Thomas Meyer-Falk – Dark Nights

$hile: “Words from the confinement, necessary letters” by Marcelo Villarroel

Posted on 2024/01/06 by darknights

On December 16, 2009 I was expelled from Argentina after 21 months of confinement in different units of the province of Neuquén to be at the disposal of the Chilean state and it has been 14 years since then.

In 2014 I was sentenced to 14 years for two bank robberies. Strictly speaking, I am serving this sentence in its entirety, from beginning to end, without any benefit and it ends today December 16, 2023 and still the state keeps me behind bars.

According to the gendarmes, I must serve 12 more years of imprisonment to be able to apply for some intrapenitentiary benefit only in 2036. According to their retroactive modifications of the illegal Chilean law, in 2056 I will definitively expire my sentences, all of them from events that occurred more than 30 years ago.

A madness of numbers and years typical of Pinochet’s military justice shamefully in force and still today endorsed by recent rulings of the Court of Appeals of Rancagua, of Santiago, of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of this amnesiac country governed today by the Communist Party, the Broad Front and all the progressive and social-democratic scum always at the service of the interests of the great god of capital.

In this context, a few days ago, Mónica and Francisco, anarchist comrades of action who received the full revenge of the state, were condemned by the capital’s democratic inquisition, particularly Francisco to whom the domination imposed 86 years, becoming today the revolutionary prisoner in the Chilean prisons with the highest sentence and whom we must know how to accompany from the daily practice without pauses since the road will evidently be longer. Always from the complicit affinity and never from the victimization!

On the other hand, in the occupied wallmapu, in the same week, the racist Chilean justice declares Peñi Luis Tranamil Nahuel, who these days is about to receive a hefty sentence, as well as Peñi Nelson Queupil, who faces an imminent sentence, both walking the path of the weichan, are in Chilean prisons, fists raised, living the onslaught of the state offensive of occupation. Continue reading “$hile: “Words from the confinement, necessary letters” by Marcelo Villarroel” →

Germany: Letter from Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2023/09/18 - 2023/09/18 by darknights

From ABC Brighton: Thomas Meyer-Falk has written about his first few days of freedom after serving 26 years in prison, much of the latter part under an old nazi-era preventative detention law.

How the wind rustles and the acorns fall: A few days of freedom!

On 29.08.2023, after almost 27 years of imprisonment, I was released from the high-security area of Freiburg prison with two hours notice. How does a person feel in such a situation? I would like to report on this after the first 14 days.

On 29.08.2023: The release!

At 8 a.m. I was still sitting in the visiting area of the prison with the probation officer, who might be responsible for me in the future, and we puzzled over when and if a release would take place. At 2 p.m. the time had come – I was discharged and on my way to my new place to live.

I should have been overflowing with happiness, but my focus was on the speedy handling of the move and my first official visits. Already around 3 p.m. I was at the job center and then at the health insurance company. The evening became long, ended after midnight. I got to know people in the new living environment, talked to friends on the phone and immediately started texting. The world of the 21st century had integrated me in a short time: thanks to the local group of the Rote Hilfe e.V. from Freiburg, my smartphone and laptop were ready. It felt surreal to sit on the tram and talk on the phone – just hours before I had sat in a cell with a corded phone and was only allowed to call numbers approved by the prison, and the conversations would be monitored and recorded, as it was always said in an announcement text before calls.

At 8 p.m., for the first time in 27 years, I sat together in a circle of people who voluntarily live together, who had voluntarily taken me in, and where I voluntarily went. It felt just as surreal, but really good. Continue reading “Germany: Letter from Thomas Meyer-Falk” →

Greece: Hunger Strike of Anarchists and Fighting Prisoners in Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2023/02/16 - 2023/02/16 by darknights

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)

Germany: ‘Solidarity with Alfredo – beyond all walls!’ – Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2023/01/13 - 2023/01/13 by darknights

Alfredo Cospito is in prison in Sardinia under the prison regime “41-bis” and is kept in strict isolation. He defends himself against the prison conditions with a hunger strike, stakes his life for the protest against the inhuman prison conditions.

No visits (with the exception of relatives), books are not allowed to be sent to him, no access to newspapers – and he is no longer allowed to write articles. Thrown back completely to purely physical existence, ultimately at the mercy of mental death.

The intensification of his imprisonment goes back to a decision of the Court of Cassation, which considered a bomb attack in 2006, in which no one was killed or injured, as a completed political assassination and, since Alfredo showed no remorse, sentenced him to life imprisonment under the infamous “41-to” article of the penal code.

That here the state takes revenge on an unbowed anarchist and activist, who did not let himself be broken even during the years in prison, is obvious. Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote very clear-sightedly:

“Punishment is the name of revenge itself: with a lying word it feigns a good conscience” (from Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

Life imprisonment is itself a form of hidden physical death penalty, but subjecting people to further isolation extends the spectrum of the execution of revenge to the psychological, the spiritual level. Humans need more than something to eat and to drink to survive! The human relations are essential to be able to live. But locked up in the bare cell, almost no human contacts, no access to books and other things, all this can and should, according to the logic of justice, break people. Revenge in its purest form!

Alfredo fights against this with his means and possibilities. He does not physically attack prison staff, no, he stakes his own life! He starves! And starves! And starves!

Solidarity with Alfredo!

Abolish the “41-bis”!

Thomas Meyer-Falk

– himself from 1996-2007 in solitary confinement –

currently JVA (SV)

Hermann-Herder-Str.8, 79104 Freiburg, Germany

https://freedomforthomas.wordpress.com

http://www.freedom-for-thomas.de

Germany: Letter from anarchist prisoner Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2022/10/01 by darknights

To give space to the nameless, faceless and voiceless!

Horror, sadness, rage, anger and a feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness. Short-term flaring up of affects and stirring emotions here, long-lasting, persistent feelings there, and all this before what we call mood, it colors our experience background, it is, so to speak, the primordial layer, the ground of feeling.

It is the global warming, what is called “climate crisis”, as if it would be a temporally manageable crisis and not a generation-spreading world change, before whose foil all further conflicts must be read, because a world-spreading cooperation, a togetherness is demanded.

Instead, horrible wars are raging, the one that touches us in Central Europe for very different reasons in the area of Ukraine, but also in Kurdistan, in Syria, in Yemen, in many regions of Africa. Conflicts in South America, in Asia – basically there is no region of the world where military conflicts are not being waged, which in turn lead to even more horror, grief, anger and rage.

Not to forget the economic antagonisms. Just as trivial as existential: Rich against poor! More and more super-rich against more and more super-poor. More and more exploiters against exploited.

The prisons are full also because of this. People are imprisoned if they don’t want to belong to the super poor anymore. Or if people go beyond the very narrow corridor that government systems keep open for protests to articulate their fear, but also their anger about the existing conditions, they are also locked up. When people express dissenting opinions, as is currently the case in Russia, for example, they can end up in camps. People who can no longer endure the brutal present without being stunned, who take various substances to escape into a colorful world of illusion, are also imprisoned. Depending on the country, even the death penalty is imposed. And people who flee from starvation or an otherwise hopeless living situation, they are also locked up in jails, if not killed, or inhumane border regimes are set up, resulting in the death of countless people.

Solidarity Weeks like this one in August 2022 are an encouragement for those held in prisons as well as for those who are threatened with imprisonment. Because it is a work against forgetting. As a rule, interest in people wanes when their criminal trial is over. But Soli Weeks bring the names, the faces and the voices of those concerned back into the focus of attention.

This is a Sisyphean task, because the number of prisoners is increasing rather than decreasing, and all this happens against the background of existential conflicts and disputes, which in turn attract all attention.

All the more beautiful that there are people outside the walls who fill this week of solidarity in August with life and keep it alive.

With heartfelt greetings

Thomas Meyer-Falk
currently JVA(SV)
Hermann-Herder-Str.8
D-79104 Freiburg

http://freedom-for-thomas.de

Source: solidarity.international