate liberation of Kostas Sakkas."
