Prison Struggle – Page 32

Italy: On the sentence of the Operation Scripta Manent trial

Posted on 2022/07/13 by darknights

SCRIPTA MANENT SENTENCE

The hearing of the Scripta Manent trial took place on July 6 at the Court of Cassation (Supreme Court). The court reclassified the facts of the explosive attack to the Carabinieri students school in Fossano (Cuneo) on June 2, 2006, claimed by Rivolta Anonima Tremenda – Federazione Anarchica Informale, for which Anna and Alfredo were prosecuted, in “massacre & political” (art, 285), returning the process to the court of Torino for the punitive recalculation of the sentence. All the other sentences were confirmed, between 1 year and 9 months and 2 years and 6 months, for 11 comrades, and the acquittals for the rest of the defendants, which thus become definitive.

There will come times for more detailed reflections. What does seem evident to us is the determination of the State to break the anarchist movement and the revolutionary struggle, making even worse what happened before the Court of Assise (National Court) of Turin, with a sentence that does not seem to presume any margin for criticism. While the contradictions on which society is governed become more and more unmanageable, before the social tension takes forms that the power does not know how to manage, the State tries to give a blunt blow to the movement and a warning to those who do not desist: two or three years for those who publish a newspaper, dozens of years or even life imprisonment for those who act.

The recent decision to lock Alfredo up in 41 bis, shamelessly taken, moreover, on the eve of this sentence, is perfectly qualified in this State reprisal: the decisions have been taken, Alfredo has to stay buried, literally, in prison. His ideas, his actions, his contribution must be silenced, condemned to oblivion.

But forgetting the prisoners of the social war means forgetting the war itself: revolutionary solidarity with the anarchists Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito. Death to the State and capital, long live anarchy.

The addresses of the imprisoned comrades:

Anna Beniamino
C. C. “G. Stefanini” – Rebibbia
via Bartolo Longo 92
00156 Roma (Italy)

Alfredo Cospito
C. C. “G. Bacchiddu” C.C.
strada provinciale 56 n. 4
Località Bancali
07100 Sassari (Italy)

Italy: We will not stay warm during the storm

Posted on 2022/07/13 by darknights

We receive and disseminate this text-proposal, which we will gladly return to in the near future:

Let’s be clear: we want Alfredo out of 41bis.

Our proposal is not that of a specialized campaign against 41bis or against prisons: not because we like these institutions or because we think anyone should remain locked up in them, but because we think it is urgent to start from a “simpler” goal, knowing full well that when we have achieved it we will not have even begun in our struggle, which is for social revolution.

A struggle for the destruction of the prison cannot be won as long as there are states and authorities: therefore, these are battles that must be carried on continuously, but we would like, in this case, to try to give ourselves an attainable goal even in the short or medium term.

The fight against prison is – in itself – a fight against the existing, because the end of prisons means the end of the state, similarly the fight against 41bis, in Italy, goes to touch some of the foundations of the Italian state, which since its introduction has made it the workhorse of the “fight against the mafia.” Let’s face it clearly and humbly: 41bis is one of the ideological pillars of the Italian state, which has among its mottos “41bis or death!” The anti-mafia war has shown us this: the state, instead of giving up 41bis, has been willing to make the population pay for mafia bombs, such as the massacre of Via Georgofili in Florence or Via Palestro in Milan. So we find it difficult that on the abolition of that prison regime specifically (as, moreover, of prison in general), we can make pressures, whether harmless or violent. Whereas we think it is different to lobby specifically for the downgrading of Alfredo. This is not to say that our speeches, or our actions, should be watered down. The radicality of our struggle must be ensured, even in the case of a “partial demand” such as Alfredo’s demotion, by never disjointing the goals we can and must set ourselves with the social-political reasons for our anarchist actions. The radicality of action, propaganda, and agitation are the only antibody to strongly reiterate that our struggle is for the destruction of the existent, without mediation, preventing our demands, from that of the liberation of a comrade to stopping this or that project of capital, from being assimilated into a power-compatible reformism. Continue reading “Italy: We will not stay warm during the storm” →

Greece: A letter from the special cell of Lamia Hospital – Giannis Michailidis

Posted on 2022/07/12 - 2022/07/24 by darknights

The scorpion is an insect that differs little from its ancestral species, which were among the first animals to walk on land hundreds of millions of years ago. It has been observed that individuals of this species, when trapped among the flames with no visible escape route, do a remarkable thing: they turn their sting on themselves and commit suicide! A behavior that offers no evolutionary advantage, as on the slim chance that the fire would go out, the surviving animals could continue to reproduce. A behavior that contradicts the theory that insects are biological robots because they exhibit standardized behaviors.

The simplest way I can explain this behaviour is that the evolution of life does not build robots, but instead creates neural systems for information processing and decision making. Recurring patterns of behaviour emerge from the complex operation of self-organised neural circuits, which in most cases do indeed favour maximum reproductive potential. So then, these tiny nervous systems with several orders of magnitude fewer neural synapses than our brains produce a behaviour that betrays evidence of their internal functioning:

These animals experience pain, meaning pain as a stimulus that the animal tries to eliminate.
These animals experience fear, meaning fear as an internal mental projection of a future situation.
They have knowledge that they possess a murderous tool with which they kill their prey and defend themselves from their predators: the stinger.
They associate the feeling of pain with their body as they point the stinger at themselves.
The association of pain with self-consciousness, since pain is an elementary form of mental state, and consciousness is thought upon thought, constitutes a primitive form of consciousness. So pain is in a sense conscious.

Continue reading “Greece: A letter from the special cell of Lamia Hospital – Giannis Michailidis” →

South London,UK : Discussion event in solidarity with anarchist prisoner Giannis Michailidis on hunger strike in Greece

Posted on 2022/07/11 by darknights

pdf

DISCUSSION IN SOLIDARITY WITH ANARCHIST PRISONER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS ON HUNGER STRIKE SINCE 23/5/22

South London: 6PM WEDNESDAY 13TH OF JULY 2022

At The Field, 385 Queens Road SE14 5HD

Anarchists in solidarity

Source: Act for freedom now!

Greece: Solidarity poster for anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis by ‘Individuals from the known space’

Posted on 2022/07/08 - 2022/07/08 by darknights

LET’S BECOME

(as cops and judges believe)

“SUSPECTED OF COMMITTING NEW CRIMES”

Immediate release of the anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis

Individuals from the known space.

UK: Communication with anarchist comrade Toby Shone cut off by scum prison authorities G4S

Posted on 2022/06/28 by darknights

Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone who is being held at the private G4S prison HMP/YOI Parc in Bridgend, South Wales, is now unable to communicate by phone with his solidarity group and closest loved ones after the Security Team at Parc, headed by Daniel Hayman, removed these contacts from his permitted phone pin numbers list on Friday 24th June 2022 at 6pm. This together with interference with his post and emails is an attempt to hold him incommunicado in the jail.

He was formally notified of this decision on Saturday 25th June with the following reasons given: giving interviews over the phone, giving detailed information about staff at the prison which has then been published online, and hate speech against some prison staff.

Neither Toby nor his comrades are surprised by this action and Toby remains strong and defiant. The weak and pitiful lackeys that work in the prison camps of capital, locking other human beings up in exchange for a little piece of silver and a small dimension of power over others, are no match at all for the revolutionary spirit and they know it. Neither Toby nor any of us will ever shut up.

Write to the prison to complain and show your solidarity by contacting the Director of HMP Parc:

Janet Wallsgrove
HM Prison Parc
Heol Hobcyn John
Coity, Bridgend, CF35 6AP
South Wales.

Tel: 01656 300200
General Fax: 01656 300316

Email: janet.wallsgrove@uk.g4s.com

or send your messages of solidarity to Toby:

Toby Shone
A7645EP
HM Prison Parc
Heol Hobcyn John
Coity, Bridgend, CF35 6AP
South Wales.

[please be aware that his mail is being interfered with and the prison may not allow him you communication but they WILL know the strength of the solidarity we can show him.]

Down with the prisons, down with capital.

Greece: Judicial Council of Amfissa rejects the request for release of the hunger striker Giannis Michailidis, who has been on hunger strike since 23/5

Posted on 2022/06/20 - 2022/06/20 by darknights

Today 20/6, the Judicial Council of Amfissa rejected the request for the release of fellow hunger striker Giannis Michailidis. The Judicial Council of Amfissa and its judges signed with their dirty hands the attempted extermination of our comrade. Next to their name, the word executioner will carry with it the stigma that must accompany them for the rest of their miserable lives.

The Amfissa Judicial Council has carried out part of a wider repressive plan to deal with our comrade’s hunger strike. Systematic silencing by the mainstream media, bureaucratic delay of the response in order to damage and exhaust the striker, rejection of the application at a time when he is in a critical condition in the Lamia hospital.

As we speak, after a month of hunger strike, Giannis has reached 57.5 kg, has lost more than 21% of his body weight and his life is in danger. He is locked up in a squalid cell in the Lamia hospital, without even a television to keep him informed, which he is deprived of by the ridiculous argument of the cops that “there is a fear of suicide from the TV cables”. Visits with his companion are refused, and she is not given an official update on his medical condition.

We denounce the vindictive treatment of the hunger striker and call on the mass bodies and the doctors’ trade unions to take a public stand against these outrages. Hunger strikers are not suicidal, they are putting their lives on the line and fighting for life itself to triumph.

Dead hunger strikers do not commit suicide, they are murdered by capitalist states, imperialism, fascism. This is how it is done in Turkey, this is how it has been done in Germany, Northern Ireland and elsewhere. We warn for the last time those responsible, the executives and deputies of the New Democracy, the appellants of Lamia who will examine the appeal of the hunger striker, those willing servants of the state apparatus who give any kind of cover to the plan of extermination of our comrade: Those of you who put your hand on our comrade’s extermination, those of you who become part of the repressive tactics against him, those of you who do not separate your position while it is still early, we will make sure that nothing goes unanswered.

We call upon the solidarity movement, as well as every progressive person who recognizes in Giannis a selfless fighter who fights with his life against state arbitrariness and vengefulness, to unite his voice, to join the solidarity demonstration on Friday 24/6 at 18.00 at the Propylaea. To do everything in his power to set up the roadblock that will prevent the extermination of our comrade.

Assembly of solidarity with the anarchist Giannis Michailidis today 20/6 at 18:00 at the ASOEE.

VICTORY IN THE HUNGER STRIKE OF GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS

ALL IN THE STREETS

Assembly of solidarity with the anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis

Source: athens.indymedia

Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/06/18 by darknights

In this umpteenth hearing in videoconference and after many requests, all denied, to appear and attend in person and not in absence to all the hearings of the trial that sees me charged, for the heavy and infamous accusation of massacre, I have to face the issue of videoconferencing, which enters, or to be more precise, was entering, in the infamous logic of the differentiation of the penitentiary circuits, in which the individual prisoner and accused is demonized and dehumanized by the said “considerable social dangerousness”. And I said that I was entering, because the videoconference, the trial in absentia, has been extended to all the prisoners in Italian prisons, who have been left without a real defense and with the marginalization that all this implies for all the defendants who suffer this imposition, through a liberticidal dynamic of the umpteenth emergency, this time for the Covid-19 emergency, which then became law. It is known, it is already evident and unmasked – and I am not only talking about the contradiction of this problem especially, or of one law or another – how the specific problem of the videoconference has reduced the defense to be a farce, annulling in fact the defendant within the trial.

This court will probably say that this has nothing to do with the trial taking place today.

But I believe it does, and what is more, I believe it is a fundamental issue. I am talking about the contradiction that the States possess by their own systemic nature, the fundamental problem is the disintegration and degeneration that dresses itself as emergentialism, and has the objective of breaking and directing the consolidated and ordinary legality at will, transforming it into another legality. We see it with the same dynamics of the perpetual emergency, and the specific plan of the videoconference is only an example of how the systemic authoritarianism liberticidal system expands in a capillary way. It is the exception, the emergency of today, that forges the law of tomorrow, reducing it more and more. The trials by videoconference, that is, in absentia, have been established by the continuous emergencies within the said social dangerousness, which is already the norm, such as the trial by videoconference for all the prisoners in Italian prisons. And it is not that this does not have repercussions on the real conditions of the entire trial, since it hinders the management of a real defense of the accused, creating a contradiction with what your own democratic and bourgeois law argues. Continue reading “Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.” →

Greece: Georgia Voulgari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/07/26 by darknights

The dictatorship of confinement is the mirror of democracy. It is the morbid representation of a tyranny that is not content with its military victories. It wants to see those it subjugates bend, sink into deprivation and decadence. To see in the faces of the captives that laughter disappears and misery takes its place. Power builds mass graves of souls to bury in concrete the voices of the invisible.

And yet some continue to shout. They shout loudly about injustice, inequality, arbitrariness. They shout for freedom and their voices break the concrete, cut the wires and travel free as birds in the sky. They contemplate the meanness of this world and from their proud height they fall like thunderbolts on the heads of the lords.

Comrade Giannis Michailidis belongs to these voices. A disobedient fighter both outside and inside the walls. Intransigent with the demand for encirclement to this day. Humble as a personality as much as a sworn enemy of exploitation, our comrade condenses in his journey the meanings that today we are called to defend collectively. Revolutionary consciousness against subjugation, abnegation against self-interest, the sharpening of the struggle against disarmament and generalized resignation.

In the face of the general decadence that prevails around us, there are people who, with their faith and dedication to revolutionary ideals, have left their own special mark in the militant struggle for total liberation. The lives of these people, whom we are honored to call comrades, weigh like mountains. Therefore, the struggles they wage are the struggles of all of us. Giannis placed a stake on his body to defend the collective current of those who chose to march, from the first to the last day, on the paths of intolerance through the walls. Continue reading “Greece: Georgia Voulgari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.” →

Greece: International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker Giannis Michailidis EN, DE, FR, SP, IT, JA, RU

Posted on 2022/06/17 - 2022/06/20 by darknights

International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker G. Michailidis

“After 8.5 years in prison, after all these arbitrary actions against me, I decided to put an end to my 11 years of suffering, by putting up a mound against the practice of preventive imprisonment, or else the additional punishment of escape with legal loopholes. After 5 more months of preventive detention, I am starting a hunger strike for my release. This choice, with the deep motivation of the much desired freedom, I intend to support it with the same consistency that I have supported my choices so far and for which they are avenging me.”

Giannis Michailidis, preventively imprisoned in Malandrinos prison, 23/5/2022

Throughout his life, Giannis Michailidis, has been an integral part of the struggles against the state and capital from an anarchist perspective. He participated from a young age in anarchist student groups, in demonstrations against the Iraq war, in anti-state/anti-capitalist demonstrations of the 2004-2006 anti-globalisation movement and was arrested during the conflicts. He participated in the 2006-2007 student struggles against the reactionary reforms in higher education (privatization of universities, abolition of university asylum, etc.). He fought against the plundering of nature and was arrested in an intervention against the deforestation of Mount Parnitha in 2007. He was an integral part of the December uprising, when police officers murdered in cold blood the anarchist 16-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the Exarchia area. He was present in the battles against the memoranda in 2012 and chose to expropriate the bloody wealth of the banks, remaining steadfastly committed to the vision of the overthrow of the state and capital, holding a militant – feisty stance, against the police-judicial complex, the material expression of state terrorism. Continue reading “Greece: International Day of Action and Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker Giannis Michailidis EN, DE, FR, SP, IT, JA, RU” →