We denounce the arrest and prosecution of 15 students and demand their acquittal of all charges.
On the night of October 13th to 14th, at 2 a.m., by order of the Dean of the National Technical University of Athens, heavily armed special police forces, unprovoked and provocatively, invaded the historic site of the Polytechnic and arrested 15 students. The site was occupied, according to the democratically taken decision of the General Assembly of the Students’ Association of the School of Architecture, against the introduction of disciplinary boards, student expulsions, private universities, and the labor law that allows for 13-hour daily work, for the withdrawal of which a general strike had been declared for the next day. After being held overnight at the General Police Directorate of Attica, the students were taken to court, with unacceptable and ridiculous charges.
Shortly later, armed special police forces surrounded and violently and illegally arrested 23 trade unionists and friends of the students, who had gathered on the sidewalk opposite the General Police Directorate to determine what was happening and to demand their release.
A few days before, the police had unprovoked and brutally attacked the October 7 demonstration towards the Israeli embassy, injuring dozens of demonstrators and arresting 18 people, who were subsequently charged with outrageous charges for a multitude of felonies.
After the government’s failure to deploy “University Police” within the faculties, the new Law 5224/2025 on the Disciplinary Law of Students, which was passed in the summer, is a new attempt to suppress the students movement. According to this law, any form of protest inside the universities can result in extreme disciplinary penalties, up to and including expulsion. They want to turn the faculty administrations into judges, they want to sow fear in the academic community, they want to turn protest into a crime! This authoritarian law should not be implemented.
The persecution of the students is a clear attempt to suppress free unionist activity. It is yet another act of frenzied authoritarianism by a government that is in deep crisis due to the cover-up of the Tempi crime, where two trains collided killing 57 people, the suffocating compression of workers’ income, and economic scandals.
We do not recognize the ND government, nor any government, nor the Dean of NTUA, nor any Dean, the right to restrict democratic freedoms. We defend the university asylum for the struggles of the entire people.
We demand the complete acquittal of all defendants from the charges and the cessation of all persecution against them
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