Bad Lausick/Treuen, 18th march 2020
An Early Easter Egg on Political Prisoners Day
We, as an early Easter egg, claim responsibility for the fires during the night of 18.03.2020 at two companies involved in the construction of the new Zwickau-Marienthal prison. [1]Today is the anniversary of the International Day of Political Prisoners. This day was proclaimed to remember the many fighting comrades and comrades-in-arms who are in the dungeons of prisons worldwide. The date is based on the day on which the Paris Commune was proclaimed in 1871. For many people, the Paris Commune was and still is a reference point for revolutionary efforts for social justice and political freedom. The smashing of the Commune, the massacre of thousands of Communards and the deportation of hundreds of them to the penal colonies, where they died a slow death, was intended to show all revolutionaries in the world what a bourgeois government is prepared to do when it sees its power threatened.
Even today thousands of revolutionaries are sitting in the prisons of this world. The emancipatory struggle has been going on since the commune, and its children have come and are still coming under the wheels of repression. There has always been a struggle for the liberation and support of the prisoners. A fundamental critique of domination has been linked to a critique of the prison system and the morality of punishment. The demand for the liberation of the prisoners often turned into a demand to abolish prisons and to overcome the principle of punishment completely.
Thus, in the course of the 68 revolt, after many activists were imprisoned, a strong solidarity movement was formed. The prison question also led to a general criticism of the penal system. However, there were different approaches to the issue and the differentiation between political and social prisoners. The differences were also articulated in the demands of the imprisoned urban guerrillas and the support work from outside. Some focused on a special treatment of political prisoners and others preferred to make demands that were important for all inmates. There were some social prisoners who showed solidarity with the revolutionaries and went on hunger strike as well. All this took place in a very politicizing period, but one can also suppose that the political prisoners and their struggles reaffirmed the social prisoners in rebellion. The prisoners’ struggles, in collaboration with outside support groups, received widespread social attention and in some cases even resonance. The first penal code of 1977 would not have existed without this resistance.
Inevitably, our path will not lead us past the point where loved ones are sent to prison. As the confrontation in social warfare grows, the number of prisoners will also increase. On the one hand, because the willingness of the population to take risks will increase, on the other hand, because the organs of repression will intensify their work, both in quality and quantity. A revolutionary movement can thus not avoid dealing with the issue of prison.
We should see prison as a field of social struggle, where we can intervene politically. It can give us the opportunity to meet even more comrades-in-arms who (also) did not have the privilege of growing up in stable conditions and thus fell into the clutches of the state. Especially the lower sub-proletarian classes, the marginalized, the precarious, are affected by imprisonment. They include the low-income earners, the unemployed, migrants, the illegalized, young people and drug addicts, to name but a few. People who have drawn the worst card under capitalism, were not born rich and therefore have something to criticize about the current situation. Probably their whole life has been a struggle – let’s encourage them to continue fighting at our side. Against the system that made them first poor and then “criminal”.
At this moment, there are revolts in prisons in many countries around the world.
The massive restrictions there, due to the Corona Pandemic, have led to riots in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Brazil. In Brazil, 1350 prisoners escaped from three different prisons. In Italy, more than 50 people managed to get past the walls in Foggia. Some of them have so far been able to resist the state’s attempts to be tracked down. In the course of this crisis, the people were deprived of the last concessions of the state. So the possibility to be visited by relatives and friends, to be outside for a few hours during the day and to interact with other prisoners. Also the food supply collapses due to the massive restrictions and the medical care is desolate to non-existent. The repression that followed the riots has already claimed several lives. Eleven people died in the uprisings in Italy. The information situation is difficult, as it has always been a strategy of the state to make revolts invisible. News spread that some of them had suicided. Such news cannot be trusted, of course. The methodology of disguising a murder as suicide in prison has been a popular strategy of repressive authorities to liquidate resistant individuals under the radar of a public, not only since yesterday.In Germany, too, prison conditions were restricted a few days ago; in many federal states, visiting opportunities were radically reduced, and services such as therapy were suspended. The situation will continue to deteriorate.
It is therefore all the more important not to forget the most isolated members of society. The basic need for human interaction must not be further restricted. In times of crisis, the precarious are always hit hardest. Especially in the current situation, they are the ones who have hardly any chance of receiving adequate health care and they are also the ones who will be hit hardest by the coming emergency laws.Let us support the prisoners and use our possibilities outside the walls to give their struggles more visibility!
Against an unjust life and for freedom! Open your mind to the insurrection!
We salute the 3 from the park bench crew, who are currently in a mammoth trial. We are also happy to hear that Peter Krauth is back in freedom and will not be extradited to the FRG – Love to sunny Venezuela to the three from the committee.
[1] In Bad Lausick, Elektro Lehmann and in Treuen, Scholz GmbH
Source: Indymedia (Tor), translation anarchistsworldwide.noblogs.org