Federal Police invade the premises of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha - FAG

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25756

On the afternoon of Wednesday, 20 June 2013, between 12 and 15 plainclothes officers dressed in black waistcoats and blazers, claiming to be from the Federal Police broke into and raided the Ateneu Batalha da Várzea, the social and political premises of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha located on Travessa dos Venezianos, and took some of our material. The officers would not present any search and seizure warrant to standers-by who tried to find out what was happening. In addition to this, some officers, also in plainclothes, tried to take a comrade from her home this morning.
The FAG is a political organization which has existed, publicly, for 18 years. Throughout these years we have never hidden, we have always maintained our public spaces where we carry out many activities of a political and cultural nature as well as our work within the community and as part of the local and national left. The Ateneu is a space where we have carried on these activities for over 3 years, maintaining a public library and doing regular activities.

We would recall that in October 2009 we had our old headquarters, at the time located in Lopo Gonçalves, raided by the police on the orders of the then Governor Yeda Crusius as a result of a poster which she claimed - and continues to claim - we were responsible for the murder of MST activist Elthon Brum in São Gabriel. On that occasion all our material was seized, including our bins.

This time, after numerous pseudo-facts stated on RBS television, accusing us of being sociopaths and fantasizing that we were plotting together with activists from other countries, employing guerrilla tactics in the city, with the apparent motive of sowing panic, there have been calls for repression against our militancy.

Like the taunts and factoids in the reactionary press, the repression employed by the repressive apparatuses of the bourgeois State is not new to us. Since our inception as a political current, we have been the target of the repressive fury of the bosses in collusion with the State. For over a century we have resisted all these cowardly assaults, with our fists raised and our heads held high and this will not be the episode that will shake our combative militancy.

Finally, we lay full responsibility on the municipal, state and federal governments for this cowardly attack on our organization. We will not be intimidated and we will go on devoting all our efforts towards building a strong people, a combative working class that can organize the oppressed of this country and its legitimate demands.

Não passarão!

Down with the repression of those who struggle!

Federação Anarquista Gaúcha - FAG