Solidarity with John Bowden – Long time prison resister and anti-authoritarian

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Show your support for John Bowden, a vocal writer and critic of the system we all live under, who is in Greenock Sheriff Court in Scotland, on Friday 24th June, after being accused of assault on a prison guard.

Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, John Bowden was at the forefront of the British prison struggle, leading and being involved in serious acts of resistance against the prison system, and was deeply politicised by the experience. Viewed by most prison staff as a committed and dangerous “trouble-maker”, John was often brutally punished, suffering years of brutality and prolonged solitary confinement. He has been victimised, in one way or another, ever since.

In June of last year, after hearing the evidence of an independent psychologist, the Parole Board decided that after 30 years in prison, John Bowden represented no real risk or danger to the community, and like the two men originally imprisoned with him in 1982, who were released almost 20 years ago, he should now be returned to that community. The Parole Board therefore asked the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to transfer John to an open prison in preparation for release twelve months later. At the parole hearing itself, a representative of the SPS agreed to comply with the Board’s request. In reality, however, the SPS had absolutely no intention of preparing John Bowden for release, or even allowing him out of maximum security conditions. The orchestration of the prison authorities against him has been considerable, and has included “arbitrary and illogical decisions” and “abuses of power” by those in the prison system and linked to it. John has also been the victim of lies told by a criminal justice system social worker, supposed to be “supervising” him. The same employee of Edinburgh City Council also failed to produce the necessary ‘social worker report’ containing a plan for his post-release supervision.

John has also been moved around prisons constantly in order to destabilise him and make his situation more difficult. This has had the affect of making communication between John and the outside world harder, and prevented him forming friendships inside the prisons, as other prisoners are able to do.

John has written “instead of keeping my head firmly down and conforming unquestioningly, no matter how wrong and unfair my treatment, I had sought to highlight it and place it in the wider political context of prison/state abuse of power”.

After an attack on a fellow prisoner, John stepped in to intervene. A guard then took John to one of the very few places within the prison that aren’t covered by surveillance cameras & started pushing him repeatedly in the chest, then when John eventually pushed his hand away the guard over dramatically threw himself to the floor. Despite sustaining no injuries the guard then took a period of time off work with “stress” from the incident. It was clearly a pre-planned set up to have John charged with assault & therefore moved back out of open prison conditions and away from any chance of preparations for his release. John is therefore pleading not guilty to the charge.

We are a number of prisoner solidarity groups that include Brighton ABC, Manchester ABC, London ABC, Bristol ABC, Empty Cages Collective and Black Pigeons Collective, Switzerland. We support the solidarity action in Greenock near Glasgow, and ask that you take action on the day of the trial or show solidarity in any way that you feel that you can.

What you can do:

Show your support for prisoners’ rights and demand an end to the frame-up of John Bowden and those who refuse to accept the brutality of the screws and their system in the following ways…

a) Come to Glasgow and join the court protest from 9.30am on Friday June 24th at Greenock Sheriff Court (PA15 1TR) where John is on trial. Sleeping spaces available the nights before and after. We will travel together to Greenock – bring banners or posters and a bike if you can, bikes should be available to borrow if you can’t. Lifts may also be available for anyone who can’t cycle.

b) Write to the governor of Whitemoor prison, challenging the politically motivated decision to categorise John as an escape risk the last time John was in an English prison:

Governor Paul Cawkwell

HMP Whitemoor
Longhill Road
March
Cambridgeshire
PE15 0PR

c) write to John to express your solidarity.
ADDRESS: John Bowden – 6729, HMP Edinburgh, 33 Stenhouse Road, Edinburgh, EH11 3LN [address correct as of June 2016]

d) Organise a demo or banner drop outside your local prison or somewhere in your town or city. And take a photo that we can collate and pass on to John Bowden.

Support a Belarusian antifascist’s family in paying damages

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Roman Bogdan is an antifascist from Brest. Arrested on April 1, 2015 on suspicion of participation in the fight with neo-nazis that took place on May 8, 2013. On October 3, 2015 got 8 years of penal colony with reinforced regime (339.3, 147.2) and 3500 euro of damages to be paid to the injured nazis.

On December 15, 2015 a regional appellate court commuted the sentence by 2 years.
The whole amount of damages has been paid by the family of the
antifascist, though later the sum was partly covered by the ABC-Belarus, local movement and a benefit concert in Warsaw. Around 1900 euros are not covered yet, and although we hate to pay anything to the neonazis, we think it’s unfair to have the family pay for the political activity of the antifascist. This responsibility should be placed on the movement and that’s why we appeal to all concerned people to help us collect the money and pay it back to Roman’s family. It is especially crucial now,
because recently he has been transferred back to Brest pre-trial facility to be interrogated about another account of a group fight that happened a few years ago.

Donate to Roman’s family using
PayPal – belarus_abc[at]riseup.net
European bank account (please ask privately)

Write Roman to:
213010 Shklov
p. Molodezhnyj, IK-17, otryad 12
Mogilevskaya obl.

Spread this call wider!

In solidarity,
ABC-Belarus

Support a Belarusian antifascist’s family in paying damages

ommunique from Martin Ignačák at the start of his hunger strike

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Communique from Martin Ignačák: start of hunger strike 9.6.2016

We have already informed about the fact that Martin, unlike us, has not been aware of the decision of the court. He hasn’t received the official decision to this day (June 9th, now he has gotten it) but has been informed about the court decision by his family and his lawyer who visited him yesterday. The court had decided that Martin is to remain in custody. Therefore today Martin officially begins the hunger strike. Here is Martin’s statement:

START OF HUNGER STRIKE

The hunger strike is my free reaction to the circumstances that concern the approach of the police in the Fénix case.

The situation is unbearable for me due to the slander through which R. Šlachta has demagogically been ling to the Higher court. I consider it unlawful that my family is being monitored, their private lives are being interfered with, their opinion and feelings of the Fénix case are being judged. This indirectly shows that any criticism is an impulse for the monitoring of the dissenting persons and the recording of details of their private lives.

I also consider it unlawful that the privacy of my friends and their families is being violated by the police who call their employers and landlords and try to intimidate them through this tactic.

Furthermore the remand prison Praha – Pankrác is knowingly violating moral and human rights as far as nutrition is concerned, as so far they have provided me with food that is completely non-nutritive, I am not provided with vegan food. I am fully provided with food by people on the outside but is very difficult for my family and friends.

Another thing is that my detention in remand has the form of pressure detention – not just in the form of being denied vegan food but also the constant ‘security’ measures due to which visits from my counsel for defence take place through bars or plexiglass, even when I am looking through file documents. Even though a month before that the review of file documents took place without such measures.

With this protest I want to express my dissatisfaction and show that the police dishonourably goes into extremes and knowingly acts unlawfully. They give false, targeted and untrue information to keep me in custody, on the basis of mere assumptions and fabrications, this is done by police agents and investigators.

I want to emphasize that the hunger strike is not an outcome of the trial. I want to and I will defend myself in the trial and I will participate in it, as I have already stated at the City court in Prague.

I will not end the hunger strike as long as this unbearable state persists and until the immediate remedy in these respects:

Immediate withdrawal of the false record on my sister given by R.
Šlachta.
Immediate suspension of all unlawful and illegal monitoring, bullying and intimidation of my family, my friends and their families.
Immediate improvement of food in the remand prison in Praha – Pankrác.
Repeated and independent review of my release from custody with
acceptance of promises and proposals from my side and the replacement of custody by other measures.

–Antifenix

Join international days of solidarity with Russian anarchist and antifascist prisoners 1st to 10th July, 2016

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When mass civil protests in Russia were defeated in 2011-12 the Putinist police regime started open political repressions against militants of social and political movements, including anarchists and antifascists. Many activists have been sentenced to prison terms in the course of the last 5 years in Russia.

We call on comrades from the whole world to show solidarity with Russian anarchists and antifascists – prisoners of the Putinist police state, and distribute information about the international solidarity decade as widely as possible, maybe organise an event in your own town.

It could be an info-party where letters could be written, a film show, a fund-raising event, a benefit gig, a protest action at the Russian embassy in your own country, a solidarity action – only your fantasy is the limit.
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1774132002816021/

“Vkontakte” event:  http://vk.com/abc_solidarity_days

Russian anarchist Elizaveta Tsvetkova Sentenced to Year of Corrective Labour for Leaflet about Police

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(From Avtonom.org)

31 may 2016: Taganrog City Court Judge Georgy Serebryanikov sentenced 31-year-old local resident Elizaveta Tsvetkova to a year of corrective labor for disseminating leaflets criticizing the police, reports Caucasian Knot. As published on the court’s website, the verdict stipulates that fifteen percent of Tsvetkova’s wages will be docked by the state for a year. The activist has also been charged 6,000 rubles in court costs.

According to investigators, Tsvetkova downloaded a leaflet criticizing the police from the Vkontakte social network, printed it out, and the day before Law Enforcement Officers Day, in November 2014, posted it at public transport stops and on street lamps.

Serebryanikov found the defendant guilty under Criminal Code Article 281.2 (incitement of hatred or enmity toward the social group “police officers”), which stipulates a maximum punishment of four years in a penal colony.

 

Open letter in connection with the arrest of three anarchists in Warsaw

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There are increasingly more absurd, one sided reports being released through the mass-media about the arrest of three anarchists on Monday May 23rd. We interpret this as an attempt to intimidate and criminalize social protest in Poland.

It is no coincidence that the closer the time comes for the so called ‘Counter-terrorism Act’ to come into force that the media and politicians increasingly construct a reality so that this law seems to be necessary. The heated reports and analysis about police actions preventing the alleged arson attempt on a police car stand in stark contrast to the silence around events which challenge the image of ‘police heros’. At almost the same time police in Wrocław murdered Igor. It is hard to find a reaction or indignation from the multitude of politicians, media, police officers and experts on terror to this. There are hardly any journalists which are critical when police kill a person. But police killings are only the tip of the iceberg. Extortion, beatings and unlawful protection of the interests of the influential – every year from 16000 complaints filed against the police only 5 percent of them are deemed appropriate. Due to media selectivity and omissions, the police have no fear of legal consequences. One can assume that people are discouraged from filing official complaints with expensive legal costs. The truth is that only loud protests and riots stop police repression being forgotten. The media meanwhile de facto do not lose any opportunity to pave the way towards permanent expansion of police jurisdiction and to further reduce public control over the activities of these bodies of repression.

Today the panic over an alleged, failed attempt to burn a police car forces consent to a draconian law allowing uncontrolled surveillance, ungrounded detention and unlimited police violence against the whole of society. Today, irresponsible journalists use sensationalism about ‘terror’ and fabricate consent to systemic repression in an attempt to persuade those not yet convinced: even official political trends in Poland express doubts in relation to this ‘anti-terrorist’ law.

The anarchist movement is active within groups of workers, tenants, environmental and anti-racism struggles and the fight against land-grabbing. It works uncompromisingly towards social justice, fighting against repression by business and political elites. The lack of public control over the police force for years condones the uncontrolled violence it uses against people opposed to systemic violence in various fields. More broadly, the witch-hunt atmosphere after the wider anarchist movement is building consent for repression and surveillance on communities challenging the most influential interest groups in this country.

Today, the sheer volume of media reconstructions about the alleged attempt to set fire to a police car, included the psychology of would-be arsonists and the subsequent press conferences with police and the prosecutor’s office. With undisguised anger we recall the public reaction to the repression against people fighting our causes. When the activist Jolanta Brzeska – living 50 meters from a police station – was repeatedly harassed and eventually brutally murdered, we could not count on similar indignation from the political elite and on the media immediately releasing press conferences and expert opinions. In fact, whenever attacks are made on workers’ rights or tenants, public opinion does not pay them any attention.

In contrast however, a media storm explodes around an arson, which de facto did not take place. Arrested anarchists are called terrorists. This forces social acceptance of using physical and psychological violence against them. Labeling them as such leads to the prisoners being tortured with no repercussions, as evidenced by their current state of health.

We will not be intimidated, nor stop our struggle for the maintenance of and expansion of social gain – even against the wishes of an increasingly police state. We appeal to the media: until you have the courage to loudly condemn many years of police violence, with the weight of its privileges and the complete state apparatus, you have no right to condemn the imprisoned anarchists and create a campaign against the whole anarchist movement. This movement never stands still for any authority, business or church. It has however a history of thousands of social struggles, many of which you are afraid to even speak of. This story will survive any repression.

Solidarity with the arrested and a call for it from all!
Enough of a state founded on fear and police violence!

Kolektyw Syrena
Warszawskie Stowarzyszenie Lokatorów
Kolektyw Przychodnia
Ruch Sprawiedliwości Społecznej
Kancelaria Sprawiedliwości Społecznej
Warszawska Federacja Anarchistyczna
Jedzenie Zamiast Bomb sekcja Warszawa
Antyfaszystowska Warszawa
ROD Kolektyw
Anarchistyczny Czarny Krzyż Warszawa
No Borders Warszawa

June 11, 2016: Day of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners

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Via Anarchy Live

(A statement for the June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners)

First, I’d like to give warm revolutionary greetings to all those who have shown solidarity and supported me. Without that solidarity and support, I don’t know how I would have survived for so long.

As one who has spent 30 years in U.S. prisons, I’ve become intimately acquainted with control units, whether we call them Security Management Units, Special Housing Units, or Administrative Segregation – all euphemisms of penological sophistication in an attempt to disguise the true purpose and intent of such sinister tools of control and torture. Let’s be clear: they are torture chambers.

Former director of the Bureau of Prisons and now shareholder in the private prison firm GEO, Norman A. Carlson, stated that Marion’s control unit’s purpose is to “control revolutionary attitudes in prison and society” as well. Marion Federal Penitentiary is considered to be the first control unit in the U.S.

Now, across the globe, from Alabama to Colorado to Greece and beyond, control units are being established for those who refuse to conform to the regimen in prison and the normalcy of every life outside of prison, and most definitely for those who carry out revolutionary activities. Like the C-type prisons in Greece, designed explicitly for anarchist guerrillas. The design and intent is to minimize human contact through isolation and to exact an immense cost in human suffering.

In most control units, prisoners live in almost total isolation, far away from family and friends. It means restrictions on communications; censorship of incoming and outgoing mail and visits; constant harassment; and sadistic brutality from prison guards.

A few years ago it was reported that almost 36,000 human beings were housed in solitary confinement prisons in the U.S.

A study by the National Immigrant Justice Center and Physicians for Human Rights stated in their report that conditions of immigrant detainees placed in isolation not only endangered their health and safety, but also pressured them “to abandon their options for legal relief, their families, their communities, and often the only country they have ever known.” The study cites multiple examples of immigrant detainees who were placed in isolation solely because they belonged to “vulnerable populations,” such as being gay, bisexual, transgender, or mentally ill. Here in Alabama’s Holman prison segregation unit, three prisoners have committed suicide in the last eight months, and there have been numerous other attempts to commit suicide that were unsuccessful.

Most control units consist of cells without windows, to cause sensory deprivation and reduce visual stimulation, and those with windows are not able to be opened, causing stifling heat in the cells during the summer months.

On February 19, 2016, Albert “Shaka” Woodfox was released from prison after 44 years in solitary confinement. Woodfox was a prisoner who joined and co-established a chapter of the Black Panther Party at the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana in the 1970s and was charged with the murder of a prison guard. Woodfox is now 69 years old.

Hugo “Yogi Bear” Pinell was confined in California’s inhumane solitary confinement units for 43 years. He was recently murdered by white supremacists in collusion with prison guards after being released to general population on August 12, 2015. He had been a leader and prison rebel and a prime organizer of the Prison Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Whatever name they are called, control units’ primary purpose is control, to break the will and sanity of those who rebel and refuse to conform to an oppressive social order in or out of prison.

What we have to do is get angry and bring ourselves into direct confrontation with this most sinister aspect of the Prison Industrial Slave Komplex that is destroying human beings and suppressing revolutionary movements. We have to continue to do the million things we already do to attack the state, but we also have to be creative and create new ways of attacking the state and its institutions. Again, these institutions of the state are torture chambers designed to break and destroy the human will to rebel against that which oppresses them.

Shoutouts to all prison rebels and anarchists of action. Keep up the good fight!
Special shout to the Plateau Crew!

Fire to the prisons!

Michael Kimble
Dragon Cell
(Watch My Smoke)

Brest antifascist Dzmitry Zvan’ko released on parole

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(from ABC Belarus)

Dzmitry Zvan’ko sentenced to 5 years for a fight with neonazis in Brest was released on parole yesterday. All in all he has spent 3 years in jail.

There are two more convicts in this case – Roman Bogdan and Dzmitry Stsyashenka. Don’t forget them, show your solidarity!
Roman Bogdan

213010 Shklov

p. Molodezhnyj, IK-17, otryad 12

Mogilevskaya obl.
Dzmitry Stsyashenka

213800 Bobruisk,

ul. Sikorskogo 1a, IK-2, otryad 14

Mogilevskaya obl.

IMPRISONED ANARCHIST MARTIN IGNAČÁK HAS GONE ON HUNGER STRIKE

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On Friday 27.5. 2016 in Pankrác remand prison anarchist Martin Ignačák accused of terrorism went on hunger strike. He did this because on 29.4.2016 the City court in Prague ruled in favour of his release from remand and the state’s attorney appealed this decision to the High court in Prague. On friday 27.5. 2016 the High court in Prague extended the remand. Therefore the anarchist has decided to protest by going on hunger strike and has stopped taking in nutrition and liquids. This type of hunger strike threatens the life of the hunger striker after a week.

During the year long investigation of the preparation of a supposed terrorist attack the imprisoned anarchist has exhausted all legal options, to achieve objective procedure of the respective organs active in the criminal proceedings. None of them were taken into account. This is why he now chose this radical form of expression, to draw attention to this manipulated police case. ” I consider the approach of the
investigators and the police to be very problematic, it is a threat to the freedom of every human being, a threat to freedom of speech, a threat to activism that tries to lead to a better world , and this doesn’t just involve anarchists.”

Martin is being prosecuted in the so called Fénix case from April 2015, in which altogether 5 people were accused of the preparation and the failure to notify of a terrorist attack on a train. Martin is the only one who has been in remand prison this whole time and his detention has now been extended after the intervention of the state’s attorney. As a reason for the extension of remand the state’s attorney used the testimony of a police agent who infiltrated the anarchist movement in 2014. From his testimony the state’s attorney drew the conclusion that
Martin might attempt to escape to Spain. Another reason, according to him, was that Martin ” is connected to the so called Síť revolučních buněk/ The Network of Revolutionary Cells (SRB) and therefore also to similar organizations abroad.” The police spoke about SRB when they began Fénix and provided information to the media. ” Any connections between the 5 attacks ascribed to SRB and all the detained and accused
have been refuted. The investigators themselves have ruled it out” says Martin.

At the moment Martin is the second longest detained prisoner in the Pankrác remand prison. For 13 months he lives there under conditions, that negatively affect his psychological and physical state. For example he has been refused food free of animal products, which means he practically doesn’t have access to hot food. Friends, who have come to visit him have been mentioned by name in the indictment. Police from the Department for combating organized crime have started to collect information on Martin’s sister, only because she tries to support her brother in whichever way she can.

For Martin parole would mean that after 13 long months he would again see his friends, family, nature, that he wouldn’t be exposed to emotional deprivation and physical hardship.

Update Sunday, May 29th: Martin’s sister Pavla B. joined her brother in the protest and this morning she has started hunger strike herself as well.

For more information follow antifenix.noblogs.org