DAY ENDS IN CLASHES AS ACTIVISTS DECLARE “PARTISAN STRUGGLE” FOR HOUSING AND RIGHTS ~ Thymo Nzk ~ More than 50,000 people from across Italy marched through the streets of Turin on Saturday (31 January) in a national demonstration following the eviction of the long-standing social centre Askatasuna on 18 December. The protest brought together a wide range of movements, including housing rights groups, student collectives from high schools and universities, trade-union activists, anarchists and anti-fascists, the No Tav movement from the Susa Valley, and organisations mobilising in support of Palestine and Kurdistan. The demonstration was organised in three separate processions. One departed from Palazzo Nuovo, home to the University of Turin’s humanities faculty, which had been occupied by students in the days leading up to the protest and closed for the second time in a week. “This is part of a general war to suppress dissent, which is seriously threatening other key centres of social opposition”, said a participant. A second march set off from Porta Nuova railway station, led by the No Tav movement, while a third began earlier from Porta Susa under the slogan “Against the government of war: for housing, schools and income.” The three groups converged in Piazza Vittorio Veneto before moving toward the Vanchiglia district, approaching the building that housed Askatasuna until last month. Clashes broke out near the site as police sought to block the demonstrators’ advance. Riot police used water cannons and tear gas, while protesters erected improvised barricades and resisted repeated baton charges. According to participants and legal observers, confrontations lasted several hours. Activist groups reported numerous injuries, some described as serious, and said at least 10 people were arrested. https://cdn.freedomnews.org.uk/news/2026/02/video_2026-02-01_12-35-13.mp4   Askatasuna, founded in 1996, has long served as a hub for Turin’s autonomous and grassroots movements. Its eviction came despite a recent agreement with the municipality aimed at recognising the building as a “common good”. https://cdn.freedomnews.org.uk/news/2026/02/video_2026-02-01_12-34-50.mp4   Government officials have defended the eviction as a matter of public order, while activists argue it is part of a broader crackdown on dissent, intensified during recent protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine-assisted edit. Photos: Marta D’Avanzo, Renato Ferrantini, Dinamo Press CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 IT. Video: Prima Linea The post Turin: 50,000 protest Askatasuna eviction appeared first on Freedom News.

ACTION MEDICS REPORT FROM RECENT DEMOS IN SWITZERLAND ~ Sanitätskollektiv Zürich ~ Between 17 and 20 January 2026, Sanitätskollektiv Zürich provided independent medical support at three demonstrations in Bern, Zurich and Winterthur. Across these protests — against the World Economic Forum (WEF) and in solidarity with Rojava — we observed extensive police deployments, the repeated use of force, and, in Bern in particular, systematic obstruction of medical access to injured people. On 17 January, three of our medics accompanied the unpermitted Smash-WEF demonstration in Bern. A march was prevented from going ahead by a massive police operation involving barrier vehicles, batons, pepper spray and fists. More than one hundred people were held for hours in a police kettle. Throughout the deployment we repeatedly observed disproportionate police action, which also denied us access to injured people. Even before the planned start at 3 p.m., numerous police units were present at Bern main station, carrying out identity checks. When the assembly formed on the station square, Bern cantonal police announced that only a static rally would be tolerated and that a march would be prevented. Several hundred officers, barrier vehicles and water cannons then sealed off the area. The demonstration was forced to circle within the police cordon and was gradually pushed towards the Church of the Holy Spirit, where it was kettled from around 4 p.m. Police then carried out multiple, sometimes violent, arrests. A detained person reported the use of rubber bullets fired at short distance from barrier vehicles inside the kettle. Demonstrators were pressed together by police vehicles, pepper spray was used against people in the kettle, and after our deployment ended we continued to receive messages from people injured by pepper spray near the station. On 19 January, four of our medics supported two demonstrations in Zurich: the authorised “Trump not welcome” march, attended by around 3,000 people, and a subsequent unpermitted protest in solidarity with Rojava. During the authorised demonstration there were no injuries. However, police presence was strikingly heavy compared to other demonstrations of similar size, with even small side streets blocked by barrier vehicles and water cannons positioned pre-emptively. After the final rally at Helvetiaplatz, around 800 people — led by a Kurdish and a revolutionary bloc — set off on another march. Following an accident involving a sound truck, which we treated on site, the march developed into a street blockade. Police issued dispersal orders and then deployed water cannons, some jets directed at specific groups. When objects and pyrotechnics were thrown by a small number of demonstrators, police additionally used irritants and rubber bullets. As a result of the extensive use of force, several people were injured. To dissolve a peaceful demonstration with tear gas projectiles and high-pressure water jets is, in our view, not proportionate. On 20 January, three of our medics accompanied a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Rojava in Winterthur, attended by families with children. Without warning or audible instructions, police fired blank shots from launchers at 6:45 p.m. and again later at close range, and deployed pepper spray. When demonstrators were pressed close to police lines, irritants and physical force were used without any apparent opportunity to leave the situation. We treated a low double-digit number of patients for eye and respiratory irritation, panic attacks and brief losses of consciousness. One person was handed over to the ambulance service. Across all three days, a clear pattern emerged: heavy policing, early escalation, and in Bern the outright denial of medical access. These practices endanger demonstrators and undermine both the right to protest and the provision of urgent medical care. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine-assisted edit from Barrikade.info The post Repression at WEF and Rojava protests appeared first on Freedom News.

ICE-STYLE RAID AT ROME’S TERMINI STATION SHOWS THE MELONI GOVERNMENT’S SIEGE AESTHETICS, WITH THE POLICE AS AN OCCUPYING FORCE ~ Observatorio Repressione ~ What unfolded at Termini station on 14 January was no ordinary security check. It was a show of power. Helicopters hovered over the tracks, there were dogs, blocked streets, men in uniform everywhere. Hundreds of people were identified, few detained, a few arrested. A monumental spectacle designed to send a clear message: we’re in charge here. This isn’t security. This is armed propaganda. Balaclavas aside, the script is crystal clear. Last Thursday’s operation in Rome follows a precise model: that of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States. The “Trumptruppen,” as they were sarcastically but accurately called. The same muscular aesthetic, the same intimidating logic, the same obsession with the internal enemy. Migrants, the poor, the marginalised: perfect targets for building consensus through fear. If it was just theatre, we could file it as farce. But it’s not. In the days immediately preceding, while helicopters took off and the dogs sniffed, criminal complaints rained down — including against minors — for protesting genocide in Palestine and in solidarity with the Flotilla. Repression in the squares and that in the stations are the same thing: two sides of a single project. While uniforms occupied public space, work was in full swing behind desks. A new Security Bill and a new Security Decree: some 60 measures to guarantee what was once called “law and order” and is now sold under the more presentable name of “security.” It is the second crackdown since the April decree, the first to be truly alarming for the country’s democratic stability. And it won’t be the last. Nor the second to last. Something has changed, and is changing rapidly, in the strategy of the government led by Giorgia Meloni and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi. That something has a name and surname: Donald Trump. Not just as a political ally, but as an operational model. Total securitisation, the aesthetics of siege, the police as an occupying force. The idea that governing means flexing one’s muscles, not solving problems. The Termini raid is a manifesto: identify to intimidate, arrest to demonstrate, strike to educate. The judicial outcome doesn’t matter; what counts is image. Substantive legality doesn’t matter; what matters is the perception of strength. It’s the ICE logic transplanted to Italy: a state that shows off to convince “its own” and terrorise “others.” Meanwhile, the regulatory groundwork is being prepared: more police powers , more searches, more “preventive” detentions, more administrative sanctions. Fewer rights, fewer guarantees, less room for dissent. Security as a club, not as protection. Social conflict treated as a pathology to be repressed, not as an issue to be addressed. Anyone who speaks of “security” is lying, knowing they’re lying. Because nothing is safe in a city transformed into a military set. Nothing is safe in a country that criminalises poverty and represses solidarity . Nothing is safe in a government that copies the worst authoritarian models from overseas and dresses them in the Italian flag. The raid at Termini station is not an exception. It’s a warning. Meloni and Piantedosi’s dream is clear: an ICE-style police force, a low-intensity democracy, a society governed by fear. It’s up to us to decide whether to accept the role of extra in this spectacle or break the scenery. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation The post Italy: Rehearsal for a police state appeared first on Freedom News.

“AT NIGHT, CHANTS ECHO FROM INSIDE PEOPLE’S HOMES” AFTER THOUSANDS KILLED AND INTERNET SHUT DOWN ~ Rob Latchford, Gabriel Fonten ~ Iran remains under de-facto martial law as heavy repression sets in to quell the uprising that shook the country. Despite the ongoing internet shutdown, eyewitness accounts and video evidence of killings and injuries continue to circulate on social media. One video showed bodies of patients who were executed in hospital beds, their bodies still attached to life-support equipment. Another showed body-bags at the Kahrizak Forensic Medicine Center in Tehran. On Saturday (17 January), Iranian officials said 4,500 civilians had been killed in the protests, but sources opposed to the regime have put the number at over 20,000. Reports also emerged from multiple locations Saturday that doctors and nurses who had treated the injured had been summoned to court. https://cdn.freedomnews.org.uk/news/2026/01/video_2026-01-18_19-38-44.mp4   The internet shutdown in Iran has exceeded 240 hours, renewing after a brief, heavily filtered restoration of select Google and messaging services. Netblocks reported that “During this time, some Iranians were able to give updates detailing the severity of the crisis on the ground”. According to Iranian anarchist writer Hasse-Nima Golkar, “Shutting down the internet, Starlink, telephones, and every means of communication is not merely a security tactic, but an attempt to sever the horizontal bonds of solidarity and mutual aid among the people”. The protests, which started in late December, saw clashes with security forces spread to over 180 cities, from the capital to the border provinces populated by Kurdish, Azeri and other minorities. During an emergency UN Security Council session, members warned of further sanctions and called for the immediate release of detainees and a halt to executions. US President Donald Trump threatened, then retracted threats, to take military action against the regime. A comrade from Tehran reported via Anarchist Front that proxy forces, including Shiite Iraqi insurgents Hashd al-Shaabi, have been present at security checkpoints, particularly in Tehran, Mashhad, and Zahedan, with unconfirmed reports from other cities. “They are firing live ammunition directly at demonstrators”, reported the comrade, “Those who fail to stop at checkpoints or show signs of frustration or resistance are subjected to severe beatings and brutal treatment.  “The city is saturated with anger and tension. People drive aggressively. Public patience has been exhausted, and encounters have become increasingly harsh and volatile. At night, chants echo from inside people’s homes. Calls of ‘Death to the dictator’ can be heard for one to two hours—sometimes intermittently, sometimes continuously”, the comrade wrote. The Anarchist Front has issued a call for “permanent anarchist and internationalist sit-in” on streets around the world to draw attention to the “dramatic decline of the world situation” from Iran and Venezuela to Palestine, Greenland to Sudan. “It is time to mobilise hope not fear and this is only possible through the creation of solidarity and permanent networks, which, through affinity, actions, independent reporting, and plurality, can modify the balance of power”. Over 500 Iranian feminists in the diaspora signed a declaration against the mass killings. They described the uprising as an “extension of long-standing demands for justice, freedom, and independence” and called for “a democratic, secular, and gender-equal future for Iran”.  In Warsaw, members of ZSP were removed by monarchist organisers from a solidarity demonstration on 17 January, after they carried a banner stating: “Neither Shah nor Ayatollah — Solidarity with the people of Iran”.  The post Iran under martial law appeared first on Freedom News.

GOVERNMENT WANTS TO ADD ‘LIFE SCIENCES’ TO THE LIST CREATED TO REPRESS CLIMATE PROTEST ~ Nathan McGovern ~ Whether it’s blocking roads, destroying Israel-bound weapons, or rescuing puppies from animal testing, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Parliament and the Courts are out to get you. The 2020’s have been a story of repeated anti-protest legislation, ping-ponging between the Houses of Commons and Lords, until painfully becoming law If anybody thought this would come to an end when a Labour supermajority swept into power in 2024, they couldn’t have been more wrong. Now, the Government is attempting to further bolster the Public Order Act 2023 by adding Life Sciences to its list of Key National Infrastructure, threatening a year in prison and unlimited fines on those who disrupt live experimentation on animals. The Conservative Government’s Police, Crimes, Sentencing, and Courts Bill presented to the Commons in 2021 started with 70 pages of reforms dealing with violent and sexual crimes, then swerved to a full-frontal assault on freedom of expression, assembly, and action. While the Lords rejected many of these measures, the Bill became law in 2022 and police powers suddenly expanded beyond comprehension. The sentencing for anyone convicted of causing a public nuisance jumped to a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. The Public Order Bill, presented in 2022’s Queen’s Speech, essentially repackaged and built on just those aspects of the PCSC Bill that were rejected by the Lords, and by the time it became law in 2023 the Public Order Act criminalised “locking-on,” introduced “Serious Disruption Prevention Orders,” and formalised a list of — seemingly sacred — Key National Infrastructures. Directly targeting Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, this list included motorways, the fossil fuel industry, and the print media. Labour’s current attempt to expand this to Life Sciences (read: animal testing) is a direct response to successful animal liberation actions, in in particular at MBR Acres, previously known as Interfauna. This is a facility that breeds thousands of beagle puppies yearly for use in toxicology and other testing. In 2022, on two separate occasions, Animal Rising successfully rescued puppies from the site; a total of 23 dogs were saved, and 20 people subsequently charged with burglary. In the first of five jury trials for these actions the verdict was ‘guilty’, but in the second which has just ended it was ‘not guilty’. It hasn’t been easy for the Government. Their attempt to smuggle change through secondary legislation has failed, and the decision will ultimately go to a full vote in the Commons tomorrow. Many MPs from all parties have indicated they intend to vote no. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nathan McGovern is Beagle Rescue Campaign Lead at Animal Rising The post Animal testing to be designated Key Infrastructure appeared first on Freedom News.

IN BERLIN, RADICAL SPACES FACING CAPITALIST EXPROPRIATION CONTINUE TO RESIST WITH SOLIDARITY AND A REVOLUTIONARY MEMORY ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ It starts with a match, a small wooden stick squeezed into the cracks of our urban decay. It can take a drill, a dozen mates and material for barricades to get it going. Don’t talk to bailiffs and keep the door locked. Landlord lives in Barbados, the neighbourhood lives in hell. Rents have doubled in ten years and only 1% of homes are ‘on the market’. Cops are at the door, the heating is cut. In the early hours of the morning on Habersaathstrasse, the cops break down the door of number 46 in an attempt to evict it’s residents. “The cops have entered to ‘prevent danger’ and yes, it’s true, we pose a threat to vacant property managers, speculators, and their accomplices,” wrote the residents of Habersaath46 (Ha46) “but the violence is coming from those who drag people out of their apartments at 6am.” “The operation ended in our hallway. No-one was evicted,” Ha46 reported to the community. The next day, the police came back with a construction crew and attempted to seal the basement door shut, which acts as their emergency exit. The police had earlier confiscated fire extinguishers, making the entire situation a potential fire risk to the tenants. They failed in this attempt and so came back days later to brick up the exit. For the next weeks, the residents of Ha46 have reported that the law firm von Trott zu Solz Lammek has turned the area into a security fortress for their clients Arcadia Estates, using private security to make apartments systematically uninhabitable as a tactic to prevent re-occupation. The law firm is infamous among squatters in Berlin for their reputation of successful evictions by any means. Across the world it is the same story as the corporations owning our homes are international. Yet the solutions can be found locally in our neighborhoods as we resist evictions and intimidation. This revolutionary dynamic between international and local is what is known as the Interkiezionale. In May of this year, squatters attempted to re-occupy the Meuterei (Mutiny) in Kreuzberg, “a place that was not only a bar, it was a place of collective meeting and sharing,” the squatters wrote. “By re-opening the Meuterei one more time, we want to bring to the present those collective moments that brought closer the idea that other worlds are possible.” “We fought in the streets to reclaim our subversive and political ideas through the defence of Liebig34, Potse, Syndikat, Meuterei, Köpi Wagenplatz and Rigaer94. We remember those times with nostalgia, but also with the powerful thoughts that if one time we were able to confront the state and his mercenaries with fierceness, we can and will do it again,” they wrote. REVOLUTIONARY MEMORY A year ago today, an explosion ripped apart an apartment three floors up on Arkadias Street in Athens. Marianna Manoura was inside the apartment when the detonation occurred. “Time froze, everything went black,” Marianna wrote, “and I was unable to move.” Two figures appeared and offered Marianna help as she went looking for her comrade. “I showed them the place where I last saw my companion, the place where our guilty gazes met, glances filled with rage at the world we live in, filled with faith and hunger for moments of true freedom” Marianna wrote in the aftermath. The anarchist Kyriakos Xymitiris was processing explosives in the next room when a technical issue lead to an early detonation and his death. October 31 commemorations in Athens “Although the thread of my comrade’s action would be abruptly cut short, his life and fighting choices would be a historic flash of determined resistance, perseverance, and dedication,” Marianna writes about her late comrade from prison. She was taken to Evangelismos Hospital following the explosion and was unconscious for the next three days. As Marianna regained consciousness, the Greek authorities began to isolate her and held her under 24/hr constant police watch. As is usual with militant partisans, the Greek authorities decided to prosecute the anarchists under terror legislation based on Article 187a. Marianna and Kyriakos were classified as a terrorist organisation and their apartment was defined as a ‘yiafka’ or a kind of crime operation centre. This would pull two other individuals into the investigation to face charges connected to the anarchists, as well as two other anarchists who had no connection to the original defendants. A flimsy case, as usual. To push the narrative, the Greek media did a circus run of pop-psychology takes on the defendants, speculations on class origins and outright character assassination, repeated into a moral panic projected onto a largely religious audience. The role of the Greek state after these anarchists are detained is to cut off prison solidarity and activism by attacking those close to them – seeking total political and social isolation. “But the question is,” writes Marianna, “Who will name whom a terrorist? Who will judge whom?” The role of the mainstream media is to depoliticize resistance into fear-based narratives, projecting the paranoia of the state directly onto the audience. The explosion on Arkadias Street was the incendiary end to the life of an anarchist who was known by the people who survived him beyond militancy and armed revolution. Kyriakos was known as participating locally and internationally. “For a long time Kyriakos walked together with us in the struggles of Berlin,” write the squatters of Meuterei. “Together we defended our self-organised spaces and fought against the process of gentrification that consumes this city and changes it’s social geography benefiting some, while expelling the poor and marginalised people.” “Through Interkiezionale we confronted this process fighting together with other collectives against evictions.” Kyriakos was part of the Meuterei collective before it’s eviction in 2020. “Our community here has changed time and again,” the residents of Rigaer94 wrote this month, currently under the threat of eviction. “We remember you as a tireless fighter,” they write on the coming anniversary of the death of Kyriakos, “as a friend, as a guest and part of our community. You brought people together instead of losing yourself in the stream of the metropolis.” INVESTIGATE YOUR LANDLORD In 2019, I was hiding in an apartment in Neukölln when my local bar announced they were facing eviction from their British landlords. The Syndikat, and Meuterei in neighboring Kreuzberg, were safe havens for me as well as other “danger zones” (kriminalitätsbelasteter orte) designated by the state. “A place to celebrate our friendship and comradeship,” as the squatters of Mutiny wrote. Further investigation revealed that the landlords of the Syndikat is Pears Global, a multi-billion network of 200 companies, subdivisions and shell companies in tax havens like Luxembourg. One company that had gained notoriety in the UK was Bankway, known for focusing evictions on the disabled, elderly, unemployed and single parents. “We are not social landlords” defended Nick Stanley, Bankway’s Estate Manager, “we’re in it to make money. The idea is to maximise the income from the building.” After years of disputes over the ownership of Rigaer94, the Berlin senate in 2020 failed to clarify the identity of the landlord who was seemingly hiding behind a letterbox company based in the British tax haven of Guernsey. Since then there have been multiple police raids on the building in order, according to authorities, to establish the identities of the residents of Rigaer94. 28 August 2025 — The police forcibly entered Rigaerstraße 94 and broke into all apartments. Photo: Björn Obmann/Umbruch Bildarchiv In reality, the police raids only served to attempt to isolate the house and intimidate its occupants, despite the fact that the Berlin authorities could not prove the identity of the individual who owned the building. The owner of Lafone Investments Limited was kept secret through a system of trustees, those who own the company on paper on behalf of those who would rather not be named. Leonid Medved is one of these people. A Ukrainian citizen born in Berlin, Leonid is the managing director of 20 companies all based at the same address in Berlin, along with Igor Lipiak. Some of these companies operate vending machine casinos, others like Centurious Immobilen Handels GmbH exploit the property market. Since Lafone’s trustee stepped down, its managing director is now Leonid Medved. Rigaer94 is now in an absurd situation where the landlord demands anonymity and ownership, and his lawyer is not even sure if they own the property. “I think we even have a house in Germany… I’m not sure though,” Bernau told the court. “We know we have a house here,” Rigaer94 said in response. “We are sure of it. And we will not give up this house without a fight.” A few days before the raid on Rigaer94 this year, a group of people broke into the offices of Leonid Medved and leaked a trove of documents that gives “insight into the machinations of Lafone Investments Limited, Centurious Immobilen Handels GmbH, and the coordinated efforts of police and politicians with the real estate industry,” they said in a statement. Photo: Björn Obmann/Umbruch Bildarchiv As part of the publication of the documents, it was revealed that Igor Lipniak was named by German tax authorities and accused of distributing laptops with software for manipulation of slot machines, cheating both the tax man and in his own gambling halls. “Here, the destruction of existence is enriched,” those behind the leaking of the documents wrote on the damage of gambling halls on the community. INTERKIEZIONALE! “Right from the start of the proceedings, the court announced its clear tendency – Lafone… seems unable to act legally in Germany,” Rigaer94 write. Despite this clear violation of the process, the judge actually offered suggestions on how to resolve the issues and become a legal entity to operate in Germany. This corruption is open for anyone to see, if they could only look. “Solidarity from those whom joined the manifestation in front of the court, those who visited Rigaer94 to reconstruct what was broken after the raid, as well as actions in other cities,” R94 writes on actions  by the community following police repression of the radical space. On September 7, the windows and doors of a restaurant on Orianientburger Strasse were smashed in. Activists used heavy tools to enter through the closed shutters and spray painted “R94 Bliebt!” on the facade. “To avoid traumatising underpaid employees,” they wrote in a statement, “we decided not to conduct the operation during business hours.” The restaurant is owned by the daughter of Leonid Medved. One day later in the Siemensstadt district, four vans belonging to the multi-national real estate corporation Vonovia went up in flames. “For the majority of people in Berlin,” activists wrote in a statement, “the housing situation is an existential catastrophe… rents in the “lower market segment” rose by 11.6% in Berlin.” Vonovia made a profit of €984 million before taxes in the first half of this year. “We sent Vonovia a message in a language they understand,” activists wrote. “We used the tired-and-tested Berlin model as the incendiary device,” referring to a popular time delay igniter. Yet beyond the fire and fury of armed resistance is a politics of solidarity that brings us together as anarchists. “Solidarity is the weapon of the people,” Marianna writes, still in pretrial detention in Korydallos. October 31 must be remembered “as a day of struggle, a day of responsibility, a moment of resistance. Because struggle doesn’t want compromises, it doesn’t want barriers or egos. There’s no room for laws, conventions, or limits. Because struggle requires determination and vision. It requires faith and commitment, it requires true relationships and dedication.” “Because struggle requires humble and willing people. People who are essentially rebellious and consistent,” Marianna writes, “People like Kyriakos.” The post When they kick at our front door appeared first on Freedom News.

WIDE COALITION OF TEACHERS’ AND PARENTS’ GROUPS ORGANISED PROTEST OVER SCHOOL CONDITIONS ~ Kit Dimou ~ Six children required medical care at a nearby clinic and one 7-year-old boy ended up in hospital after police tear-gassed and attacked a protest at a primary school in Exarcheia, Athens last Thursday (23 October). MAT and OPKE riot police set on a demonstration of around 100 parents, teachers, union members and schoolchildren from the 36th Primary School with beatings, tear gas and flash bangs. The protest, outside of the regional Directorate of Primary Education, opposed plans to merge school classes and highlighted lack of care for children with disabilities.  The protest was called groups including the Parents Federation, all the teachers’ associations from this part of the city, as well as the parents’ associations of 15 separate schools. Nevertheless, the police and right-wing press blame the incidents exclusively on the presence of parents who are members of the two local collectives “NO metro in Exarcheia Square” and “Open Assembly for the Defence of Strefi Hill”, accusing them of trying to break police lines and force their way into the building. While anarchist parents and children may have been present, other workers and parents in the protest were anything but anti-authoritarian. As stated by the Strefi hill assembly, parents and collective members are not “horrible aliens from Andromeda” but “parents who fight for their children as they have learnt to fight for their neighbourhood, Hill, park and square“. This is not the first time the schoolchildren at 36th Primary face violence and tear gas. In April, following the eviction of the “Exostrefis” squat on its first birthday, a number of cultural and educational activities took place around Strefi hill, with the support of the School’s parents’ assocation. The climbing and tightrope walking activities were interrupted violently by riot police.  So far, the parents’ attempts to bring this up in the supposedly “progressive” Athens City Council have fallen on deaf ears. The post Athens: Police tear-gas schoolchildren, blame anarchist parents appeared first on Freedom News.

STATE BLAMES FABRICATED “CHAOS STAR” ANARCHIST NETWORK FOR INSTIGATING GRASSROOTS UPRISING ~ Cristina Sykes ~ Anarchists in Indonesia are calling for international support for comrades imprisoned and tortured following the August uprisings. In the wake of mass protests against corruption and inequality, around 900 people are being detained and named as suspects, many of them anarchists or sympathizers, spread across various cities. The latest solidarity call named over 40 anarchists arrested in West Java, accused of being part of the so-called “Chaos Star” network, which the government describes as a “foreign-backed anarchist group”. According to an activist source, the arrests were triggered by social media posts showing actions such as Molotov cocktail attacks. The detainees face charges ranging from property destruction to online incitement. While many are still awaiting trial, some of the accused face up to 20 years in prison. The imprisoned comrades have been isolated, and their access to legal representation has been severely restricted. Many are young, and their families report widespread torture and abuse, with some forced to give false confessions. Among those accused of “leading” the network and the recent anarchist uprisings are Bima Satria Putra, an anarchist jailed since 2021 on cannabis charges. Recently transferred to solitary confinement at Lapas Merah Mata, his family and lawyers have been blocked from seeing him. Another is Reyhard Rumbayan, known as Eat, who was arrested in Makassar on 23 September 2025 and is currently held in solitary confinement and denied contact with others. The unrest began in August 2025, when widespread anger against former military leader Prabowo Subianto’s regime sparked protests that quickly turned violent, and later spread to Nepal and the Philippines as well as Morocco, Madagascar and Peru. The Indonesian government has since responded with mass arrests, media manipulation, and brutal policing. The crackdown is seen as part of a broader government effort to suppress anarchist movements, echoing past anti-communist purges. International solidarity is crucial, as anarchists call on supporters to send letters and postcards to the imprisoned comrades. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Verified machine-assisted edit. Image courtesy of CrimethInc.com   The post Crackdown in Indonesia, anarchists appeal for solidarity appeared first on Freedom News.

MASS DEMONSTRATIONS ACCUSE GOVERNMENT OF AUTHORITARIANISM AND CORRUPTION ~ from ANRed ~ Tensions have surged in Peru after interim president José Jerí Oré declared a 30-day state of emergency in Lima and the neighbouring province of Callao, citing what he called a “crisis of public security”, days after police repression left one young demonstrator dead. The state of emergency suspends the right to assembly and allows joint patrols by the police and armed forces. It also restricts visits to prisons and permits warrantless searches. More than ten million people are affected in Lima and Callao alone. Civil liberties groups warn that the decree amounts to the militarisation of public life, aimed less at crime than at quelling dissent. Jerí, appointed by the congressional coalition that forced out president Dina Boluarte earlier this month, justified the measure as “the beginning of change” in tackling violent crime. Yet critics note that it follows an eruption of street protests rejecting his unelected government. Peru has cycled through seven presidents since 2016, a sign of the profound political and institutional crisis gripping the country. Last week, thousands marched through Lima and other cities to denounce what they describe as a “mafioso and authoritarian pact”. Witnesses report that police opened fire on demonstrators near Plaza Francia, killing 24-year-old rapper and community organiser Eduardo Mauricio Ruíz Sáenz, known as Trvko. According to eyewitnesses, an undercover officer fired several shots after being confronted by protesters. The National Human Rights Coordinator confirmed 15 people injured, including four journalists, while the Health Ministry acknowledged one death and three critical cases. Public outrage has mounted ahead of a new national mobilisation called for today (Saturday 25 October) by the youth collective Generación Z, demanding justice for Trvko and the lifting of the emergency decree. The demonstration will again converge on Plaza Francia, while pro-government groups have announced a counter-rally in the Campo de Marte park. The government’s response has been unapologetic. Interior minister Vicente Tiburcio, a former counter-insurgency officer under the Fujimori regime, denied police responsibility and branded student protesters “violentists”. Meanwhile, Jerí used social media to praise the “firmness” of the police while accusing demonstrators of seeking chaos. Despite the repression, public anger shows no sign of abating. “They are killing our youth to defend a corrupt pact,” read one banner carried through Lima’s centre this week. For many Peruvians, the murder of Trvko has come to symbolise the enduring impunity of a political class clinging to power through force. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine edit. Photo: José Francisco Rubio / Contranoticia.pe The post Peru: State of emergency after young rapper killed in protests appeared first on Freedom News.

THE GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA ARE PRETENDING TO SUPPORT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY—BY OBEYING THE FAR RIGHT ~ Tabitha Troughton ~ Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have just been rioting in Tel Aviv itself, with the match banned as a result. For the previous 72 hours, the British public were once again instructed, by the media and politicians, not to believe their lying eyes. Forget videos of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters running riot in Amsterdam in November, or of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters beating someone in Athens unconscious in March last year: banning Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from a game at Aston Villa is, according to the UK’s prime minister, antisemitic. It did not need confirmation from the Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs that the British government is now entirely obeying the diktats of the State of Israel. “A line must be drawn” Gideon Sa’ar reports having told foreign secretary Yvette Cooper yesterday (19 October), listing the measures necessary further to spread fear among, and alienate, British Jewish people. This included the banning of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. Sa’ar: “expressed our clear and unequivocal expectation that this disgraceful decision be revoked and that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans be allowed to attend the game”. The resulting campaign is just the most recent in a redoubled wave of attacks on fact and community, clearly at the Israeli state’s behest. It is worth examining the run up to it. At the start of October, thirteen UK citizens were among those kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli military. Millions of people worldwide had been watching live-streamed footage from the Global Sumud Flotilla; around 50 small, civilian boats on a humanitarian mission to break Israel’s 17 year-long blockade of Gaza. By 2 am on Thursday 2nd, around 13 of the boats had been boarded and seized by Israel, with the rest still under pursuit. In total, 462 peaceful flotilla activists, from around 45 countries, were eventually taken hostage. Many would later report being tortured. By Thursday evening, emergency protests in support of the flotilla crew had erupted across the world, through the whole of Europe through to Dhaka, Rio and beyond. The UK public’s response, while comparatively muted, was no different. Earlier that day, the British Transport Police had issued a warning. Protests were expected “in response to Israel detaining activists on the Global Sumud Flotilla in the early hours of this morning”. Emergency gatherings indeed sprang up that evening around the country, from Edinburgh to London Piccadilly. Later that morning, in Manchester, two Jewish people had tragically been killed, and others injured, after a terrorist attacked a synagogue. The feelings of shock, dismay and horror across the population were heartfelt: condemnations of the act, and support for the victims and the wider Jewish community poured in from across all spectrums – religious, political and communal. And then one of the largest of disinformation campaigns slammed into action. It was spread by a variety of actors with a variety of motives, but the strategy was the same. To start with: tell people that the UK flotilla protests were not protests in support of the flotilla. Tell them they were protests in celebration of the Manchester terrorist attack. The flotilla protests were “a shameful response to the Manchester attack” according to The Spectator. “Vicious Jew-hatred was indulged, yet again” agreed the Scotsman. “They weren’t demonstrating. They were, actually celebrating. I can’t even imagine whoever’s seen such vile scenes on our streets” Farage told his followers. “I could not take it that after such a horrendous terrorist attack, I could see marches of celebrations in London and other cities that celebrated this murderous attack”, Israeli deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel said, on Good Morning Britain. The next immediate target was larger; hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people: those who had marched peacefully through London, month after month,  against their government’s complicity in genocide. Suddenly, once again, the marches were “hate marches”, specifically a mass of “Jew hate”, and directly linked to the Manchester terror attack. “Everyone on pro-Palestine marches this weekend is complicit” threatened the Express. Social media was bombarded by posts from right wing accounts: “Anti Semitic mobs have been allowed to march through our streets, waving their terrorist flags and shouting Death to Jews” was one exemplar. “People like killing Jews” the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges clarified. Until now, coverage of the silent, seated, placard-holding Palestine Action protests had been sympathetic. It would, you would think, from the footage of priests, pensioners, Quakers and disabled people being arrested under the Terrorism Act, and carried off by reluctant police, be difficult to sell this as an antisemitic hate event. But not this time. “We’ve had Swastikas, pro-Hamas posters, pro-terror posters and calls for Intifada”, Dan Hodges asserted, of the most recent Palestine Action protest in Trafalgar Square on 4 October, which he does not appear to have attended. The supposed evidence for this came from three photos of people on the fringes of the protest: a grey-haired man with a t-shirt which compared the Israeli government to Nazis, and one person with a placard saying they supported Hamas’ right to resistance. A banner from Cage, the campaigning civil rights organisation demanding that the government “Abolish terror laws” was presumably “pro terror”. The Times’ Matthew Syed, wandering around the sombre square on Saturday, was asking people, there to protest their government’s support of an ongoing genocide, whether “Hamas were partly responsible”. Told to piss off with his stupid questions by women there to witness the protest, Syed extrapolates this into a “hatred of Jews”. Many participants in the protest were Jewish and the protest itself was supported by Jewish organisations, including Jewish Voice for Labour and Na’amod. There were placards affirming the general grief for Manchester, but Syed comes away with “the pervasive view that the Manchester atrocity was not a heinous attack but righteous comeuppance for an evil people”. The protestors, from priest to Quaker, were “almost gloating over the Yom Kippur attack” the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews later told his Jewish audience. Coasting on the back of this, like a surfer upon sewage, was the British government. Naturally they wanted to end the protests; the public accusations of their engagement in the mass slaughter of defenceless people. And yet, interviewed by Owen Jones and Rivkah Brown at the Labour Party conference last month, it was clear that they were not about to do this by stopping their diplomatic and military support for the current Israeli government. Indeed, the government can do nothing to go against the Trump/Netanyahu axis, or so it has persuaded itself. Consider the haunted grey face of Yvette Cooper, questioned by Jones over Gaza. Or Jess Phillips, pursued by an incredulous Rivkah Brown with questions about the proscription of Palestine Action. “We’re just doing what we’re told” shrugged Phillips’ body language. “Are you daft, or something?” “I just do as I’m told, you know”, Labour’s Peter Prinsley confirmed to Declassified UK outside the conference. So this ideologically authoritarian, blindly in thrall government doubles down. The Prime Minister told the country that there are “people on our streets calling for the murder of Jewish people”. He did not mean the threat, to all people, of insane extremist violence; he meant what Gideon Sa’ar has instructed him to mean: the schoolgirls, students, pensioners, white and brown, singing “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. According to Sa’ar, and the right wing press, and their supporters, this calls for “the elimination of the State of Israel” – and is therefore antisemitic. Legislation, said Sa’ar, was needed. And thus the UK’s right wing, and its convenient dupes, flog the fallacy that the majority of the country who demanded arms sales to Israel be suspended, or who think banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans is a good idea, simply hate Jewish people. Meanwhile, the Israeli state not only invites in, but parades, a man known as one of the UK’s most unwanted Nazi-adjacent mortgage fiddlers. The shock among the British Jewish community when Tommy Robinson’s trip was announced was palpable, including from the British Board of Deputies of British Jews, which described him as a “thug” who represented “the very worst of Britain”. Robinson was urging supporters to rally at the Maccabi Tel Aviv/Villa game, where the Prime Minister and his accomplices are simultaneously attempting to expedite, as directed by Sa’ar, an influx of notoriously violent foreign race-haters, screaming “antisemitism” if challenged. If there were a better way to spread fear, division and hatred among our Muslim and Jewish communities, it is difficult to think of one. “If Tommy Robinson wants to show he’s a friend of Jews I urge him not to go after Jewish journalists just because they happen to disagree with him” pleaded one Jewish journalist. It is a terrible and damning game that this government and its allies are attempting: pretending to support the Jewish community by obeying the far right. Meanwhile, excluding figures from London, religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims rose by 19% in the year before March, including direct attacks on mosques and Muslims themselves. Communities are standing up to this, as they have, and they can, and they will.  The government, clearly, will not. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: Israel Police / Sports5. Maccabi Tel Aviv banners read “We’re back from reserve duty” and “Harbu Derby“ The post Red card for reality appeared first on Freedom News.