Muhammad Kamran Ashiq Lives Forever
On September 18th Muhammad Ashiq was detained by Greek police for resisting arrest and property damage. What the media tells us about Muhammad Ashiq are the basic tick box statistics about his life – He was 37 years old. He was a delivery rider born in Pakistan. He’d been in Greece for more than 20 years, he’d arrived as a teenager. The reality of his life – what he loved, what motivated him, what went on in his dreams – the statistics have no interest in. The reason we know his name is because he went down fighting, defending himself constantly over a period of several days until his body could no longer sustain the injuries being inflicted and his spirit escaped to fight on.
Muhammad Ashiq’s body was found in Agios Panteleimonas police station on September 21st and identified on medical records as deceased, in circumstances to be investigated. As news of the circumstances of his passing and photographs of his injuries, evidence of torture spread around Athens, the spirit of resistance has been growing among the masses. Delivery riders unions have gone on strike, the student movement has come out in force and in Exarcheia fires blaze. Muhammad Ashiq went down fighting against a system that has no right or need to exist, through our actions his ability to fight back is carried on.
In July the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture said that during a visit to Greece in 2023, it “again received several credible and consistent allegations of deliberate physical ill-treatment of detained foreign nationals by police officers in certain police stations in Athens”. Agios Panteleimonas police station has a long history of abuse and collaboration with far-right groups.
These accounts, coupled with the European Court of Human Rights’ repeated condemnation of Greece for its failure to address ill-treatment by police underscore the need for action. Across Athens and worldwide resistance to the fascists on the street and the fascists in uniform is spreading like wildfire.
In London comrades from the Anti-Racist Defendants and Prisoners Solidarity Network held a vigil for Muhammad Ashiq and a banner drop outside the Greek Embassy last Saturday. We gathered in support of the uprising in Athens and to demonstrate against police brutality and racism across Greece. But we also gathered in London because the British ruling class hold their share of the responsibility. They dress in suits and keep their hands clean while trying to hide their connections to the police and street fascists who throw the punches, this is what we are exposing and mobilising to resist.
The British government fund Frontex and Fortress Europe in the billions, from paying for tear gas shells fired by the CRS at refugee children in Calais, to push backs by coast guards and drowning of migrants off the shores of Greece. If a wealthy thief was to rob all your wealth that you needed to survive, and take it into his mansion, you would be breaking down his door to take it back, and this is exactly what is happening right now. Money provided by the British government fuels the hostile environment which migrants in Greece face. The fascist street thugs, the police, the border guards and racist politicians work together for the same interests.
As natural resources are extracted and looted and the working class are exploited for profit across the Global South, wealth is drained to centres of finance capital in the Global North. Migrants follow the flow of capital to survive, to support our families and to take back what’s being stolen. Our countries are not poor, our cultures and our eco-systems are rich and the land is rich in natural resources. We are being made financially poor through neo-colonial economic robbery, our migration to the Global North is one way we take back what’s being stolen from us. Reparations aren’t to be asked for or begged for because the ruling class will never let go of their wealth and power freely, reparations must be snatched out of their hands.
The British East India Company and then the British Empire first colonised the countries today known as India and Pakistan. In 1857 the people rose up in rebellion and fought the first war of Independence. Among the leaders were Bahadur Shah and the Rani of Jhansi, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs rose up in unity. Eventually the uprising was defeated with the help of collaborators. In response the British Empire put in place a system of divide and rule, buying the support of selected princes and leaders and turning people against each other on lines of religious faith. This system was modelled on sectarianism stirred up in Ireland and Scotland by the British aristocracy to divide and control the working class.
The British Empire has been overthrown but it’s legacy remains for us to dismantle. Today the British government, City of London corporations and the trilateral commission work closely with Bill Gates to buy up land in Panjab. The agenda here is to replace diverse ecosystems with mono-culture, cash crops, genetic modification and terminator seeds. Short term profit is persued without regard for long term desertification, when the farmers rise up in rebellion they come under attack from police and drones sent by Narendra Modi’s fascist government. The BJP claim to be nationalist, but Hindutva politics represents the continuation of the colonial game of divide and rule, the BJP’s support for the buying up of land stands testament to their role as collaborators in neo-colonialism. Muhammad Ashiq was in Greece because his homeland continues to be impoverished and colonised, responsibility lies with the ruling class in London so we’re taking the resistance to them.
In London we live away from the land, out of touch with nature and in a metropolis built for the sole purpose of sustaining the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the ruling class, exploiting and draining energy from the rest of us in the process. Our location in close proximity to the centre of global capital provides us with the capability to target cracks and weaknesses in the belly of the beast.
Beyond our physical bodies, wherever we are thought about, spoken about or the effects of our actions are felt, how we come to exist in the collective consciousness represent extensions of who we are. Material bodies have a limited time span on this planet, but ideas, memories, legacies and the consequences of actions live forever, we make the spirits of all those whose actions live on in their name immortal.
Anarchist anti-racist comrades are among those calling for a sustained escalation of resistance to accelerate the collapse of capitalism, the dispersal of power and energy from the ruling class and the taking back of land by the people who live off and on the land in harmony with nature.
We need to be using a diversity of tactics to halt the rise of fascism and to bring down the fragile fascist structures already in existence. Fascism is a deadly system of total war, designed to keep the ruling class and the capitalist system alive through it’s dying breaths, breaking the natural bonds that exist between people through race hate and division and infecting minds with false pretences of patriotic glory and anti-globalism.
The planetary eco-system is in crisis, while never ending growth, space colonialism and imagining artificial intelligence and not ourselves to be our saviours, are the fantasies of the super rich. For the rest of us the stars are the realm of our dreams and Mother Earth is the realm of our waking lives to be preserved for future generations. The future isn’t promised but it can be fought for and won, we are all free in every moment we strike.
Comrades from the Anti-Racist Defendants and Prisoners Solidarity Network are calling for abolitionists and anti-racists across London to gather again at the Greek Embassy, this Saturday 5th October 6pm, for a vigil and banner drop.
1A Holland Park
W11 3TP
London, England
