Deer and Hunters

This is our newest video. If you read the description, you might be a bit confused, so let me explain.

The last few days in my homeland, Greece, dark things are happening.
Yesterday we were reading all the announcement on the news, blogs and articles about the publication of the pictures of four suspects of a robbery. Normally, pictures of people who have not been convicted are never published, as a measure to protect their privacy and safety and their families. Additionally, we have never seen in the press the faces of policemen who have been convicted for murders or the faces of neo-nazis who have been convicted for killing legal immigrants in cold blood. 

Two days ago though, the Greek police decided to publish the pictures of four young men, aged 20 to 24, who are accused of the robbery in Velvento (Kozani, Greece). The reasoning was that they are also suspects for being members of a radical/terrorist (according to the police) group that Greek police has been after for a while. The photographs of those men were all manipulated in photoshop in such a way that it was more than apparent that police tried to cover up the severe beat up that they have undergone.

I am copying here the Guardian article: (The public order minister, Nikos Dendias, said that) "the use of Photoshop methods was necessary to ensure the suspects were "recognisable"". What more can we say about the violation of human rights?

Police is trying to justify the beating by claiming that it happened while they were trying to catch the group. There is video footage however that clearly shows that the members of the group were not beaten at the time of their arrest. It seems that it all happened later on and that they were tortured while kept in the police offices. They were not allowed medical examinations, even though they have apparent signs of having been beaten on the head. They were also not allowed to contact their parents for a long period of time.

The young members of the groups believe that they are fighting a just fight against a corrupted government and they see themselves as a revolutionary group and not as a terrorist organization. I am not going to say if their deeds are justified or not, because they have not gone to trial for them yet and they are not convicted.

What struck me though, was that one of the four, N.Romanos, was a very close friend of Alexandros Grigoropoulos,  the 15 year old student who got shot and killed by a police officer in December 2008. Romanos was there that night, with Grigoropoulos. I can not wrap my mind around how I would have felt if police killed an innocent friend of mine with no reason at all. I cannot imagine what I would have turned into, but I am sure it would not be pretty. Does that justify any violent action? No. Does that explain why Romanos became an active member of the anarchist movement and sees himself as a prisoner of war? For me, yes, it does. I clearly remember back in 2008 trying to grasp how the friends of this kid must have felt, how they would grow up, how they would deal with this system that occasionally kills civilians instead of protecting them.

This video we made is dedicated to their friendship. It's all about the dark and tragical and dramatic elements that surround it. It's all about the violence that provokes yet more violence. (The hunter kills the father of the deer. The wolf eats the hunter.). But most of all it is about the infinite sadness of loosing your loved one and having to go on with your life (same way that the doe has to feed the deer).