The following article was published and written by our friends in La Revolte first of all, we are just reposting it with permissions.
We sent a couple of representatives to this tournament from 0161, and we want to also say thank you to everyone involved and for helping us get there, showing us around, organising places to stay etc. A hospitality was shown that is second to none. Thanks to La Revolte specifically, Lviv Ultras, Freedom Fighters Poland who organised the training and all our brothers and sisters we met out there.
The blood and the sweat was very real, people standing and fighting for antifascism. Putting their lives on the line every day for what they beleive in. It was a pleasure to be there, to see people standing firm and not pretending or doing it as a show like so often we see here.
We will be back soon, in the meantime we will organise tournaments here all the while United in struggle.
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Preparing for the “United for Rojava” tournament, which was held in Berlin in support of the revolution in Kurdistan, we returned to the idea of holding an anti-fascist tournament in Kiev. We returned to Kiev charged positively after the Berlin event and began to prepare for “No surrender.” We understood that this would be the first tournament in the last 5 years, so we decided to hold a concert as well, in order to further reinforce positive emotions. Considering the fact that many concerts are attended by boneheads and nobody pays attention to them, we decided that we needed to point out that there would be no such shit at our events. Hence the idea of setting up PROMO – a subsidiary initiative, the main purpose of which is to organize sports and cultural events with an anti-authoritarian bias. We aimed to gather as many people as possible and make a worthy event.
During the preparation for the events, we remembered that one of the possible problems is the fragmentation of the movement, which had been cultivated for 5 years. Therefore, we decided to start communicating with people in advance and conduct some kind of negotiations so that everyone could start helping each other again and stop concentrating on the problems of the past. At the beginning of these negotiations, we described our plans in detail, it was important for us not to suppress other groups, we did not want to prove that someone was wrong. We were driven by a desire to unite in order to correct the situation. Therefore, we gradually managed to establish communication with other activists. The key factor in building relationships is the understanding that we may have a different vision for some things, but we can help each other and achieve a good result. It was important for us to show in practice that mutual help is more effective than competition.
About the tournament
After a 5 year interval an Anti-fascist tournament “No surrender” took place in Kiev in the end of April. We managed to gather about 100 people, both participants and spectators from various towns of Ukraine as well as from other countries – Belarus, Russia,Poland, Germany, the UK. As the result the house was full and the atmosphere was really friendly.
Could be even more there!
Write to us to find out the exact dates of the events in advance, don’t wait till the last moment🙂
Also we need to mention that because of strained relations with Russia, which conducts hostilities in the east of Ukraine and also because of stupid behavior of Ukrainian border police and non-argumented denies, some of the guys from Russia couldn’t get to Kiev and participate in the events(we already starting to search possible solution for this situation, that next time we hope everybody will pass smooth, we are planing next tournament in the end of autumn. Our greetings to the operator, who also didn’t make it). We need to mention also active work of police state in Russia and Belarusian, which make big pressure on antifascists and all authoritarian activists. All this factors make their influence on the quantity of guests and participants on the events.
We hope, that in future the quantity of participants and guest will grow!
Tournament began from classic of martial arts – boxing. There was really interesting fights in this section, some of them everybody will remember for long time.
Bleeding noses, knockdown – no one was indifferent! Fights was in weight categories from 60 kg till absolute category.
We hope that participants will keep working on their skills and those who was not ready enough at this time, will take revenge on the next tournament.
Straight after the boxing we had a classic of the “No surrender” tournaments – MMA. First fight ended with knockdown and aggressive ground and pound, but whatever the heat of fight after all fights there was a friendly hugs and handshakes.
Sport not only work on you character but also it instills respect for the competitor.
After there was a Thai boxing fight, there was not a lot of competitors in this category that’s why it has some weight difference, but it didn’t prevent a spectacular and really worthy fight!
Also on the tournament there was girls and they fight by rules of K-1. Both acted on the character and even if some of them lacked experience or technics, they had big perseverance and desire to win!
Hope that next tournament will gather bigger quantity of the participants in women categories. Next one was BJJ in this category we had different levels from the beginners till guys who participate in competitions of different levels: from open mats till Europe tournaments. Here guests could see really good and technical fights.
Among the guest attended one of the organizers Poland tournament “Freedom Fighters” Kamil Siemaszko, periodically he was helping participants in the corner.
It hard to tell about all the fights in words, better look some photos. Soon there will be a short video online.
Tournament lasted around 8 hours and pass in really great atmosphere. We didn’t had this kind of unity feeling of people from different parts of Ukraine and other countries for a long time. We sure that everybody who was fighting that day in the ring feels that support.
On the tournament there was a vegan-kitchen, which organized guys from “khlebnasushchnyi“, which allowed everyone to have a quick snack, without being distracted from the fights.
Also there was a distro.
Especially everybody was interested in stickers, a lot from them was connected to repression: the deal of “Set“, Belarusian anarchist Dmitriy Polienko, anarchist Azat Miftaxov, Crimean prisoner Aleksandr Kolchenko and connected with Belarusian antifascists was the stickers of Vadim Boyko(who don’t cooperate with investigation.)
Thai boxing seminar from Kamil Siemaszko.
Seminar took place on the next day after tournament.
Kamil not only the organizer of tournament “Freedom Fighters“(which you can visit 15-16 june this summer in Poznan, Poland, squat Rozbrat), he is also known for his achievements in Thai boxing.
CHAMPION of Poland (2014, 2018 x2)
VICE CHAMPION of Poland (2017 x2, 2015)
23(10 KO)-13-2
That why we decided it will be good to organize this seminar within our events because he is close to our spirit and have big experience. On the next day we’ve meet with company of people(who still had power after tournament) and those who wanted to work on their Thai boxing skills.
There was around 20 people, Kamil put big attention on clinch and defence work. Nobody have mentioned how fast 3 hours just passed. Someone has learned something new for himself, someone has fixed what he knew before, but anyway this kind of events give you a power and motivation for working on yourself.
For us it was interesting experience and initiative PROMO plans to make more seminars in future!
Hardcore-punk gig
In the evening, on one of the notorious musical locations of the capital, Hardcore / punk Sunday in Otel ‘thundered! About 200 people occupied the whole hall, the steps and all the places where they could at least somehow see what was happening on the stage. It should be noted that even within the framework of hardcore-punk, the line-up party at the event was quite diverse, which in turn made it possible to gather people from different “subcultural” layers, united by love for independent and free music, under the roof of the former ribbon-weaving factory.
Skinhead, punk, hardcore and metal bands were represented by the following bands: RESURGAM, TANK-2000, CIOS and BAD ACT. On the eve of the event there was a breakdown of the guys from Odessa (Homesick and Sundown) and the Kiev group Kentawr. But despite this, the metropolitan public demonstrated a fairly decent turnout. And the gangs who spoke out really shot both for themselves and for their comrades who were absent this evening.
We would like say separately thank the troops from Minsk! Resurgam staged a show in the best traditions of favorite metalcore/xxx bands and presented an atmosphere that has been harder and harder to feel on modern hardcore.
TANK-2000 was reminded to the local public and showed the guests what the real 044HC is and why one should not reckon with this hc/punk association.
In turn, the guys from CIOS skillfully plunged the public into street-punk madness, recalling that “Goodness must be with fists”!
Also, you can not leave without a separate respect BAD ACT, which at the last moment agree and became a worthy reinforcement of this evening.
After such a busy weekend and sleepless nights, we fell out of the air a bit, due to fatigue and cold, which we fought during the events.
But remaining exhausted, we were under a great inspiration from the work done and from the atmosphere that we felt.
Separately, we were inspired by volunteers who took upon themselves different vectors of responsibility and brought them to the end, with many of them this was our first experience of interaction and it turned out to be successful. Also, we were pleased with the guests, who dropped substantial sums on Free-Price, and the musicians, who were ready if we couldn’t afford to pay all price for their travel.
Thanks to the general awareness, all the money spent by the organizers, participants and volunteers was reimbursed. And even when the information about the broken microphone came, the amount was collected in 3 days.
It is important for us that everybody continue to understand that the development of a healthy atmosphere in the movement and organization of new events depends on each of us.
We want to say thanks to everybody who came, support and have read this till the end!
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Now we are getting ready a material of the “No surrender” tournament history and soon we will announce the dates of the next tournament.
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