The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Communist Youth (KNE) released a statement denouncing the verdict by the r Magistrate Court of Thessaloniki regarding the murderous assault of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn thugs against Communist Youth (KNE) members in November 2012.
ICP, 15 November 2017
A shameful verdict was issued on 10th of November 2017, by the single-member Magistrate Court of Thessaloniki in northern Greece regarding a murderous assault of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn thugs against Communist Youth (KNE) members in November 2012.
According to the Court's verdict, the perpetrators of the attack were sentenced to 21 months imprisonment. However, the same verdict convicted the victims of the attack to 12 months imprisonment.
The story goes back to November 2012, when two members of the Nazi-fascist party Golden Dawn attacked and injured members of the Communist Youth of Greece in the town of Lagadas, in the outskirts of Thessaloniki. The attackers, who were identified as members of the local Golden Dawn branch, had in their possession knobs and knives. The victims, students-members of KNE, were attacked while they were sticking posters propagandizing a 48-hours strike.
The Court decided that this wasn't a clear murderous attack, but a street scuffle between groups thus equitating the offenders and the victims.
The Central Committee of the KKE, as well as KNE, issued statements expressing strong condemnation of the Court's decision. The Press Office of KKE, among other things, stated that: ‘This unacceptable verdict, only some days after the assault of Golden Dawn members against a lawyer, member of the prosecution of the trial of Golden Dawn, and another woman, outside the Court of Appeals in Athens, is an attempt to give a message to the workers’ and peoples’ movement not to defend its struggle, not to respond, to submit to violence, not to denounce and expose the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn.
‘The working people must draw their own conclusions’, writes the KKE's statement and continues: ‘With more vehemence and militancy they must organize their struggle against the antiworkers and antipeople policies of the government and the capital. They must decisively expose and alienate the criminal nazi Golden Dawn and its murderous practices’.