Queer Activist Zak Kostopoulos Murdered in Athens
Queer activist and performer Zak Kostopoulos was murdered on September 21 in Athens. His murder is all over the news presented as an accident: he died trying to escape through a shop window after attempting armed robbery.
The brutal, brutal video accompanying those articles shows a very different truth: a disoriented, unarmed Zak trying to escape and the shop owner with another man brutally kicking him to death.
The Greek public is a talking about the shop owner’s right to protect his property from drug addicted, HIV positive faggots. What they don’t know is that Zak, our Zak spoke openly and without shame about being or having been all three, and his words, his songs and his dance brought light and joy to a whole generation of queer people.
Spread the word. Spread our anger. HIS MURDER WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED
According to information from a direct source, Zak and a friend were sitting at a café next to the jewellery shop, and they got attacked/threatened, and Zak went in the shop to take shelter.
There are many sites publishing information on the incident and providing a greater insight into what happened.
LGBT HIV activist Zak Kostopoulos murdered in Athens: campaign calls for justice
Greece: queer activist Zak Kostopoulos lynched to death in Athens
Zak’s death is not being forgotten. The Greek state is being pressured into providing a thorough and transparent investigation into his death. Amnesty International Greece is one organisation working on this matter.
The attack on the weak, the stereotypes about the image of the Other, the fear of being different, stigmatization and marginalization are phenomena that can not and must not be tolerated in our society. In addition, the sexist and homophobic character, and the stigma against drug users, in the way in which the public dialogue after the assassination took place in many cases, marks a flagrant violation of the rights of large social groups.
As Amnesty International, we insist on the need for a thorough, transparent and meaningful investigation of the murder of Jacques Zac and the police attitude, and we will take action in this direction.
We will not compromise with the monster. Translated from Greek.
Some are prepared to draw a line in the sand over this murder.
On receiving news of the gruesome murder of Zak Kostopoulos in Athens this week, we were struck with overwhelming sense of the need for a response. Though, we do not know Zak, his awful situation resonates so strongly because we know that this to could be our fate, the fate of a close friend or lover. In a world that overwhelmingly wants to see more dead queers we recognize this attack for exactly what it is- the continuation of normalized brutality against queer and trans people under the eyes of states which are happy to let us die: be that through the refusal on a structural level to provide adequate treatment for HIV, the criminalization of HIV positive people, or the actions of individual cops allowing and enabling Zak (and others like him) to be beaten to death.
Not that we want anything from those dirty institutions, simply we want to acknowledge the enemy and the tactics it employs against us; fuck justice and fuck the police- both are the weapons of our enemies and neither of them will ever bring us anything except greater harm; there can never be justice for such a cruel and brutal murder, there can never be justice for Zak. We want vengeance- vengeance for Zak and the countless others like him who fall every year to Homophobic/Trans-phobic and state violence; vengeance against those who carry out these attacks, vengeance against the police who ruin lives everywhere and always, vengeance against the states who oversee it all, and vengeance against a world whose indifference is tantamount to complicity. Expect to see more escalations soon.
Some Armed Queers already prepared to die. Originally published by Act For Freedom.
The following is a response from a Greek Syndicalist Union.
We call on every worker, unemployed, to take a stand against the fascist plague. Within our unions, workplaces, neighbourhoods, schools and schools, we defend our right from the bottom to life! In order not to overcome fear and hatred! To bloom the colourful working communities and solidarity towards barbarism! —-
On Friday, 21 September at noon, Zak Kostopoulos falls dead in a pawnshop of homonymy after merciless beating by the owner of the shop, another shopkeeper and police presence and other people who just look at the spectacle (with the brilliant exception of a man trying to make them prevent). In the case file that is passed to the prosecutor, nothing is mentioned of all of this, nor the testimonies of the police and the owner.
The murder space is not enclosed and the owner cleans the space by destroying every element.
The media are killing the memory of the dead by spreading falsehood. Until the perpetrator’s identity is revealed, journalists and peaceful citizens are hating their hatred for the low levels of society, justifying the self-righteousness and linguistic practices against micro-drug addicts and drug addicts at the same time that drug dealers and public money thieves either have their own media or are glorified from those.
After revealing that he is a well-known and highly respected militant for the rights of the community and so it is more difficult to conceal the truth, a more indirect targeting begins and the Nazis who gather with eerie slogans against homosexuals and users drugs at the point of killing.
Do not get used to Death and social manhunts! Defend the memory of the murdered Zac Kostopoulos from his everyday abusers! We call on every worker, unemployed, to take a stand against the fascist plague.
Within our unions, workplaces, neighbourhoods, schools and schools, we defend our right from the bottom to life! In order not to overcome fear and hatred! To bloom the colourful working communities and solidarity towards barbarism! The Union of Liberals calls for participation in all the gatherings and demonstrations that take place across Greece against the efforts to cover up the murder of Zak Kostopoulos.
ELEFTHERIA SYNDICALISTIC UNION (ATHENS, THESSALONIKI, RETHYMNO, IMATHIA, IOANNINA) Translated from Greek.