‘Until the demolition of every prison. Always with anarchy.’ Document of the Open Assembly of Anarchists for the initiative in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito in front of the Italian Embassy (Athens, Greece, Feb. 16, 2023)
We publish “Until the demolition of every prison. Always with anarchy,” the call for the Feb. 16 initiative in front of the Italian Embassy in Athens in solidarity with anarchist Alfredo Cospito on hunger strike to the bitter end. The enormous movement of international solidarity that has manifested itself in recent months is proof of how to the isolation and censorship of the state and its prisons we will always oppose the tenacity and consistency of our ideas and practices. This text and the initiative of the Open Assembly of Anarchists, reaffirming the perspective of international revolutionary solidarity, are a further contribution in this regard.
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UNTIL THE DEMOLITION OF EVERY PRISON. ALWAYS WITH ANARCHY
Because for those who love life, reacting when it is turned into surviving is a necessary act.
– Anna Beniamino, “Declaration of beginning hunger strike,” Nov. 7, 2022
Alfredo Cospito, imprisoned anarchist convicted of the crime “massacre” in the “Scripta Manent” trial – a charge concerning the double explosive attack on the Carabinieri Cadet School in Fossano, claimed by Rivolta Anonima e Tremenda / Federazione Anarchica Informale (RAT/FAI) – has been on hunger strike against the 41 bis prison regime and hostile life imprisonment since Oct. 20, when he was imprisoned in the Bancali prison in Sassari, Sardinia. Since May 5, and after ten years in prison, the state has chosen to reinforce the isolation of the comrade (who until then had contributed significantly to the debate among anarchists with letters, articles and interventions) through the detention regime provided for in Article 41 bis of the Italian Prison Order (the carcere duro), a law-abomination that, in essence, requalifies imprisonment into a form of special isolation even on the intellectual and sensory level. It is a suffocating stranglehold that almost completely nullifies communication and contact with the outside world, a torture of psychosomatic annihilation against militants in order to force them to political “repentance.”
Moreover, the purpose of this regime is to create a barrier to revolutionary-antiauthoritarian dialogue between comrades inside and outside prisons. Systematic censorship and the attempt to annihilate the very existence of political prisoners reveal the teeth of democracy and the fear of authoritarian forces of those who carry and spread the seed of revolt and attack for the demolition of the world of the state and capital.
Alfredo Cospito, a continuer of anarchist discourse and practice, raises the shield of the hunger strike to repel the vindictiveness of the state apparatus. The Italian state, with its fascist practices-through the last elections and beyond-has a long history of confrontational tension with anarchists, its enemies who over the years have had trials and investigations for their actions and beliefs, even at the cost of death.
Also imprisoned in the same annihilation regime are three political prisoners, members of the Red Brigades for the Construction of the Combatant Communist Party (BR-PCC) arrested in 2003, Nadia Lioce, Marco Mezzasalma and Roberto Morandi, while Diana Blefari – also a member of the BR-PCC and a longtime prisoner in the solitary confinement of the 41 bis regime – committed suicide in 2009.
With the approval of the new Penal Code and with the even more recent approval of the new Penitentiary Code by the Greek state, “maximum security” prisons or wards now have as their purpose “increased supervision” of “unruly” prisoners, apart, of course, from political prisoners, convicted under the main counterrevolutionary legal instrument par excellence applied to guerrilla warfare, 187A; all seven years after the abolition of Type C prisons thanks to the struggle waged through hunger strikes by political prisoners at the time. This latest development in the state’s legal arsenal is nothing less than a tendency to absolutize prison conditions, also placing a regulation on social confinement with surveillance and control outside the confines of the prison and opening a serious possibility for the introduction of solitary confinement and torture models (similar to 41 bis) in Greek prisons as well. Prisoners in Korydallos and Domokos prisons are still engaged in resistance mobilizations against the new and further authoritarian Penitentiary Code. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: ‘Until the demolition of every prison. Always with anarchy.’ Document of the Open Assembly of Anarchists for the initiative in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito in front of the Italian Embassy”
Hunger Strike of Anarchists and Fighting Prisoners in Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito
The 41-bis prison regime is the completion of the prison structure into a masqueraded death sentence. The execution, in this case, does not end in one moment, like with a gunshot, the tightening of the noose, the application of electrical current or the injection of poison into the body, rather it lasts a lifetime in a state of social coma, in a state of non-world. And so, spread through time. Out of this world, the death sentence has evaded history, just like the state pursues oblivion for all the prisoners of the social war who are buried alive in the state of 41-bis. The 41-bis regime has already murdered one fighter, Diana Blefari Melazzi.
The 41-bis regime and the law about “massacre” are the legacy of the european counter-revolution from the time of Piazza Fontana (Strage di piazza Fontana). This civil war never ended. The states, and particularly the Italian one, carry on the counter-revolution so that the flame may never flare up again. All the systems follow, step by step, the examples first introduced as special warfare, e.g. the white cells of West Germany, the F-type prisons in Turkey and the FIES prisons in Spain to the Type-C prisons in Greece or the new high security prison system A.A.; the still active Hitler-inspired law about indefinite extension of one’s sentence on “preventative” grounds, by which comrade Thomas Meyer Falk is being held for another 10 years (25 in total) in Freiburg prison in Germany, to the different methods of extorting declarations of repentance, and from Asinara to Imrali.
Anarchist Alfredo Cospito is fighting for the flame to flare up again. Let’s reassert the fight of the comrade.
It is our duty to defend in deed the battle that Alfredo Cospito is fighting. A struggle for and against time itself. This particular hunger strike does not concern only the comrades in the italian territory, but it is internationalist, and so the star of internationalist solidarity must shine on the side of Alfredo Cospito and all those who are fighting from within a special prison regime. From Greece to every point in the planet – for all those fighting for freedom.
Because defeat is not captivity, but losing one’s faith in the possibility of wining. So, we are collectively going on a hunger strike, according to each one’s capacity, so that we may stand by the side of anarchist revolutionary Alfredo Cospito, but also, against the death regime of 41-bis.
At the same time the struggle against the new prison code in greek prisons is continuing.
Anarchist and Fighting Prisoners
Yiannis Michailedis
(1 day hunger strike)
Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis
(3 day hunger strike)
Thanos Chatziaggelou
(1 day hunger strike)
Iasonas Rodopoulos
(1 day hunger strike)
Kostas Dimalexis
(3 day hunger strike)
Labros Vougiouklakis
(1 day hunger strike)
Panagiotis Vougiouklakis
(1 day hunger strike)
Stathis Nikolouzos
(1 day hunger strike)
Stergios Kalaitzidis
(1 day hunger strike)
Fotis Daskalas
(1 day hunger strike)