KNE Athens University Students’ District Organization:The Festival will take place at the University Campus and no one can stop it!

The administration of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) refused to make the University Campus in Zografou available for the needs of the Festival of KNE’s Athens University Students’ Organization, which will take place on Saturday 6 June. In a statement on 27 April, 2026, the Athens University Students’ District Organization of KNE denounces this unacceptable decision.

More specifically, recalling that this event of the Students’ Festival “constitutes the first link in the chain of events of the 52nd Festival of KNE–‘Odigitis’, which will culminate over the four days of 23–26 September in Athens, at Tritsis Park in Ilion, under the slogan ‘“General, man has one defect: He can think! ...With the KKE at the forefront, for socialism!”, the Athens University Students’ Regional Organization points out the following:

The Council of Administration of NKUA, making use of the authoritarian legal framework of the New Democracy (ND) government and invoking ‘security and civil protection reasons’, refuses to grant permission for the holding of festivals, cultural events and concerts to any ‘non-university body’, that is, to KNE!

The ND government bears huge responsibility! It is revealed that the reactionary legal framework, which it inherited from previous governments and has further strengthened, is not about the ‘safety of students’ or the so-called ‘lawlessness in universities’, but about censorship, the restriction of political and cultural activity, and the obstruction of KNE’s action. Every young man and woman who does not compromise with the problems in their studies and fights for their rights is being targeted.

This attempt to ban the Festival is not an isolated incident. It comes after the refusal to grant a hall at NKUA’s Law School for an event with a KKE MP on constitutional revision, the refusal to grant a space at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for a KNE event on the heroic EPON, the arrests of three female students inside their homes in the Student Residence of the University of Athens, and the dozens of disciplinary prosecutions against students, some even following suggestions by DAP-NDFK cadres. Once again, it is proven that they fear the exposure of the real conditions in the universities behind the façade constructed by the government, as well as organized struggle and demands; this is why a plan to intensify repression is underway.

The pretexts of the NKUA administration are flimsy and ridiculous! The safety of students and civil protection are not threatened by the Festival of KNE, but by dangerous and poorly maintained infrastructure, the lack of anti-seismic and fire protection measures, the policy of “going ahead and hoping for the best” in transport, etc. KNE is not a ‘non-university body’, but the most mass and dynamic political youth organization within NKUA, with hundreds of student members, whose fellow students and professors recognize their scientific, militant and cultural activity. The historical contribution of KNE—from the Law School uprising in February 1973 to the present day—to the student movement and the struggles of NKUA students is well known and indisputable. It is no coincidence that the Festival the NKUA administration seeks to ban would feature ‘The Smoke-Blackened Pot’ (Kapnismeno Tsoukali) by Y. Ritsos and Chr. Leontis, set to music by the composer on the day after the occupation of the Law School. What irony: the songs once banned by the junta are being banned again today!

If they think they can ban the KNE Festival, they are deeply mistaken. On 6 June, the University Campus in Zografou will be transformed into a vibrant ‘red city’, packed with thousands of young people who ‘will not settle for less sky’ (excerpt from Ritsos' poem 'Romiosini"). This is the very place with which the Festival of KNE has been associated since its first steps after the junta, broadly highlighting the demands of students. After all, it is not the first time that the Festival of KNE has taken place in defiance of bans, thanks to the determined stance of the youth and the working people, as was the case with the 3rd KNE Festival in Peristeri in 1977.

We call on Student Unions, trade unions, other mass organizations, and every artist who has taken part in and contributed to the historic course of the Festival of KNE–‘Odigitis’ to condemn this authoritarian decision.

The ND government will receive the best answer to its attempt to intensify authoritarianism and repression with the emergence of Panspoudastiki KS as the first force nationwide once again, as well as at NKUA, overthrowing the government-backed DAP in the student elections on 13 May.

P.S.: Amid all this, they also told one truth. The Festival of KNE–‘Odigitis’ is indeed ‘dangerous’ to ‘security’—not to the security of students, but to that of the system of profit, the government, and the parties that serve it.”