Industrial Workers of the World

Konstantina Kuneva

28.12.2008 Syndicates to Finance Treatment of Acid-Burned Bulgarian in Greece

Konstantina Kuneva, 44-year-old general secretary of secretary of the Union of Housekeepres and Cleaners in Athens was in a coma yesterday after being attacked outside her home in the district of Petralona early on Wednesday Dec 24th by assailants who threw acid into her face. She lost her sight in one eye and has been unconscious since the attack.

The hit might have been planned by members of gangs seeking to control firms offering cleaning services. A group of around 80 demonstrators staged a rally outside Athens’s Evangelismos hospital late yesterday to express solidarity with Kouneva, who is in the intensive-care unit there. The rally was mostly peaceful but a police patrol car passing in front of the hospital was pelted with stones by a group of youths. The stones broke the car’s windscreen but caused no injuries.

The Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (KNSB in Bulgarian) will cover all expenses on the treatment of Konstantina Kuneva who got sulfuric acid poured on her by two attackers in Athens, its leader Zhelyazko Hristov announced on Sunday. Hristov promised that as soon as the holiday season is over the syndicate will open a bank account for aid of Kuneva's family. KNSB will also send a lawyer to Greece. "This is a shocking incident", says Hristov - "This morning I talked with Greek union leaders. This woman had struggled for a schedule of payments." SOURCE:

http://www.bgnewsnet.com/story.php?lang=en&sid=23527

GREECE IN FLAMES! Mon, 22/12/2008 - 7:55am — benced For days the young people of Greece have been in the streets, venting their anger. Anger against the police who murdered a 15 year-old in cold blood. Anger towards a political class (those of all parties) which is infested with corruption and nepotism.

Their anger against this political class that privatises universities, casualises the young workforce and chips away at the gains of the workers (social security and retirement reforms) In Paris, in Roma, in Madrid, in Warsaw, in Stockholm as in Athens... Capitalism exploits, sacks and kills ; it criminalises workers’ movements ; it expels immigrants.

We are calling for international solidarity with the students and workers of Greece in their struggle ! In Paris, in Roma, in Madrid, in Warsaw, in Stockholm as in Athens...

We need to globalise resistance !

We need a General Strike against Capital !

We need a General strike agaisnt State represion !

CNT (france), WORKERS INITIATIVE (Poland), CGT (Spain), USI (Italy), ESE (Greece), IWW (Great Britain), LA (Poland), SAC (Sweden), Solidaridad Obrera (Spain)

http://magrathea.xs4all.nl/planet-iww/

Statement of Greek syndicalist union ESE on murder of Alexandros and social protests ( translated: Mikael Altemark )

http://www.ese.gr/

"Class struggle against the bosses and the state who exploit and murder us. The murder of 16 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the roving assassins of the Greek Police was not a chance incident, nor an isolated one. In the last few months alone Toni Onoua in Kalamaria, Mohamed Asraf in St Panteleimonas and Maria Koulouri in Leukimi have all died as a result of polie actions.

All this isn't the result of a few hot-headed policemen but the results of the general tactics of the repressive forces. Those who continue to talk of chance or bad luck are not just ridiculous they are accomplices of the system. The State assassins have set the scene for general repression across the country. In the last few months those who have gone out into the streets, who have fought, who have demanded, who have challenged the peace between the classes have been the victim of gratuitous violence at the hands of the state.

Tear gas and chemical weapons have been the more lenient weapons used to repress them. Often there have been beatings, arrest and even torture of those held in police custody. Faith in the false well-being that capitalism promised has ben destroyed by the economic crisis we, the workers, have been experiencing these last few years as bosses and the state illegally attack the world of work and brutally repress any voices of protest. The democracy of the bosses, of the industrialists and of the authoritarians doesn't merely resemble dictatorship, it is dictatorship.

The responses of the working class to the murder of this schoolchild were direct as we went out and joined together in the streets. Any reaction to this is justified and the accumulated violence that we accept everyday, will be thrown back at those who practise it every day. We respond with the response of the class against the state and the bosses because it is the only path that we'll let ourselves follow, the only one that we know.

LET OUR ANGER LEAD TO A POPULAR INSURRECTION"

Information about ESE from ainfos.ca post

http://www.ainfos.ca/05/apr/ainfos00252.html

"(ESE - Libertarian Syndicalist Union) formed in Autumn 2003 in Athens. It is an anarchosyndicalist organisation with the ambition raising some important issues among the Greek working-class movement. At the moment the organisation consists of small groups in Athens, Paros, Rhodes and Trikala and tries to maintain contacts with similar organisations from other countries."