Support the Italian life prisoners in struggle - Against life sentence and all prisons | Solidaridad con los presos italianos

fonte infoshop.org e anarchistnews.org

“…What does it feel like to be condemned to life in prison?
Well, imagine that all your worse fears be brought together.” (by an Italian life prisoner)

The 1st of December 2008 is a date that some of us wrote with big letters on their agendas: on this day, the Italian life prisoners will begin to struggle.
Not to say that their life would not be a daily struggle, buried in the dungeons of Italian prisons, with no hope left for their future; indeed, they have none, since when one speak about life sentence in Italy, this is meant literally: life sentence.
However, several life prisoners chose to begin a public struggle from this date on, by using the mean of the hunger strike on relay: to say, that every week there will be a different region doing this strike, until mid-March 2009, where the strike will end.
The mobilization will begin on the 1st of December, where all regions will make a day of hunger strike.

What do prisoners fight against?

“Not everybody knows what a life sentence really is. One is lead to think that it is simply another form of detention like many regimes. One is convinced that a person condemned to ‘life’ after a certainly long amount of time will finally be released.
Maybe, once this really was the case. But now, in a country where one security emergency is followed by another and that is followed by yet another, lifers have no hope of being set free.
This is, in fact, a country where people are induced into fearing crime because this fear, rising within the population, can help some politicians along in their career.
Crime is considered in fact a sort of ‘illness that politicians promise regularly to ‘cure’.
Within this system people who have been condemned to life imprisonment will really never be released!” (from a letter by Alfredo Sole, life prisoner in Livorno).
If you are sentenced to life in Italy (and you can get sentenced to several life sentence, one of the many aberration of the penal code), this means you will not be able to accede to any beneficial measures: no day leave, no parole, nothing. That's it simply.
It means the State captures your life in its totality, forever.
Within the European Union, in theory, the life penalty no longer exists as all countries foresee the possibility of reviewing the sentence and the application of conditional freedom once a certain amount of time has elapsed since a prisoner was brought into custody. This is generally referred to as ’a life sentence subject to periodical revision’. The amount of time involved varies from one state to another. It is of 26 years in Italy, 20/25 in the UK, 20 in Greece, 15 in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 12 in Denmark and 7 years in Ireland.
Surely, still an inhuman violence, but at least one can still see some little light in the distance.
In Italy, somebody decided to switch off all lights.
In this country, life sentences becomes really life covering for many prisoners due to the fact that offenders who have been condemned in relation to crimes classified as undergoing the 41bis* regime, or whose offences are considered not compatible with benefits given by law or are considered as refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.
This is the very moment where the State shows what it means by making its mouth full of talks about so called re-socialization, re-education, reintegration into society.
Indeed, when talking about life sentence, all the empty promises and the knots are coming to the comb: one's aims are not the aforementioned ones, but apply a medieval punishment in a modern form: instead of physical tortures (which anyway are also contemplated within daily prison reality, no matter what your sentence looks like), one found out one which can be better resold to the public opinion, by capturing somebody's life for eternity, eliminating any chance for hope.
The State throws its mask.

What do prisoners fight for?

In their words: “Against life sentence: because the hope towards coming free again is needed in order to not transform a punishment into a psychological and social death; the respect of the article 5 of the universal Declaration of Human rights dated 1948: nobody should be subjected to tortures, or to a cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; an inquiry Commission of the European Parliament about prisons in Europe.” (from a letter signed by Spoleto's life prisoners to all Italian and European prisoners: you can find this complete letter, as well as others, in our Entfesselt coming out by mid-November).
Surely, as anarchists our aim is not to struggle for “Rights” in the first place.
Still, our aim is also to create awareness and spread solidarity whenever a social, self organized struggle outbursts and people stand up against the present conditions, striving for liberation: in this sense, we see our role in widening this struggle here on the outside, where we encounter much less limitations than someone locked up, in making the struggle of prisoners ours, in not limiting it to formal requests. Also, within also a “intermediate” struggle, each individual has the possibility to develop affinity with alikes and deepen his/her vision of the world and struggle.
That we understand why prisoners put such requests that might appear as not really revolutionary from many, we explained already in our text about the hunger strike happened in German prisons in August this year (to be found in Entfesselt September/October or on our website).
We believe the role of anarchists and other rebels to lie into radicalizing social struggles whenever they happen, as far as we can, push them to their limits.

A first experience of struggle?

Italian prisons saw a high and radical level of struggle for many years, especially during the 70's and the beginning of 80's.
However, several factors contributed to break solidarity inside the walls: State-planned diffusion of hard-drugs, individualization, repentance, disassociation, blackmailing of rebel prisoners by introducing beneficial measures upon good behavior, psychological control by experts and many others.
No different to the development occurred in all the rest of the world (although we refer here especially on the its “western” part).
Therefore during the last years, struggles reduced or have been mostly limited to support specific prisoners.
One year ago, prisoners decided they had enough.
One year ago, life prisoners stood up against their situation and criticized prison itself, by calling for an undetermined hunger strike until they would have reached at least some of their requests: the latter being not especially abnormal, since they “merely” asked that a discussion on the topic of abolishment of the life sentence should be brought on in parliament.
However, the Italian State and its judicial authorities couldn't be bothered, and life prisoners decided to stop after roughly two weeks, as soon as they have realized that there would not be any echo of their struggle reaching the ears of the ones in power.
Many prisoners believed that journalists, sympathetic politicians and democratic judicial authorities would have spent at least a word in their favor.
However, this sounds to us rather as a contradiction in terms: prisoners are worth for the press only since the latter can endlessly reconfirm their scribbler role by writing about the explosion of criminality and its gruesome protagonists; prisoners are worth for the politicians, only when they need to use them as scapegoats in order to justify their politics of social control, allegedly based on the “enormous” arise of the criminal rate, despite the fact this actually decreases and it is anyway produced by the present social (un)conditions; prisoners are worth for democratic magistrates, only since the latter make their living out of them.
All in all it proofed again what anarchists and other people who came at daggers drawn with this society say permanently: do not believe such vultures, believe rather all the ones who struggle on your side carrying no other interest than developing relations in struggle in order to overthrow the present system.

A few words about the situation in Germany...

On August this year, German prisoners also decided to undertake a struggle against their conditions and prison at all.
After many years of silence, a self organized struggle began inside the walls, undertaken by the prisoners association I.vI. and anarchist individualities: one week of collective hunger strike against their condition of detention and prison reality.
From outside, several people tried to show their solidarity in different ways.
A new situation, which lighted the spark of a new, potential situation of rupture inside German prisons, generally dominated by apathy and conform behavior, beside few outstanding exceptions.
To show that this was not a papertiger, German prisoners call as well to support the hunger strike of Italian life sentence prisoners by undertaking as well a hunger strike: because international solidarity can not remain an empty word.
In the words of Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Spanish anarchist imprisoned since 4 years in Aachen:

“...The German molecular prisons (exported in Spain on the beginning of the 80's) carry a
very precise instrumental functionality: to classify, to put in order, to discipline and
disassociate prisoners through dispersion, isolation and individualization.
Inside a “space”, where individuals neither know, nor recognize themselves as “equals”, it is difficult that a “feeling of community” might arise, but rather one of
indifference, competivity, egoism...
(...)
Inside German prisons (more and more imitated on an international level), one will be
divided from his/her friends and comrades already from the very beginning of his/her
reclusion (through dispersion); than, once inside, one studies with attention what “they” call “psychological profiles” of prisoners, so that they will not be able to develop
any relation of affinity which might turn problematic for the administration.
(...)
For these reasons and many more we, some prisoners, pretend to create a collective answer
by undertaking a hunger strike, to open a common space of struggle which would overcome
atomization and isolation.
(...)
For now, we are getting ready for the hunger strike which will take place in Italy next
December for life prisoners...
We believe this to be a good occasion in order to give an impulse to anti prison
struggles and proposals...
(...)
...At the same time, the comrades of I.vI. are preparing a specific dossier about the proposals and the very contest of german prison reality...We believe the diffusion of such proposals to be very important for the discussion and the debate on an international level...”

If prisoners are able to show their solidarity, under the conditions they are forced to, then here on the outside we have not many excuses left for not to act.

What does the word solidarity stands for?

Last year, the only ones who actively support the struggle of life prisoners in Italy, beside their relatives, have been the anarchists.
This year, after the disillusion produced by the scarce attention their struggle found within the public sphere, life prisoners do not rely any longer on empty promises but called for a struggle that looks for the support of all the ones who repute life sentence an aberration, prison a monster and feel solidarious with them, a struggle to be undertaken by the means, one feels the closest to.
Some people will make a hunger strike as well, as it was last year where several prisoners from other countries solidarized as well: this year there have been already some call to solidarity from Spanish prisoners as well as from other European ones.
Some relatives participated and will participate again, some non-life prisoners, some concerned individuals and more.
However, the hunger strike is not to be seen as the only mean one can support this struggle, neither it has been asked for: everything which can raise attention and put pressure on authorities in order to express our unsatisfactoriness with the situation and our active solidarity with this struggle is legitimate and welcomed by prisoners.
We plan to host an info event about the ongoing struggle and a rally in front of the Italian embassy.
Check out for these dates and, above all, create your own moment of active solidarity!
As Carmelo Musumeci, imprisoned in Spoleto wrote, “He who refuses to struggle is a useless man indeed as well as being someone who places his future in the hands of those that are worse than himself.”
We can only underline such evident truth.

Active solidarity with the struggle of Italian and worldwide prisoners!
Against life sentence, against a life inside a prison society!

*Art. 41 bis: Is the article within the Italian legal system that allow the Ministry of Justice to suspend the application of rules and regulations normally valid in prison and to apply a different regime to those prisoners who are accused of participating in organized criminal organizations, terrorist groups or take part in or organize prison revolts.

Anarchist Black Cross Berlin