The following is an interview with Thodoros, conducted by Ntina Daskalopoulou and published in an Athens daily on August 15. It appeared online on UK Indymedia.
I took a stand in the December uprising and now I face the state’s reprisal
Eight months in pre-trial detention for December’s events, the last one also on hunger strike. His anticipated release in July never came, the theatre of the absurd of the charges against him continued and Thodoris remains incarcerated.
But he is a fighter. This time, his “weapon” is his own body.
He spoke to us over the phone from the prison of Korydallos. From there he sees the revanchist face of the state, that Greece of violence and repression, but also sees another Greece — of the restless youth, of the faith in ideals.
He is insisting on his innocence and his own beliefs —and paying dearly for both.
I hear his voice with intermissions from the loudspeakers blasting orders to the prisoners of Korydallos. He is extremely polite, low-pitched, strong within his weakness. Now fragile, but determined, in the middle of August, the month with no news, he fights the struggle for his freedom with the only weapon he has left: His own body. For more than one month now (trans: 36 days), the only remaining prisoner of December is on hunger strike. Despite having lost 12 kilos, having low pressure and suffering hypoglycaemic shocks, and although his doctors insist that he can now suffer irreversible damages, the prison administration refuses to transfer him to hospital. Thodoris Iliopoulos declares his innocence. A hostage.
Interview
– The state prosecutes you for legal offenses, felonies and misdemeanors, and considers you so dangerous that will not release you under restrictive terms. How do you feel about this?
“From December 18 I found myself being a protagonist in this theatre of the absurd. They arrested me together with others en mass, as I was walking down Akadimias Street with some friends. Five riot police units surrounded around ten of us. I started running and two of them caught up with me, they threw me on the pavement and started kicking me in the head, screaming “now you’ll see what will happen to you”. I had no idea what would happen to me. Finally, what happened was that I found myself charged with three felonies. According to the inquisitor, at the moment of my arrest I was outside the Law School throwing molotov cocktails. The only witness account existing of this is that of the two riot police who arrested me. When the inquisitor asked them if they would recognise me on the street and they responded positively, she put up her finger, showed me and said, “is it him?” She exposed me herself! Of course, the riot police… recognised me. From that point on they won’t release me because in reality they need me as hostage. From the arrested only a few took a stance for December. I’m not saying they were obliged to. I took a stance and I am faced with the State’s reprisal.
– How did you experience the December events?
“My dad is on his final days and he is suffering from Alzheimer and my mom is 83 years old and cannot look after him. For this reason I only made it to the streets twice, unfortunately. It was a very good opportunity to discuss and to think, to offer solutions, to exchange ideas. Some, with dubious interests, read the events with crocodile tears, they weep for the disaster and the destruction. And yet December gave birth to a different way of thinking and most importantly, it took kids away from their playstations and internet cafes. It is naive and unfair to say that the kids took to the streets only to ease their rage. They were claiming their ideals and their dreams”
– What was your stance toward the State and what is it now?
“If I tell you, they’ll throw me in jail for life… I’m kidding. I don’t want to assign any labels to myself, like anarchist or anti-authoritarian. I am a visionary of direct democracy, of deciding and acting together. During my teen years I was fascinated by the philosophy of anarchism from Zenon to the cynics and all the way to Enrico Malatesta. Even today, I remain fascinated by these. I am struggling for a different world. Not with molotovs and stones, but with ideas and texts. I am not the first nor the last to which the state shows its revanchist face. What bothers them, what they repress is not my action, but my stance and my ideas. They charged me with fabricated charges, they ignored the proofs I submitted of my innocence. The issue, for the state, is that I insist on thinking. And I think differently. In this sense, tomorrow morning you – or anyone else – could find yourself in my position”
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