“All of a sudden the streets were ablaze”: Nikos Romanos and legacy of the Greek revolt
From Freedom News
The anarchist’s recent arrest continues a long story: ten years ago today, his prison hunger strike brought the country to the edge of insurrection on the anniversary of the 2008 uprising
~ Neil Middleton ~
The recent arrest of Nikos Romanos, following the widely publicised explosion in an Athens apartment, took place in the run-up to today’s anniversary of the start of the 2008 Greek riots. Six years later, in 2014, Romanos was a dedicated insurrectionary serving a prison sentence for bank robbery.
At that point, the situation in Greece was deadlocked. The years since the 2008 revolt had seen the most powerful popular mobilisation in Europe that decade, with the anarchist and anti-authoritarian space at its heart. By 2014, a weak coalition was in power, continuing the austerity measures demanded by Greece’s lenders to keep the country from defaulting on its debt. The government appeared to be in a slow motion collapse, struggling to hold on to a thin parliamentary majority. The popular mobilisation was channelled into the hope of electing a left government, while the anarchists faced state repression and a fight against fascism on the streets.
The economic and political crisis in the country had seen an increase in anarchist sabotage activity, with new formations emerging and established groups picking up momentum. The state responded with the full deployment of anti-terrorist provisions and charged as many people as possible with membership of terrorist groups, imprisoning dozens. Further restrictions on the prisoners culminated in a plan to create special high-security sections to hold anarchist and guerilla prisoners.
The imprisoned anarchists became rallying points for the movement on the streets. Demonstrations were tightly controlled and anarchist infrastructure was attacked.
By this point, Nikos Romanos was one of the few anarchists whose name was known to the wider Greek public. He was 15 years old during the 2006-7 mass mobilisation of high-school students against educational reforms. On 6 December 2008 he saw his friend Alexandros Grigoropoulos murdered by the police, the event which started the revolt. Romanos disappeared during the trial of the murderer, only to surface in early 2013 as part of an armed raid on a bank. He was captured along with three others, and sentenced the following year.
In 2014 Romanos decided to use his right to an education, and requested educational leave to complete his studies. Such controlled journeys beyond the prison walls were a regular part of the prison system, but Romanos’ request was refused. After exhausting the established channels, he decided to fight the decision with his remaining option.
The hunger strike
Unfortunately, anarchists’ hunger strike campaigns are not unusual in Greece, but they are rarely conducted alone: the wider movement carries out protests and direct action to draw attention to the case, creating a link between the prisoners and the movement on the street. For the state this creates a problem as it breaks the prisoner’s isolation and means their treatment of people behind bars can have consequences beyond the prison.
When Romanos began his campaign in November 2014 he was not just acting on his own behalf. In the context of tightening control over prisoners, allowing the suspension of educational leave would set a precedent and close off another avenue. Romanos stated that the campaign would be an opportunity to break the stalemate and take back the initiative.
Earlier in the year, he had written on the idea of the “polymorphic” campaign. He urged the anarchist movement to overcome its divisions by reaching a minimal level of agreement between its diverse parts. As his hunger strike reached a critical point, the streets of Greece burst back into life for a few weeks with demonstrations, occupations and sabotage actions gathering pace.
A week ahead of the 6 December anniversary, a 1,000-strong motorcycle group rode through Athens to join another 2,000 gathered beneath Romanos’ hospital window. Later in the evening, there were attacks on ATMs and police stations, and clashes with riot forces, in Athens, Thessaloniki, and Volos among other cities. Town-hall and campus occupations spread, and in the first week of December reached into several cities.
On 2 December the demonstrations escalated again, with up to 15,000 marching in Athens, one of the largest anarchist-led in recent decades. As the Barbarian Review commented at the time, “the crisis was said to be over, now it’s back in full swing. Nothing much was happening, and then all of a sudden the streets were ablaze. We witnessed the power of the unpredictable: within a month normality was turned upside down. How quickly things change in today’s world!”.
The 6 December 2014 anniversary again brought 15,000 onto the streets of Athens. Following the traditional march most people headed into Exarcheia, with riot police and their water cannons close on their heels. Clashes raged back and forth as people fought for Romanos on the burning and barricaded streets and from the rooftops around Exarcheia square. By the evening’s end, 296 people were detained and 43 arrested. Marches and clashes were also reported in Thessaloniki, Agrinio, Volos, Patras, Heraklio, Ioannia and Mytilini. Assessing the damage in Athens, vice-mayor Apostalopoulos was reminded of 2008.
As Romanos’s request for educational leave was still being denied, the solidarity movement continued. Town halls in Ioannia, Kavala and Chania were occupied, along with university buildings on Rhodes and in Athens. The night-time attacks increased in numbers and strength, with attacks on the prefecture of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace and a police station in northern Athens. One of the final actions of the campaign was a bomb placed outside a bank, which was detonated by the police in a controlled explosion on 10 December.
After another appeal had been rejected, Romanos stepped up his action by going on thirst strike, and the government quickly buckled. An amendment to an existing bill was added to allow leave on condition that the prisoner wore an electronic monitoring bracelet.
Romanos’ hunger strike was a rare victory in a bleak period. Just weeks before the crisis was still raging but resistance had flagged. From waiting for something to happen, people had gone onto the streets and made something happen. The air began to smell like December and the reflexes of revolt came back into action.
The arrival of a left-led coalition government in 2015 changed the political situation for the anarchist movement. The unity and collective action of 2014 did not last. A new hunger strike campaign by anarchist and guerilla prisoners in spring 2015 met with only mixed results and exposed divisions. Now, on the tenth anniversary of the hunger strike, Romanos is back in prison.
In a recent statement he said: “I am not in prison for making conscious choices that carried corresponding risks. Instead, my life is being sold as a political product, on the shelf of the communication supermarket…I have spent half my adult life in prison. I will not accept without a fight this unjust statistic consisting of much pain and immeasurable loneliness, to cover me in cement and bars”.
The events of 2008 and 2014 both showed Greece’s anarchist movement in its strength, as it seized the initiative in response to state repression. Romanos’s arrest, on the slightest suspicion, shows that the Greek government today is still acutely concerned about the anarchist movement’s capacity for initiative.