Political letter from RAF prisoner of war Daniela Klette from the Vechta Women’s Maximum Security Prison, at the 30th International Rosa Luxemburg Conference held on 11 January in Berlin on the topic: The last battle – how dangerous is capitalism in decline.
Dear participants of the Rosa Luxemburg conference,
Dear comrades,
I greet you today from the prison in Vechta. I was arrested almost a year ago after decades of living in illegality.
I am facing years of legal proceedings on charges of participation in armed expropriations. In addition, ‘justice’ is pursuing another trial against me on the charge of participating as a urban guerrilla fighter against capitalism and imperialism.
I was 17 years old when the Vietnamese liberation struggle crushed American imperialism. This incredible victory was achieved with worldwide solidarity – despite the napalm, despite the huge military machine that stood in the way of the liberation movement, and despite the massacres of the Vietnamese population perpetrated by the US army with the help and complicity of the West, especially Germany.
I was 16 years old when I was informed that a man on hunger strike against the torture of isolation had been murdered. It was Holger Meins who actively resisted the conditions of confinement and was murdered by the prison system, through deliberate malnutrition – during state forced feeding – and a complete refusal to provide medical assistance.
It was the era of liberation projects and anti-colonial struggles in many countries: like the Black Panthers against racist oppression rebelling in the USA, or the FSLN in Nicaragua against the dictatorship. I was already beginning to understand what humanity had to expect from capitalism and imperialism. Yes, I saw myself as part of the global movements fighting against exploitation and oppression, against capitalism and patriarchy, and against war and militarism.
Justice is now negotiating my guilt in the legal sense. For me, there is no question of guilt, but there is the following question, which has mobilised and continues to mobilise millions of people: how do we overturn the correlations that reproduce world war, displacement, exploitation, patriarchal and racist oppression, poverty and total ecological destruction?
The powerful of the world, struggling to maintain their power, are preparing for total war. Society is characterized by ever-increasing poverty, militarization and a growing shift to the right. Capitalism is heading towards ecological collapse: the state of the world today makes it abundantly clear that the questions about how to overcome these conditions were and remain legitimate and are now more necessary than ever to be answered. These questions concern us all and can only be answered collectively and by mass movements. I would love to be with you and work collectively on these issues, but state repression and the state’s will to condemn all resistance from below does not allow it.
No one who is imprisoned as a member of subversive and revolutionary movements is persecuted simply because of their alleged or actual actions. We are condemned to years of misery in prison because of the state’s insistence on delegitimizing the history of revolutionary struggles and preventing the struggles of the future. This happens to me, just as it happened to Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier in the US, to the captured anarchists in Greece – Marianna, Dimitris, Nikos, Dimitra – and many other political prisoners worldwide.
In this sense, the legal proceedings against me are proceedings against liberationist, radical and anti-capitalist resistance. My trial is about to begin shortly. I would be very happy if those of you who can attend it, so that it becomes clear that this trial is not a trial against me, but against all those who are engaged in the question of overthrowing capitalism. Every form of solidarity is welcome!
I wish you every success and, yes, I hope you have a lot of fun at this year’s Rosa Luxemburg conference!
Solidarity, fighting and warm greetings to all of you.
Daniela Klette
Women’s maximum security prison Vechta
