On 13/12/22 it was announced that Rom Costas Fragoulis is now dead. On 5/12, after 16 year old Kostas refused to pay 20 euros for petrol, he was chased by DIAS cops, who shot him with 2 bullets in the head. Before we even knew about his final state of health and while the family was not receiving any information either, the cop killers were already set free.
This murder unfortunately does not catch off guard, as we do not forget the murder of another Rom, Nikos Sambanis in October 21 with 38 bullets in the back of the head, where once again the killers were pampered by the bourgeois “justice”.
Roma communities vehemently refuse to adapt to the norms created by Greek capitalism. And rightly so! In any case, the only “efforts” of the state to include them in the social fabric and remove their marginalization are to fit them into its molds, to “civilize” them and use them as cheap labor, as it does with all social groups that do not conform to the dominant model. When it has no need for this, it feeds their ignorance in a whole host of ways, culminating in the murder of a child for which it will not budge.
The message “whoever can’t adapt, dies” is now clear from the state’s side and is being transmitted every day. Whether it is the daily oppression and ghettoisation, the criminalisation of the Roma, or the shooting of the Roma, Greek society has been educated in the narrative that the Roma are less than human and therefore deserve all this. That’s why we see people applauding the cops who killed Kostas, just like they did in the case of Sambanis. That’s why the Roma communities have taken the whole struggle for vindication on their backs; and one shouldn’t have to wonder how and why.
We, for our part, as the pedagogical team of the Children’s House & Self-education Structure of the Squatted Community of Prosfygika, are confronted daily with all kinds of social, class exclusion and various forms of violence, towards all our people, young and old. Every day, children and adults alike live with the idea of evacuation of our homes and self-organized structures, with violent arrests, detentions, beatings, imprisonment of our local and migrant companions, with the horrors of war, with trauma, with the uncertainty of the next day, with exclusion from public health and education and from freedom of movement. We see the children of our community growing up fast, entering the game of survival early, either forced to work, or realizing their fate predetermined by the system that wants them excluded from any “socialprovision”, or experiencing the loss of their own people who are imprisoned or forced to leave the country, and a thousand other reasons. So every day fear and insecurity take root in the soil we liberated through our struggles, the soil of autonomy, freedom and solidarity.
We hear our children have many questions, similar to those of Roma children, as soon as they become aware of the world around them. We see them struggling to understand the labyrinthine structure of this worldthat does not fit them anywhere. But fortunately – and this is our greatest victory – at the same time as they do, we see them working with us in the direction of solidarity and self-organization of our lives, with a consciousness that is increasingly sharpening.
As members of the Squatted Community of Prosfygika or as individuals in solidarity with it and as fellow travellers of the children of this multicultural and diverse community, we know that the bullets – even when we don’t see them – whistle over our heads every day. That is why the murder of the teenager Kostas Fragoulis has overwhelmed our anger, at the same time as reminding us of what no human being should forget: the state keeps two bullets for every head that is raised.
The state has many ways of tightening the leash and killing the nuggets of social resistance in the bud. Brute force is one of these ways, not the only one. At the core of our struggle must be a multi-layered counterattack in its every effort. The murderous violence of the state is not its dominant purpose, as the purpose of the state is to secure the interests of the ruling class, and in this logic a productive worker is always better than a dead worker. Yet this violence is expressed, with the full consent of those who control it, precisely where social disobedience is born, where conformity does not find fertile ground, in those who do not fit the sterile, dystopian image of the peaceful productive worker; hence the immediate and all-round cover-up of this murder by the state and the media.
The insurgent Roma communities in the recent period have sent a powerful message and we are committed to keeping it alive and spreading it: For every bullet in a child’s head the only appropriate response is to burn the world. And we, from its ashes, will design a new one that fits us all. Our position, with our dual starting point as social militants and as educators/children’s companions, is to stand with the insurgent(s) of this world, by any means and at any time. As long as children are murdered in cold blood, no one is safe. Our position is and will be at the forefront of the struggle against barbarism.
LET’S NOT GET USED TO DEATH!
IT WASN’T THE GASOLINE, IT WASN’T THE MONEY, THE COPS KILLED HIM BECAUSE HE WAS A ROMA!
MUTUAL SOLIDARITY IN THE ROMA COMMUNITIES!
IT’S IN THE REBELLIOUS COMMUNITIES THAT THE SOCIETIES OF THE FUTURE ARE BUILT!
Children House & Self-education Structure of the Squatted Community of Prosfygika
