It is Sunday afternoon and about five cops in the center of Athens at Ermou str. go on for their daily routine of head hunting.  What they hunt is immigrants, who work in the streets as vendors.  They  arrest two of them, of Senegalese origin.  They take them at the Police Station of Acropolis and lock them in a cell. Two hours later, 10 cops prepare themselves: they wear their gloves, open the cell, lead the two immigrants in a nearby room and begin to swear on them, kick them, punch them, hit them with police clubs.  After puking their disgusting egos on them, they let the immigrants go,  with bruises on the hands and feet and swollen heads.

This is but one incident of the “battle of the square”, the daily trench operations of the police who hunt, beat, detain the immigrants who sell their merchandise (hand bags, accesories, dvd’s, paintings) in the street in order to survive.  In this battle the Municipal Police has an active role: almost daily they assault the immigrants, beat them, confiscate their merchandise and then let them go.   This is the daily terror of downtown Athens, where rights and jurisdiction are luxurious concepts.  

Here is a post in Athens Indymedia (in Greek) about an initiative that was formed to defend an other Senegalese immigrant who was not only abused, beaten up and robbed by the Acropolis cops, but also charged and brought to court  for “resistance to authority”.   Tomorrow May 19 is the trial and a solidarity gathering.  

There are some encouraging attempts of self-organising defense on the immigrants side.   Of course they meet with furious violence on the cops’s side. Here is a relevant post about an incident in Peiraieus.