325

Letter of solidarity from anarchist prisoners in Korydallos Prison to Palestinian hungerstrikers (Greece, Israel, Palestine)

The struggles of the Palestinian political prisoners are directly and inextricably
connected with the overall struggle of the Palestinian people. 70 percent of the
Palestinian families have at least one member that has been imprisoned for
action against the state of Israel. 20 percent of the total population has been
imprisoned at least once in their life while according to other estimations 40
percent of the male population has been imprisoned at some point in their life
within the past 30 years.

Another revealing manifestation of the situation the Palestinian strugglers find
themselves in while inside the Israeli prisons is the fact that until 1999 “mild
torture” during interrogation was considered legitimate practice by law. These
tortures included- among others – deprivation of sleep, immobilization in an
uncomfortable body posture, loud music, exposure to extremely cold or hot
temperatures, placement of malodorous cloths over the face etc. In 1999 the
supreme court of Israel upheld that in certain cases these practices were illegal
and thus imposed some restrictions. These restrictions did not, however, rule
out force-feeding as illegal in accordance with the UN provisions.

On the 1st of May 2000 almost 1000 out of the 1650 Palestinian political
prisoners participated in a large-scale hunger strike that lasted one month,
demanding better living conditions, better treatment by the guards, family visits,
abolition of the solitary confinement, access to healthcare and release of political
prisoners. During the solidarity demonstrations seven Palestinians lost their
lives while one thousand got injured. Meanwhile, sixty Israelis got injured, too.
On the 31st of the same month the government of Israel satisfied some of the
demands.

In February 2012 around 1800 Palestinian political prisoners started a hunger
strike against the regime of administrative detention. That is, incarceration
without evidence to back a charge, without specific accusations, without trial and
without sentence, meaning they would remain detained for an indefinite amount
of time as ordered by the military authority of Israel. Out of the 4500 prisoners
in total, 310 remained in prison under the status of administrative detention.
Among their demands was the ability of those family members who resided in
Gaza to be able to visit their relatives in prison- a fact that was impossible since,
as residents of Gaza, they were not allowed by the state of Israel to leave Gaza-,
the termination of solitary confinement and the release of those kept under
administrative detention.

On the 24th of May of the same year and after a several-day huger strike, the
strugglers managed to strike a deal with the state of Israel, which pledged to
bring the maximum duration of administrative detention down to 6 months if
sufficient evidence were not provided in between. Moreover, the family visits
expanded and those in solitary confinement returned to the regular blocks.

Today, 1500 Palestinian political prisoners have been on hunger strike since the
17th of April and their number is expected to climb up to 200 within the
following days. United in a single battlefront and despite their internal disputes
and confrontations, members of Fatah, Hamas, PFLP and Islamic Jihadists
participate in a common struggle as political prisoners.

Their demands resemble those of the previous mobilizations and have to do with
the prisoners’ access to telecommunication and the placement of payphones in
every block, in particular. Also, they demand that they have visits from their
relatives, who must get a permit to enter the occupied territories –applications
for such permits are usually rejected and the visits are, in reality, impossible
since the prisons are located inside the occupied territories. Finally, they demand
access to healthcare, the abolition of administrative detention and solitary
confinement.

The state of Israel has so far reacted with unannounced transfers of the
prisoners and their placement in solitary confinement.

We, as anarchist prisoners of the Greek prisons, can only join our voices with the
voices of the Palestinian strugglers. Beside our straightforward and
unconditional solidarity with the forces of resistance against the forces of
imposition, with the forces of slings and knives against the forces of bombs and
tanks, the forces of the oppressed against the forces of state brutality, the forces
of the Palestinian people against the forces of the Israeli state, we also express
that we have yet another reason to support every act of resistance against the
state of Israel. The technology of surveillance, the apartheid know-how, the
derogation regime, the interweaving of social and geographical marginalization,
the imposition of militarized control upon whole populations, the administrative
detention -which makes a come-back in Europe as a tool to manage migration-
and the overall dystopian reality that the state of Israel imposes upon the people
of Palestine constitute a compass for those in power as well as an
experimentation that the rest of the states will eventually be called on to
implement elsewhere.


Victory to the struggle of the Palestinian political prisoners

Victory to the arms of the Palestinian resistance

Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos,
Antonis Stamboulos,
Argiris Dalios,
Dimitris Politis,
Fivos Harisis,
Giannis Michailidis,
Giorgos Karagiannidis,
Grigoris Sarafoudis,
Tasos Theofilou

Korydallos Prison, Athens


Source

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2017 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Prison Struggle.