Another random incident or another state crime with a fascist and racist dimension?

On 5 January, a policeman of the DIAS police force (a team roaming the streets on motorcycles and wearing hoods) ran over a 7-year old Roma girl while she was singing the Epiphany Day carols in the streets of Menidi, a suburb of Athens where a lot of Roma people live. According to witnesses, the policeman attempted to blind-pass by the a truck that was in front of him, while driving in a very high speed, and dragged the girl for about 150 metres and left her bleeding and dying. On her transport at the hospital the girl was found dead, and Roma residents of Menidi clashed with the police who came to suppress their rightful anger. According to news reports the policeman was charged with inattentive homicide and left free on bail, while the bourgeois media claim the death as a “random incident.”

As the Movement for the Reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece 1918-55, we believe that deaths by policemen are not random incidents, but are results of the increasing fascisticization and of the Greek society as the choice of the Greek bourgeois state to intensify police presence in the streets, while the moderate “Left” will probably talk about the need of the better training of police forces in order to avoid such “random incidents,” another of which was the murder of 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos by the “random” burst of a policeman. Incidents of policemen on motorcycles running over civilians has become the norm in big demonstrations as the serious injury of a protester on the demonstration for the commemoration of Alexis’s death on 6/12/2009 and the most recent workers’ strike of 15/12/2010, when a protester was ran over by a police bike and then arrested.

Furthermore, our organization stresses the fascist/racist dimension of the Roma girl’s killing, which is also evident by the fact that the killer was left free on bail, although if a civilian – let alone a Roma – did the same thing (and left his victim on the street dying) they would be imprisoned promptly. As it became known, the killer was running on a high speed in a residential district without chasing someone, or “doing his duty.” We believe that the speed on which the policeman was running proves that the state and its apparatuses considers Roma people “second-rate citizens,” and is disrespectful for the safety of their lives, even when they are simply walking in the streets. Also, the girl was simply certified dead without further autopsy procedures, and the policeman was not tested for alcohol or other substances (he was probably “frightened” of passing by “the filthy Roma” and that is why he was running so fast), proving that Roma people are not treating in the same way as civilians and children of a rich district would be.

All these are evidence that the girl’s killing was not a random incident but an outcome of the process of the Greek bourgeois state to turn the Greek society into a completely fascist one, through the ever-increasing imposition of police terrorism in the streets of the country, and the racist and class treating of minorities, immigrants, refugees, workers and the poor. We condemn the attitude of the Greek state, demand the paradigmatic conviction of the killer, and call for an increased solidarity to the Roma people and immigrants, who are all our class brothers and sisters.