Corfu will not be sold out!

The Memorandum Laws and the impoverishment tactics imposed by the European Union and the IMF, through our subject - and in question - emergency government, unleash a brutal and unending assault on the lower and middle classes.

While the burden of the banks’ debts is loaded on the people’s shoulders in the invocation of "public debt" and "financial restoration", bankers, ship owners and industrialists are vested with all legal provisions and guarantees to help them accumulate more wealth. Because “financial growth” and other economic terms used by the State and the capitalists, mean even greater losses for the low-class people, even more profits for the high classes. 

      While society is experiencing misery in every aspect: unemployment, dark ages for the working people and violent impoverishment, the government completely undermines social benefits such as education and health, the destruction of which is presented as "restoring moves".

Under the pretence of normality and social peace, repression is intensified, every strike is declared illegal, every person fighting is prosecuted, ​​new type C (Guantanamo) prisons are built, but eminent representatives of the domestic capital are still not prosecuted for embezzling millions of public wealth or are exempt from their crimes against society, their lawyers being prominent party officials and government Ministers.

At a time when there are extreme cuts on wages and pensions and public insurance funds collapse, huge amounts of money are provided for armament programs and for the reinforcement-even with human resources- of operations carried out by "coalition forces" in third countries.

They promise economic recovery through tourism while they impose the destruction of the natural resources of the country, either by destroying the highly dangerous chemical weapons of Syria at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea or in the form of "investments" such as the one in Skouries, Halkidiki, as well as by selling out every piece of public land and public asset: from water, electric power, roads, ports and airports, to whole islands, shores and forests.

     It is now the time for Corfu to pay a heavy toll to this extraordinary sellout. It seems that Corfu has been put on sale from North to South: from the rare wetland Erimitis to the Natura protected habitat of Issos, and from the historic building of the Old Psychiatric Hospital –where, not only mental health services are still delivered, but also three Ionian University departments are housed- to Mpouka beach in Lefkimmi. 

      But the tourism industry, the development and the investments that they promise -and some can only dream of- include all the provisions necessary for the investors: expropriation of neighboring regions, favorable loans and tax regulations, local and foreign workers on starvation wages, slavery working conditions. Anyone who hopes to be saved by those responsible for our devastation is utterly deluded. The public land and property does not belong to governments, investors, speculators, economic growth seekers or people serving small and large interests. It belongs to us all. We will not allow for the public land and property to be sold out or disposed of, not only because it is not a product for creating wealth, but also, because it does not belong to anyone, therefore, it cannot be sold. 

        This fight is given by all of us for all of us, without petty political interests. We are horizontally organized, determined to take our lives in our hands. This struggle is a struggle for Life, Land, Freedom and Dignity. It is a fight that should be given by everyone, with respect to the nature, the history and the tradition of Corfu island and its society.

Corfu will not be sold out!

Open meeting every Wednesday at 19.30 at the premises of the Old Psychiatric Hospital.

Corfu residents’ “Initiative Against Sell-out and Repression/Submission”