THE STRUGGLE FOR THE REGROUPMENT OF IMPRISONED REVOLUTIONARY MILITANTS
a document by Vincenzo Spano
PART A
This proposition must above all be assumed as an initiative of struggle. It is in effect an initiative of struggle against:
— the mystification which, in recent months, was carried out by the French media around the arrests of several revolutionary militants and the political histories which they represent;
— the tendency to isolate the communists from their global reality, which is the reality of the entire proletariat.
Mystification, repression, and isolation are the terrain on which recent months have seen the attempt to annihilate that which the imprisoned comrades represent: the revolutionary route for the liberation of the proletariat in the European metropolitan territory of western capitalism. This political annihilation takes place via the attempt to depoliticize our collective identity, by reducing it to an individual criminal identity. This is the attempt to depoliticize the instrument that characterizes our existence in a fundamental way: armed struggle for communism.
CONTENTS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STRUGGLE
The struggle against the effort towards the political annihilation of our revolutionary subjectivity and against the terrain on which this annihilation is achieved, that is to say, mystification, repression, and isolation, signifies struggling to appropriate social space and communication between ourselves and between ourselves and the outside. These are, in my opinion, the general contents and the base of our struggle.
The objectives around which these contents are concretized are the objectives which other comrades have already indicated, that is to say:
— regroupment of imprisoned revolutionaries;
—real freedom of postal communication, without seizure of letters or the sabotage of outgoing mail;
—no arbitrary limitations of authorizations for visits with parents, friends, and comrades;
— unsurveilled visiting rooms;
— the possibility and space for collective preparation of trials.
Only the achievement of these goals in their totality, without any being excluded, guarantees the minimum threshold of the general contents of social space and communication on which the struggle should be based.
The reason I propose this configuration in terms of general concrete objectives, where the first give a political value to the second, is the necessity to develop the struggle in a way coherent with our identity, without falling into the confusion which is always possible.
1. THE WESTERN BOURGEOISIE AND THE POLITICAL PRISONERS
a) On the status of political prisoners
Here we have a term which is part of the entire bourgeois baggage of the so-called 
question of Human Rights, civil rights, respect for the political identity of each individual, etc… The tendency of the bourgeoisie is always to dress itself in the clothes of bourgeois democracy, to give itself the appearance of neutrality with regards to the political choices of each subject, to mystify the reality of the repression it produces behind the respect for formal and false liberties. This is the language which we, revolutionaries, must not use because we objectively risk playing the game of the dominant class.
Each time that it speaks of all of this, the western bourgeoisie does so with another goal that has nothing to do with the word liberty. For example the bourgeoisie struggles through propaganda and action for the defense of the rights of political prisoners in the East. All of that stinks of filthy mystification: not only because the West European bourgeoisie is certainly no stranger to political repression in its own territory, but above all because this preoccupation of the European governments with regards to the various Sakarovs is nothing but a good chance to enrich the ideological propaganda campaign for the preparation of imperialist war against the Eastern territories. The bourgeoisie is totally indifferent to the real rights of the peoples of these territories.
On the Western side, that is to say at home, each time the bourgeoisie concedes improvements to the conditions of detention of the political prisoners, they do so because they have been forced to by struggles. They attempt to present their concessions as their capacity to respect subjective political identity, to control the defeat that flows from the fact that they have given in to a struggle. The bourgeoisie concedes rights when they are pushed up against the wall, then they brag about the concessions they have made, and the mystification continues ad infinitum.
As well, the bourgeoisie concedes more humane conditions of detention in exchange for the selling-out of the political identity of the detained subject. This blackmail produces a mystification which covers the blackmail itself. This is a widespread practice all over Europe, but it is in Italy that it has attained its most massive use. That which has been previously stated is, therefore, most comprehensive and most visible there: the Italian bourgeoisie bragged, in recent months, about the democratization of special prisons. But, on the contrary, what we are seeing is a diffuse policy of differenciation of conditions of detention: freer for those who actively dissociate from armed struggle, harder for those who don’t. The bourgeoisie spreads propaganda about the liberalization of conditions
of detention to hide the reality of torture and psycho-physical annihilation as 
instruments for the political annihilation of communist fighters.
3
We can therefore say that in Western Europe humane conditions of detention for political prisoners are only given by the bourgeoisie due to the force of the struggle or as a result of blackmail and the liquidation of political identity. Everything is managed by the bourgeoisie and propagated in public opinion with the rhetoric about respect for civil liberties, political liberties, etc..
B) The particularities of France
I don’t know the French situation in a developed way, but I think that certain factors are very clear. In France, more than in any other European country, the discussion around respect by the bourgeoisie for political subjectivity is widely diffused and praised by the French bourgeoisie, and this in a particular manner. This is due to the tradition of France as a country of political exile, as a country of social revolutions made in the name of liberty, etc.. This tradition was already an ideological of the bourgeoisie in the
proceeding phases. Today, the recycling of this tradition (for example, by conceding political amnesty, the status of political refugee, and that of political prisoner) is the way in which the historical mystification of the French bourgeoisie is represented, henceforth at the stage of Putrefaction.
The mystification produced by this tradition, in the metropolitan territories and in the multinational phase of imperialism, is, more than anything, publicity that the bourgeoisie make for themselves, a self-satisfaction by which the French bourgeoisie nourishes its intellectuals, as much those of the right as those of the left, from where come those who do the most to dirty the word liberty, and who attempt to implicate the population in their filthy game, and above all the proletarian section of the population. They therefore function as organic intellectuals of capital, as ineffective builders of its ideology. Ineffective because the current level of contradiction attained by capital in the metropole unveils the entire structure of bourgeois ideology which has been in irreversible crisis for decades.
It is thus, as in the rest of Europe, that in France, the bourgeoisie hides behind a discourse about respect for the political subjectivity of interest other than those that they claim to have. One could give many examples, such as that of the political refugees in France, who come from the four corners of the world, and who the bourgeoisie use for propaganda about their neutrality with regards to all totalitarian regimes. In reality it costs the French bourgeoisie nothing to shelter these subjects, who are used as an excellent workforce for the lowest and hardest jobs in which they are super—exploited (for example the Asian refugees) and, at the same time, are used for ideological propaganda.
4
The French behavior with regards to refugees from West European countries is different. They are, sometimes discreetly, sometimes not so discreetly, persecuted and provoked. This is the case for the Irish, the Italians, and the Basques. Clearly, those that actively and clearly announce their diassociation from the struggle in their own country are treated with kid gloves, and this treatment enters the French ideologicial propaganda of mystification about refugees. This is the case with the Italian dissociates (like Negri and Scalzone), flowers blooming from the supposed respect for political subjectivity on the part of the socialist government.
As in all other situations of repression and control, it is the policy of differentiation between those who consent to power and those who don’t that serves as an instrument to mask and mystify a desire for political annihilation.
Another example is the situation of the Basque refugees: on the one hand, there is the GAL, a secret Spanish anti-guerilla structure in agreement with their French collegues, on the other hand, there are the recent arrangements between the Spanish and French governments regarding the repression of the guerilla, a formalization of the annihilating content expressed by the GAL.
From all of the above, the importance and necessity of expressing in our struggle the maximum clarity in contents becomes evident. As revolutionary subjects in the metropole our struggle is against the mystification that this social and economic formation of advanced capitalism produces. Increasingly, I believe that, in France, there is a special mysification about the relationship between the bourgeoisie and political subjectivity. It is, therefore, more important to be clear because, more than in other European territories, we risk finding ourselves caught in mystification and ideological propaganda.
This is the primary reason why I’m called to refuse the discussion of political prisoner status and to outline the struggle in terms of the appropriation of social space and communication. These are the contents which refuse a judicial form (by this I’m referring to the current French situation), and which are, therefore, difficult to mystify because they develop from the concrete struggle against the disguised desire for the annihilation of our political and human identity.
2. The western bourgeoisie and the fighting subjectivity
a) Terrorism and the armed struggle
In the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the fighting subjects, that is to say, those who express their political practice with arms, the bourgeoisie acts in terms of the annihilation of political subjectivity. It is an annihilation which, as much as possible, is camouflaged and mystified by the political non-recognition of the militant and her/his actions, which are criminalized. The militant is thus considered as the wrong-doer par excellence, because s/he assumes responsibility for her/his behavior and choices. The repression that s/he suffers is presented by the bourgeoisie as repression necessary for particularly dangerous and deviant subjects. This is how the political annihilation which is realized by this “necessary repression” is mystified. When this level of mystification no …
• Huelva – local office of the Ministry of Education and Science;
country does not leave NATO, if the living conditions of the people are not improved, if the fascist members of the repressive forces, the Army, and the institutions of the State are not purged, if the right of self-determination of the nationalities is not granted … the popular resistance struggle will continue to increase every day and our organization will continue to strike relentlessly against the monopolies, the institutions of the State and its forces of repression, and all those who are part of it and support it.
minimal political freedoms, all that the government and its party, the PSOE, will achieve by that will be an even greater crisis and open revolutionary warfare in this country. And this is indeed what will happen, for the people will join the guerrilla en masse in order to fight the reactionary forces in the only possible way, and thus to gain real freedom.
problems of our society lies in the concretization of the points of the KAS alternative for Euskadi and the five-point program for the rest of the state.
sole purpose of further increasing the exploitation of the masses.
the reactionary forces like an iron fist forever, regardless of what disguise they are wearing.
framework of the deepest economic and political crisis which capitalism has experienced in all of its history. In order to slow down this openly revolutionary process, the European oligarchies have turned the territory of their states into veritable penitentiaries in which the political control of the population, the emergency laws, anti-terror laws, and the militarization of the entire society are reaching their culmination in the extermination prisons, the number of which has grown in all European countries. This whole international repressive strategy which is supported by Yankee imperialism, is being upheld in veritable police states and through the complete demolition of freedoms.
struggle. And thus we also declare that neither the whole repressive machinery of the European states nor all the special legislation, the murders, tortures, and extermination prisons used against the nations and their revolutionary organizations can slow down the development of a broad-based resistance movement, nor can they prevent new decisive victories over monopolism and imperialism.
organizations. This is particularly obvious with respect to the conditions to which all political prisoners are subjected. As is well known, at no time have we promoted in the prisons anything beyond preserving minimally acceptable living conditions. The prisoners of the PCE-r and GRAPO have never created situations that could be used by government officials and jailers to justify dispersal or any other type of reprisal against them.
acts of savagery that are being committed?
releasing the prisoners who have suffered the most from the blows of institutional violence? Free those who have suffered serious and irreversible effects from torture and repeated hunger strikes. Release these men and women. This would demonstrate a true interest in settling the problem.
photographs which depict hooded persons carrying weapons habitually used by that organization. In the interview they set out various themes related to their political posture and diverse appraisals on their future intentions, as well as some comments on the general political situation.
That’s how it is. That could explain our history. Since 1975 until around 1978 we formed a new type of armed organization, without experience and few means. In combat we acquired both. We had surprise in our favour: the state’s repressive forces knew nothing of our functioning and little about our militants. That made the organization’s activity easier in actions like the kidnapping of Oriol and Villaescuela and other operations carried out during that time period. But even though their repression wasn’t easy, the police relied extensively on their traditional methods: massive detentions, systematic torture… They accumulated information and little by little began detaining some combat groups and important leaders.
taken it out of the isolation it suffered before the reform. But any ways following the thread of what we were saying earlier, it is in that situation when the repressive forces accumulate sufficient in-formation on our movement, they go on the offensive and go on a real hunt against our combatants. It mattered little that the “democracy” would be forever stained with murder and torture, the important thing for them was to finish with our organization by any means. They murdered Collazo and Cerdan and other frontline combatants.
for their liberation, will be long, and in the course of which we hope to convert ourselves into the people’s army. In the first phase of this war we defend ourselves, we resist the enemy’s blows, hitting them when it will benefit us the most politically and supporting the popular struggles. We consider this struggle to be essentially “defensive” which is to say that even though the state and Spanish dominant class present themselves as “victims of terrorist violence”, in reality, we are the victims along with the popular masses and they are the victimizers.
national rights.
not entering a dynamic of “immediate response” to the government’s provocations. As much in this case as in others, because that is where we will have already lost the match. We have our plans and we will accomplish them independently of what they do.
As a future of resistance and struggle. It goes without saying that in good measure that future will be conditioned to the political prisoners struggle, to the support movement they are generating and the government’s attitude before it. For our part during this strike we have been very patient in waiting for a just solution that would end this painful conflict. But the whole world has been able to prove that good reasons mean nothing to this government. They are so closed and so fascist that only the guerrilla’s blows can make them recant.
In Spain, the fascist and militaristic regime of Felipe Gonzalez, in line with its despicable and servile spirit, has submitted to Yankee demands and has placed the country at their service to be used as a platform for the imperialist aggression throughout the entire Middle East, the Mediterranean and North Africa. Our actions are aimed against this type of lackey policy and against its imperialist mentors, and our groups will continue to fight against it.
actions by ETA that we consider erroneous. In any case, this is what we must continue to stress, since it has been that policy, spelled out in what has been called the ‘strategy of negotiation’, that has led to the dead end that it now faces. Ill-conceived and unplanned ‘indiscriminate’ armed actions result from that situation, which has led it to political blindness, together with the diversionary and terrorist strategy practiced by the government. Today, the failure of that approach can be fully appreciated, which has only proven self-destructive (in addition to making headlines in the newspapers almost every day). And of course, it is not by this method that the organization will end this impasse.
movement is struggling, on account of the absence of a political and strategic approach that seriously considers the defeat of the State and other forces interested in that same objective.
near Valencia, During the ten days that she remained under arrest in Madrid she was brutally tortured. Today, she has been in prison over twenty years in the prisons of Yeserias, Carabanchel, and Sevilla 11, from which she will be released in June 1999.
How important is it to be grouped together in one prison?
No, never. Of course, over these past 20 years I have had very tough moments, when I felt too weak to stick to my own commitment, but I always knew that there was a line I would not cross, a line that situates me alongside the people, and to cross that line would be to put myself in front of them. Loyalty to my ideas and to the people gave me the strength to resist, and now I will leave prison having a clear conscience.
fascist/monopolist oligarchies and the NATO alliance.
advocates armed struggle and provides cadres for the October 1st Anti-Fascist Resistance Group, GRAPO, a Marxist Leninist armed clandestine formation. The GRAPO represents the continuity of the anti-fascist armed struggle initiated during the insurrection of Asturia in 1934, and a response to the fascist violence of today.
violence, the demonstrations continue.
Collectively, they have written various theoretical works while in prison which advance Marxist/Leninist and Maoist thought; such as Problems in the Construction of Communism, Texts for Discussion Among the Revolutionary European Movement and Philosophical Problems of Modern Science, among others. These works and their example nourish the workers’ movement.
bombs 30 different targets across the Spanish state, destroying government buildings and fascist monuments.
supporters while trying to induce defections from the rank of the political prisoners under a policy of “social reinsertion.” “Amnesty” is offered for those who renounce their politics and associations. All but a tiny minority of the political prisoners have refused these terms and their movements on the street reject the entire premise .
December 31,1989 In a demonstration called for by the Basque Gestoras Pro-Amnistia, 10,000-12,000 people march on the maximum security prison at Herrera de la Mancha near Real. They demand amnesty/reunification for the Basque political prisoners and declare solidarity with the GRAPO/ PCE(r) hungerstrikers.
Monika Barberich: Most of my time in prison I have been in isolation, totally isolated or in small groups. Only for a short period was I in normal prison conditions with common prisoners, but the last 8 years I spent completely isolated in a maximum security unit.
basic objectives of regrouping, conditions always improved after hungerstrikes, for us as prisoners as well as on the outside, because in each hungerstrike there was an important mobilization, each one of our hunger-strikes has been a political offensive which has allowed us to advance the resistance movement.
times in support of the struggle of the Spanish prisoners. And coming here is part of that activity.
where Milagros Caballero, Carmen Munoz, Rosario Narvaez, Jose Antonio Ramon Teijelo, Buenaventura Garcia, Ramon Foncubierta and Antonio Lago were already. They stayed there until the 1st of March. And during all this time they were force fed. Teijelo had a grave general infections (septicaemia) and they had to remove liquid from his spinal column and treat him with anti-biotics. On the 1st of March the prisoners managed to tear the tubes out, and in reprisal they were all transferred once more to the Prison Hospital
March, although they managed to negotiate with the prison wardens about the way it was to be administered. In order to avoid keeping them permanently tied to their beds with a plastic tube through the nose, they agreed that the food could be administered orally: a prison orderly brought it to them in a plastic bottle filled with a serum called Pentaset; in the presence of the orderly, Jose Manuel Sevillano pretended to be taking it, and when he went off, he spat the contents into the toilet. In Zaragoza, food was also administered through the nose, which resulted in Olegario Sanchez Corrales suffering from a bad case of gastroenteritis. For this reason, together with his other comrades (Jose Balmon and Francisco Cela), he took off the tubes on March 13th in the hospital, and in reprisal they were transferred to Daroca and Torrero prisons. The return to the prisons led to numerous infections due to the extreme weakness of the prisoners combined with the dirtiness and the character of the prisons. Nonetheless, the media manipulation did not stop for a second, trying to minimise the gravity of the situation and to discredit the prisoners on hunger strike. For example, Diario 16 of Aragon presented the facts on the 23rd of March as if the prisoners had gone back on hunger strike after a break, eating a ‘stew’ on the day they left the Miguel Servet hospital. Events accelerated when the prison warders discovered the extreme weakness of Jose Manuel Sevillano in a medical report, and forcibly put a tube through his nose in order to feed him and reanimate his general condition. On April 18, together with the 
other prisoners, Jose Manuel Sevillano again refused force feeding and managed to tear out the tube. The management of the Prison Hospital, instead of sending them to the Gregorio Maranon Hospital, transferred Sevillano to Meco prison where he was put in the infirmary. It was a forcible measure aimed at pressurising him and exhausting all the possibilities for repression: despite the gravity of the situation, those who refused force feeding were not transferred to hospitals, but rather to prisons. Also, they transferred Buenaventura Garcia to Segovia, Juan Manuel Perez Hernandez to Ocana, Josefina Alarcon and others to Avila. A few hours after entering the infirmary at Meco, Jose Manuel Sevillano had his first heart attack, which the government tried to hush up so it would not get out; they urgently revived him and were obliged to transfer him once more to the Prison Hospital on April 25, where they force fed him through the nose. There he was put into a room together with Juan Manuel Perez Hernandez, Fernando Fernandez and Luis Cabezas Mato; the majority of the other prisoners were in the other rooms, but without the ability to communicate with each other. On May 12, Sevillano had a second heart attack, and the doctors declared him dead, but despite this they urgently transferred him to the Gregoria Maranon Hospital in order to revive him. He was in a coma and in the hospital they 
artificially kept him alive so the government could gain some time and prepare for the death, which could only happen when they considered it opportune. At the same time, they let out the news of his death in order to demoralise and disorient the movement on the outside. In Jose Manuel Sevillano’s village, Marchena, an Andalucian area of day labourers and agricultural workers, special troops from the Civil Guard took up positions and went into the homes of the most militant people in order to intimidate them in advance of what was about to happen, and to ensure there was a silent funeral attended only by the closest relatives. When Sevillano died the government could not prevent many people from gathering at the cemetery in Marchena in order to pay their homage to him, followed by demonstrations, meetings and other forms of protest in many cities and villages throughout Spain.
appeared in the face of the government’s intransigence and the lack of prospects. But the hunger strike still went on for many more months. The prisoners were continuing on the verge of death. Juan Manuel Perez Hernandez also had a heart attack and went into coma, with the doctors managing to revive him. Nonetheless, he suffered clinical death, and this paralysed the flow of blood to his brain, which remained seriously damaged. The facts were then carefully hushed up by the prison wardens. It was his own comrades who noticed the cerebral lesions which he began to suffer from. A prison medical report produced many years later in Tenerife prison described his situation as follows: “He remained in the intensive care unity in a state of coma and under parenteral nutrition. This parenteral nutrition was maintained until he returned to the Madrid II prison centre, and it was necessary to use mechanical means in order to maintain the parenteral nutrition. However, the feeding tube was withdrawn by the intern himself, as a result of which, given the poor food, there were biochemical and neurological problems. This situation lasted until March 1991.” Juan Manuel Perez suffered permanent consequences of this, and had to remain in prison because the General Directorate of Prisons, failing to implement its own laws, refused to set him free, despite the fact that his medical condition is progressive and gets worse just with the passage of time, the bad conditions in which he is kept in prison and the lack of medical treatment. He is suffering from Wernike-Korsakov encephalopatia because of a deficit in vitamin B1. Other prisoners who continued on hunger strike until the end are now in wheel-chairs with identical or 
reactionary forces which defend it have not been able to destroy us nor to force the imprisoned comrades into demoralisation, capitulation or repentance, as they had intended. Their political and moral defeat are more than evident. In contrast, the prisoners retain their morale and their combative spirit intact. Furthermore, through this struggle they have won the recognition and the support of a large section of the workers.
But if the Party could not let itself fall into the trap, nor could it abandon the prisoners to their fate, because this would amount to leaving the government’s hands free to rid itself of them. But at the same time the brunt of the struggle had to fall on the shoulders of the prisoners themselves. The government’s plans went beyond the narrow limits of the prisons: it was a matter of a strategic project in which what was at stake was the whole counter-insurgency policy of massive extermination and reintegration. In order to tilt the balance in favour of the prisoners, it was necessary to build a broad movement of solidarity among the working class and other sectors of the people, a movement with an open character and with the perspective of getting the prisoners out of jail.
FIES was organised and regulated, which involved entry into special departments in the prisons, isolated and separated from the other prisoners, in cells which were changed periodically, with just two hours access to the courtyard, always in isolation, eating inside the cell itself, without having access to clothes other than that supplied by the warden, handcuffed each time that they went out of their cell, subject to systematic and humiliating searches and registrations, including by x-ray and strip searches etc.
When Aygun Ugur, an imprisoned militant from the outlawed Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML), died on the 63rd day of a hunger strike, Turkey was shocked. In a nation which is continually rocked by political crises and rebellion, this summer’s death fast by left-wing political prisoners posed the greatest threat to the Turkish government in recent years. Weeks of public denial and fierce repression could not stop the prisoners, and in the days after Ugur’s death, 11 more martyrs were to fall in Europe’s most serious political hunger strike since 10 Irish POW’s died in the 1981 IRA/INLA hunger strike.
Mehmet Agar’s May 6th order announced the establishment of several new special isolation prisons in Eskisehir and other cities, and the planned dispersal of political prisoners to remote areas far away from their families and lawyers. This order marked the highpoint of increased repression against political prisoners in Turkey and Kurdistan.
His battered corpse was found in a ditch a few days later. Turkish police at first denied they had any knowledge of Emin’s murder, but overwhelming evidence soon proved to the world that Emin was the latest in a series of “disappearances” and murders of leftist journalists in Turkey. Bowing to pressure from the European Parliament, several Istanbul police officers were indicted for Emin’s murder this spring.
resourceful, and they managed to smuggle a video tape of the prison conditions and the death fast to the outside. When these images were broadcast to Turkey and the world, the government could no longer deny the resistance which was underway. Rallies by prisoners’ families and supporters grew. Riots broke out in the Gazi district of Istanbul and other areas as well. The state vowed never to negotiate with “terrorists,” but when Aygun Ugur fell on July 21st, the situation changed. In the following days, more prisoners died, and yet the resistance continued. By now, the bourgeois left were shocked, and even pro-state media began to question the inhumane stance of the new regime. Sedat Ergin, a leading newspaper commentator in Ankara, noted that the fast had become a “direct challenge” to Prime Minister Erbakan’s new Islamic government. On July 25th, with 8 strikers already dead, the Kurdish PKK prisoners announced that they too would join the death fast. The Kurdistan Parliament in Exile in Europe issued a declaration in support of the hunger strikers. With social discontent and protest mounting, the media black-out having failed to keep a lid on the situation, famed author Yasar Kemal and other noted human rights activists attempted to mediate between the prisoners and the state. On Saturday, July 28, 1996, the prisoners announced that the death fast was over when the government gave in to all their demands.
The government stated it would close down the Eskisehir prison in central Anatolia, it would stop the dispersal of prisoners to remote locations, end the attacks on family members and lawyers, and seek to improve prison conditions. After 69 days of determined resistance and the death of 12 prisoners, the hunger strike by Turkish revolutionaries ended in victory. But Turkey is still a country in turmoil. As the urban underclasses continue to rise up in the cities in the west and the Kurdish liberation struggles gains in strength in the east, state repression will continue, and this summer’s hunger strike will certainly not be the last in the struggle for socialism and freedom in Turkey and Kurdistan.
Last summer, co-workers from the “Rote Hilfe” (Red Aid) from Kiel (Germany) conducted an interview with DHKP-C prisoners in Turkey. Two years after the hunger strike until death, we want to hear from them about the present situation and how their struggle is going now.
practical support for the revolutionary struggle. In that sense we also have a written statute which determines our communal life, our political education, our relations with our relatives, our principles and rules in all details. This statute was discussed and approved by all members of the DHKP-C, it’s valid for all imprisoned members of the DHKP-C. In all prisons, these common principles form the basis for our lives and our activities, naturally considering local circumstances. The common frame of mind develops in real life the collectivity on the basis of revolutionary principles. On the other hand, the collectivity strengthens our mental and moral unity in real life. It’s fundamental in our life to permanently practice revolutionary discipline, collectivism, political education, productivity and an attitude which prevents the dissolving of the revolutionary struggle.
strengthens our consciousness. That’s why fascism tries to isolate us, and if that doesn’t succeed, sabotage our lives. It’s not important whether we are with 300 people or alone, our lives and our activities stem from this consciousness.
people outside, thousands were arrested. All – revolutionaries, democrats and intellectuals – were driven together in prison and under those circumstances, every fight for rights, every struggle for freedoms, transformed into resistance against the terror of the junta against the people. A struggle which served as a barricade against all the repression and aggression could only develop inside the prisons. After the junta had silenced the unions, associations, even the bourgeois opposition, with repression and bans, it turned against the prisoners. If the revolutionaries and their consciousness could be broken inside the prison, the road would be paved for their system of exploitation.
counteracted these attacks with barricades and taking security officers as prisoners, must be seen in that context.
torture and repression, will not break their word to the people, who will not hesitate to die for their conviction, thus giving the people conviction and determination as well. This constitutes a danger to fascism, therefore one attack follows the other. The demand for building isolation cells, since 1977, time and again on the agenda, constitutes the continuation of these attacks.
launched again. But our reaction will be swift. None of us will disappear into a isolation cell. We will resist, if need be we’ll die. We will break down these cells with our hands and teeth. All the DHKP-C prisoners are that determined. Given such a situation, the full attention of the country will be on the prisons, the resistance of the revolutionaries, again.
Tunc in Nevsehir and Polat lyit in Sagmalcilar.
consciousness which gives us strength and pride. Therefore every form of support from people in other countries, from revolutionaries, democratic groups or individuals, is important to us and really valuable. It’s clear that the more we are, the sooner we’ll achieve freedom, the sooner we’ll achieve a world in which we can lead a dignified life.
First, we would like to make it clear that the change which the RAF made was, from the beginning, an indication of a political crisis, behind which were lurking dangerous and destructive disintegrating processes. By making public their reasons for making a “pause”, the prisoners did not offer those members still living in illegality, namely those that still make up the RAF, any useful proposals for a new perspective, but rather they got stuck in a heavy, populist, Great German morass, and they displayed their willingness to play along with Kinkel’s game, imperialism pure and simple.
when Kohl fired von Stahl, he did this because he wanted all of the RAF to be captured, so that they would beg for forgiveness and make a spectacle of the physical and political death of the resistance, thus enhancing Germany’s glory.
There are those that place a priority on the consideration of the strategic decisions from which the guerrilla developed; a step backwards which only consists of demoralizing and disarming ideological revisionism, thereby moving away from an offensive attitude towards the struggle.
The task of communists is not to remind the workers of how destructive life in bourgeois society is, or how many massacres stem from the wealth of “big business”. They already know all that. The primary task is to take on the responsibility of saying how it’s possible to make changes, both big and small, given the current situation.
any new line of development which began to orient itself around the international proletariat/imperialist bourgeoisie. This lead to the guerrilla in the metropoles, along with other revisionist trains of thought, losing all of its political-strategic significance within the revolutionary consciousness of the metropolitan proletariat.
This necessity is enough for the USA’s politics of “total security”. A concept of a model of war which can be easily adapted to all parts of the world. In this model, the “swift deployment of troops” has replaced “preventive defence”, and the war is no longer limited to the battlefield decided on by the enemy, because it follows the logic of the mass destruction of the entire region without distinctions between “military” and “civilian” populations. That’s why the number of casualties among the civilian population always exceeds the number among the military.
the proletariat, as they have arisen in their entirety from the struggles, according to this level.
Nothing whatsoever in the analysis of the contradictions inherent in the development crisis of the capitalist and imperialist world tells us that we should reject this consciousness. On the contrary, it’s quite clear that the international revolutionary strategy must press forward the conflict at the European level under the new prevailing conditions. The possibilities of the guerrilla as a power strategy for the European metropolitan proletariat exist primarily in clearly defining where today the power relations between the classes are and by clarifying these through close connections between the national sphere and the international system. In this sense, we are dealing with maintaining and further developing the dialectical relationships between the attack on the strategic projects of the imperialist bourgeoisie and their instruments of control and the most advanced struggles of the metropolitan proletariat, those which exist in the confines of political consciousness and the autonomous organization of the classes and which come about through offensive struggle and the defence of free spaces and living conditions.
power before the national, because the national area and its political structures may seem independent, but in an international sense they are but an integrated part and expression of the actual situation of the unified world market.
A fatal embrace, one by which the imperialist bourgeoisie hopes to neutralize the class struggle which arises from the new social polarization which is presently taking place in all advanced capitalist nations. The revolutionary vanguards must unmask this and fight to create spaces for the struggle of the metropolitan proletariat.
labor market according to strict EC guidelines, backed up by a huge supply of labor reserves. In reality, the masses of immigrants from the south and east who are pressing at Europe’s borders are actually the undeniable foundation of the development of the European economy, and the entire politics of the EC is designed to secure a plan for their exploitation and control.
European level, will once again find themselves in relation to one another.
guerrilla is the embodiment of the revolutionary break which was made in Europe in the early-70s by those organizations which took up armed struggle in order to renew the class consciousness of the proletariat and to reopen the power struggle in the belly of the imperialist beast. The introduction of revolutionary struggle, even if it has since become partially contradictory, has not lost its essential form.
important factor – but rather by the fundamental necessity of a new perspective, one in which the “memory of past confrontations” is always an significant element.
revolutionary strategy has reached a new level of aggression and is seeking via military means to compensate for its identity and planning crisis in order to break holes in the organizations of metropolitan guerrillas. The “political solution” which was introduced in Italy a few years ago, which was supported by many political prisoners who have since renounced their political identities, although it was actually an initiative of the imperialist bourgeoisie to press forward the war “from the inside”, has shown the way for the counter-revolution for all of Western Europe and has spelled out an effective model to deploy.
“political solutions” to the question of political prisoners, in reality have a very different goal in mind: They seek to utilize the political prisoners as a “weak point” in the revolutionary movement and to use them as a means of pressuring the contemporary guerrilla in order to influence and control the development of the revolutionary confrontation in Western Europe.
In this sense, Kinkel’s initiative of “social reconciliation” is nothing new, and it’s suicide to believe that the question of political prisoners is only decided at the national level and that the difficulties and contradictions of the German state can therefore be dealt with. All communists and revolutionary prisoners who wish to concretely work on the reestablishment of the perspective in Western Europe can learn a great deal from the example of what happened in Italy!
and they acted in the context of the RAF’s politics. Their concept of developing “coordinated militant projects”, to open a new level in the confrontation, was in line with the course spelled out in the May Paper. T
world. In this research center they tested this year 20,000 new pesticide compounds and they will be expanding this research discipline even further, from about 150 million to about 500 million a year. The plants that are raised here and the pesticides that tiamt are produced here form an important support for Bayer’s overwhelming market share in the world market for agricultural products. This represents a new understanding for a more effective production controlled exclusively by Bayer; and by extension they control the peoples and countries which depend on this research and production for their food.
respect to the Third World.
acceptance.
perspectives with a view towards the growing strength of the FRG and Europe who in every aspect of society through their policy of modernization are going to oppress and alienate. The FRG, as member of the imperialistic organization of states has favored the integration of Western Europe and becomes more and more determined to act as a power for oppression. The strategic plans of the imperialist states whereby they have joined the economic, technological, political) and military powers is barely opposed. The penetration of the socialist countries both guarantees imperialism unknown profits for the next few years and ensures that an important opposition to world-wide imperialist aggression has been nullified. At the same time a situation has developed in the FRG, as a result of the entire dialectic of the anti-people and inhumane politics of those who govern, which gives us an opportunity to subject these imperialist policies and their consequences to discussion and resistance.
were forced to make concessions to the resistance, because it had already for some time become a national conflict.
pay steadily more and more for the energy we consume, RWE supplys electricity at a special rate to industry and also destroys, in all areas of its energy business, the conditions necessary for life; for example the destruction of Ville, an area affected by the mining for brown coal, also the destruction of the forests as a result of the drilling for oil in the DEA (by the previously German Texaco which was bought by RWE), and also through the mining for uranium in Australia and Africa which robs people of their property and exploits their labour in the mines where they must work for starvation wages. It is in the area of nuclear technology and industry that RWE’s destructive policies most clearly emerge.
who dictate the living conditions It is those who stand behind these projects and technologies who are creating a fascist and patriarchal society, degenerate and void of any humanitarianism where poverty is just as real as luxury for a few and where the over-regulated environment can only be made bearable through, for instance, the consumption of drugs.
relevance. Together with the prisoners, in this new phase, we want to give shape and substance to the composition of these conditions, and to the thoughts and processes which will lead to the realization of these conditions.
Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt-Eschborn. We don’t know why the charges did not explode. In any case, we had set the time to 15 minutes and it is not possible that a pig patrol could have defused the bomb in that time. At this time it is very difficult for us to say anything about this action because it failed.
coalition had gone into the streets, could have brought pressure on those responsible so that they could have been forced into making concessions. This mobilization did achieve concession from several states and small groups of prisoners were brought together, but they refused to let go of their extinction-project against the prisoners.
life. The hunger-strike made it clear to us that we need to develop a revolutionary process and that we need to fight for a political idea and by doing that we will have created for ourselves the opportunity for sharp political interventions, such as the militant attacks against central installations owned by banks and corporations, and through our discussion with comrades from the guerrilla and the other Fighting Units, which have become very important.
regulations, an increase in short term labour contracts. Siemens earns good money through the exploitation of black labour in South Africa. Siemens is one of the largest corporations in Western Europe, and just so that it can make a profit, is prepared to engage in inhumane projects. During the period of Nazi fascism, Siemens profited from the merciless exploitation and murder of concentration camp prisoners who laboured in the production of weapons.
economic uncertainty, sexism, overt racism, destruction of the environment, daily starvation of peoples of the continents – South America, Africa, and Asia, and genocide
by a wave of repression. In 1986, many people from the anti-imp spectrum were arrested and sentenced for Fighting Unit attacks. This temporarily halted attacks by the militants. But the paper ‘Zusammen Kämpfen’ was still published periodically until 1991. After the RAF’s attack on the head of the Deutsche Bank in November 1989, the Fighting Units carried out four attacks between December 1989 and February 1990. Two bombs were detected and disarmed. Then there were no more Fighting Unit actions.”
