The General Secretary of the National Federation of Construction Workers of Greece and member of the PAME Secretariat, Valsamos Syrigos is being tried on Monday, December 19, on charges as if a common criminal.

Our colleague’s “indictment” is that:

He allegedly committed acts of violence against persons and property by having a “leading role” in the protest rally against auctions.

He singlehandedly confronted and beat up an entire platoon of armed police forces who were at the entrance of the auction site and he entered the site, cancelling the process.

He caused the alleged injury of four policemen and a fifth who felt short of breath from the tear gas fired by the A-354 platoon of the Sub-Directorate for Law and Order Measures at the people gathered to protest .

He allegedly left the police platoon without helmets, globbies, berets.

That he was shouting the slogan “no house in the hands of a banker”.

In reality he is on trial because together with hundreds of militant workers they fought to prevent workers’ homes falling into the hands of the banks. The government with the indictment against our colleague, seeks in advance to intimidate the militant trade unions, so that they will not react to the more than 40,000 auctions of homes that are to take place in the next period.

Such dirty tactics are neither unprecedented nor accidental. Poor farmers, pensioners, workers, students, no one can deny that they have not felt the heavy hand of repression and persecution as the assault on the lives of the people continues and escalates. In the factories, the riot police take on the role of guardian on behalf of the capitalists, beating up anyone who dares to picket a just struggle against dismissals and unpaid work. They fire militant unionists, workers who defend the right to work, for a life with rights, as in MALAMATINA factory. In the port, the repression forces and the port police protect the multinationals responsible for dozens of fatal work accidents.

On university campuses, police are set up to impose “order” in a space where ideas must circulate freely, as a necessary criterion for the progress of the people. At the farmers’ blockades we even witnessed the tearing of tires by riot police. Pensioners not once, but many times, against the cold, took to the streets and faced the brutality of the state that attacked with violence against old people.

One after the other, all Strikes are called illegal to give the strikers the message that “they must comply with the instructions” and let the anti-worker policy be imposed without obstacles.

And yet all this is not enough for the government. In order for the bankers and other vultures to take the people’s homes, they attack on those who defend the right to have a home without paying the financial institutions in gold for generations.

Their attacks will not succeed!

Intimidations against the workers’ struggles will break against the massive solidarity!

Hands off the unions and those who fight

Hands off the homes of the people

NO HOUSE IN THE HANDS OF THE BANKS

We call all unions to denounce the criminalization of trade union action and struggles

Solidarity with Unionist Valsamos Syrigos

All charges to be dropped