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Greece

No Conviction for the Movement In and Out of the Army

Statement by OKDE Spartakos

Tuesday 15 October 2019, by OKDE-Spartakos

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The solidarity movement with conscripts/soldiers in Greece
 [1] is under attack yet again as a new persecution against the Free Soldiers Network “Spartacus” and the Solidarity Committee to Conscripts is underway. More precisely, an active duty officer of the Greek Army (a former commander of an army unit in the city of Alexandroupoli) sued Nikos Charalampopoulos, a member of the “Spartacus” network with the accusation of “continuous libel and slander”.

The lawsuit is about complaints that concerned the actions of this officer which were published on the blog of the Solidarity Committee to Conscripts and the Free Soldiers Network “Spartacus”. The army officer turned against the administrators of the blog and found a scapegoat in the person of the political activist, Nikos Charalampopoulos, who owns the public phone number that is used for certain complaints of the conscripts and their families.

The Free Soldiers Network “Spartacus” and the Solidarity Committee to Conscripts has given voice, published and highlighted a big number of complaints about the situation in the army camps, thus helping to solve the conscripts’ problems and create a movement both inside and outside the army camps. They have also contributed to the creation of an anti-war political current through the resistance to militarism, nationalism and the war.

A plethora of conscripts have published, through the Solidarity Committee, letters of opposition to the murderous wars. The Solidarity Committee and the “Spartacus” Network have steadily highlighted the need to defend all conscripts’ rights through a collective struggle for the decisive improvement of their lives. They have raised their voice against the armament programmes, that bring unbearable financial burdens to the people, for the immediate withdrawal of Greece from NATO and the closure of the US military bases.

We demand that the prosecution against the Free Soldiers Network “Spartacus” and the Solidarity Committee to Conscripts be terminated.

Hands off the movement in the army!

OKDE-Spartakos

Athens

15 Ocrtober 2019

To sign the statement send to grafeio@okde.org

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Footnotes

[1Military service is compulsory for all men in Greece between the ages of 19 and 45. See Wikipedia “Conscription in Greece”.