Neolaia Synaspismou, Greece:
OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF FINLAND (14.9.2006)

Neolaia Synaspismou condemns the repressive behaviour of the Finnish Police in their Open Letter to Tarja Halonen.
Kuva: Mikael Brunila

Dear Ms Halonen,

Our organization (Neolaia Synaspismou-The Youth of Synaspismos*), alongside with an important number of progressive Greek citizens, have been closely following the activities of the Finnish social movements, concerning the preparation and the organization of the peaceful demonstrations in 9 September, under the general slogan "Another Europe is Possible".

Unfortunately for us, for social and political rights and for democracy itself, the reports that arrived after the demonstrations, concerning incidents of repressive behaviour by the Finnish Police, have nothing to do with the modern political tradition of your country, which has been mainly characterized by a general respect towards individual and collective liberties and especially towards the freedom of expression. The pictures, that came to justify the aforementioned reports, are more than convincing for the originality and the credibility of what our Finnish friends reported.

We refuse to accept that an extremely limited number of people with "dangerous" practices and intentions (since when people can be arrested because of their "intentions"?) can be a sufficient excuse for the application of repression against citizens who simply make use of their fundamental democratic rights. The deprivation of the right to demonstrate and transmit -through this methodology- your ideas to the public and the unjustified, random arrests and violent treatment of people who simply "looked strange" or "dared" to react to this repression, are practices standing totally far from your and our democratic traditions.

For these reasons, we would like to express publicly our condemnation towards the political choices (because this behaviour is firstly a political choice) of the Finnish Police and the Finnish Minister of Interior. We would also like to urge your government and the Finnish Justice to investigate the reported incidents of police brutality. At the same time, we would like to congratulate our friends from the Finnish social movements, for organizing a peaceful and productive demonstration in 9 September and for transmitting our continentally common message, that another Europe is possible and necessary.

Athens, 14 September 2006

On behalf of the Central Council of Neolaia Synaspismou,
Yiannis Bournous
International Affairs Responsible of Neolaia Synaspismou

* Neolaia Synaspismou (The Youth of Synaspismos) is a Greek Left youth organization, connected to the Greek political party of Synaspismos (Coalition of the Left of social movements and ecology), which participates in the Europarliamentary Group of GUE-NGL and in the European Left Party. Our organization works intensively in the European field, through the European Network of Democratic Young Left (ENDYL) and retains fraternal political relations with Vasemmistonuoret, the Left Youth

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