Bristol ABC are supporting this info night as part of the World Wide Week of Action for Animals in Laboratories. We are helping to fundraise for the Blackmail 3 – for more information about this case & the repression of anti-vivisection campaigns visit blackmail3.org
Bristol ABC are supporting this info night as part of the World Wide Week of Action for Animals in Laboratories. We are helping to fundraise for the Blackmail 3 – for more information about this case & the repression of anti-vivisection campaigns visit blackmail3.org
Right now eight comrades are serving prison sentences at institutions in Tidaholm, Malmo, Vastervik, Sala, Frovi and Rosersberg. All are convicted of political crimes. Another 4 comrades have been sentenced to prison and are now awaiting setting dates. In addition, 13 people is accused of rioting in connection with a counter-demonstration against the fascist party Svenskarnas Parti (Swedes’ Party) demonstration in Eskilstuna on 1 May 2012. In late March, an additional 29 people is also expected to be prosecuted. These 29 are suspects after two large counter-demonstrations against the fascist Swedes’ Party during the election campaign. (Limhamn in Malmö August 23, 2014 and central Stockholm August 30, 2014.)
That makes a total of 12 already imposed prison sentences against anti-fascists and 42 more have been charged or are awaiting prosecution. These events are historical as they distinguish the most aggressive repression of the anti-fascist movement in Sweden so far.
We in the Prisoner Support Association are struggling to make the lives of our comrades in prisons as bearable and easygoing as possible. We have a close contact with the prisoners and our goal is to be there and support our comrades in their everyday lives throughout their incarceration. Along with the prisoners we have started an internal prison newspaper where all imprisoned anti-fascists in Sweden are committed and writes texts for each other and can receive relevant news from the outside. The paper has become much appreciated!
Our prison support work is long term and requires resources! Several comrades are serving long prison sentences and we urge all comrades outside the walls to support us with financial resources. Your contribution makes a big difference! Together we disarm the repression!
If you are going to give money to our Swedish bank account, use this account number:
IBAN : SE0680000832799438650120
BIC : SWEDSESS
With protests and hunger strikes now taking place inside eight of the UK’s Detention Centres, is this the beginning of the end for detention?
Source: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/immigration-detention-resistance-and-rebellion/
The racism and sexism at the heart of the UK’s secret network of immigration detention centres was thoroughly exposed by Channel 4 News on the 2nd March 2015. That same week the system was further undermined by the report of the parliamentary detention inquiry that recommended radical changes to who is detained and for how long.
Strengthened by the public recognition of what detainees and ex-detainees have been speaking out about for so long, detainees responded by launching an on-going campaign of resistance and rebellion, determined to see an end to the hated system of Fast Track, the release of all vulnerable detainees and a 28 day time limit as proposed by the detention inquiry. This is just a small snapshot of what has been happening in the detention centres:
Yarl’s Wood: Mass demonstrations continued for two days after the Channel 4 News exposure, the women gathered in the gardens refusing to return to their room, chants of “We are not Animals” rang through the corridors. Women continue to write that statement on their T-Shirts and collective organising to get help to sick women and resist flights continues.
Harmondsworth: There have been mass demonstrations with the men demonstrating in the courtyards, refusing to be locked up – these are taking place regularly. Every day there is resistance through refusing to follow rules and resisting flights. In response to the recent Afghan charter flight, the Afghani detainees gathered together in the courtyard with other detainees, refusing to be separated and refusing to be moved so that they could not be taken on to the flight. Many detainees have started a hunger strike, saying they will continue until Fast Track is ended.
Colnbrook: Demonstrations have taken place demanding that the chair of the detention inquiry is invited into Colnbrook to meet with detainees. Some detainees have staged protests refusing to go into their rooms and spreading disinfectant through the corridors. Many are on hunger strike.
The Verne: In a desperate act of anger and despair a detainee climbed onto the roof shouting ‘we need our freedom, we need our families, this is not right, we are not animals’ he gathered over 150 men around him before he put a makeshift noose around his neck and threw himself off the roof. 10 guards jumped on him; detainees say they saw the guards pressing down on the man’s injured legs. The detainees responded in fury, trying to take back the man from the clutches of the guards. The guards had to retreat to a locked room as the detainees shouted for freedom, smashed windows and expressed their fury. The detainee who had tried to kill himself was not given any medical treatment, he was locked up in two different police stations, threatened with being charged and moved to Colnbrook where he has joined the on-going protests there.
These are just a few examples of the kind of resistance and rebellion that is rocking the detention system. There have been reports of demonstrations and hunger strikes in Morton Hall, Dungavel, Tinsley House and Brook House. Supporters outside have held noise demonstrations outside and blocked charter flight buses by super gluing their hands to the windows, Everyday detainees have been speaking out through the Detained Voices website. On the 11th April there will be a mass, national solidarity demonstration at Harmondsworth organised by the campaign group Movement for Justice.
Resistance is growing, the detention estate is proving unstable and explosive, and already a significant victory has been won with the Home Office withdrawing their plans to double the size of Campsfield. Detainees, Ex-Detainees and other campaigners sense a change in the air and are determined not to waste this opportunity to end immigration detention once and for all.
Karen Doyle is an activist with Movement for Justice by Any Means Possible
From: http://rabble.org.uk/hunger-strikes-spread-to-8-detention-centres/
As of yesterday (Sunday 15 March) we had heard of hunger strikes and other protests taking place in 8 detention centres across the UK, as prisoners started refusing food in Dungavel (Scotland, near Glasgow) and Dover. There is now rebellion in the majority of the UK’s migration prisons.
The other six known to be protesting are Yarl’s Wood (Bedfordshire), Harmondsworth and Colnbrook (Heathrow airport), Tinsley House and Brook House (near Gatwick Airport). (See previous report here.)
The new website Detained Voices is spreading the voices of people inside. Here are just a few fragments from the past days, there is much more on that site.
Colnbrook. Thursday March 12:
“At Colnebrook, more than 20 people on hungerstrike. And we go outside but they officers have closed the doors and we can’t go outside. I’ve strike for 5 days and no one has asked about us. No one cares. We eat or no eat, release or no release no one cares. It’s very bad here. You can’t believe it. It’s very bad for everything.”
Harmondsworth. Friday March 13:
“The response to the protest is like, they don’t have ears to hear it, they don’t have heart to beat.
“The water was shut for the whole day. No it wasn’t for maintenance work because if you see they shut the whole unit. The complete wing, was shut for the whole day. Because if you see, there are also Muslim people over there who used to pray five times a day and they couldn’t’ use the toilet, and they couldn’t use the toilet, and they couldn’t use water or anything to pray. I hear that they say it was shut for an hour or so for some six rooms but no it was shut for whole wing not only for six rooms, and it was shut for all day
“They don’t care what we are doing inside. We are dying. Because of protest yesterday, one of my mate went to hospital because of that, because he got ill. He started vomiting because he was not eating. He was on hunger strike, he got ill, and started vomiting, and now we don’t know where he is.” …
Dover. Friday March 13:
“We are not eating in Dover Detention – we having a strike. There are half of the people are already on strike. We are organising and talking with all the people. We are human beings.”
Dungavel. Friday March 13:
“Around 60 people have been on a foodstrike since Monday in Dungavel. They are not eating because they are upset at the way they have been treated for a long time. W want to see the immigration minister and we want to talk about a lot of things that have gone wrong. There are lot of things to ask:
Someone has already been to hospital and they’ve put him in a secure room for monitoring.”
Dungavel. Sunday March 15:
“There are about 70 people are still protesting in Dungavel. They are refusing to go to the kitchen to eat. There was a protest from people outside. There was the police and STV. We can’t really see them because of the walls but it is good to hear them. It shows the message is getting across, what we are trying to achieve.”As these statements make clear, the approach of the prison authorities is brutal force and isolation, knowing that few will hear the voices coming across the walls.
Active solidarity is vital.
Prisoners ask again and again that we spread their words and make more people know what is happening inside these largely forgotten prisons.
Just a small group or an individual shouting across the walls can help boost the strength of those on hunger strike. At most UK detention centres it is still possible to get close up to the cells where people are kept, so we can communicate visually and with sound.
But the border regime is all around us. We can attack it ourselves wherever we are.
The UK Home Office has signing and admin offices, holding cells, and bases from which they launch dawn raids, in many towns. Here is a list of some addresses for their “enforcement” teams.
Much of their work of running the detention centres is contracted out to private companies including Mitie, G4S, and Serco, which also have offices across the country and globally.
Source: http://brightonabc.org.uk/campaigns.html#27
Alexander Kolchenko is a Crimean anarchist, social activist and antifascist who is held in captivity by the Russian authorities. Along with other Crimean activists, he has been kidnapped by the Russian FSB (ex-KGB) and is now detained as a political hostage in Lefortovo jail in Moscow. He is charged with committing “acts of terrorism” and “belonging to a terrorist community”.
Why Alexander Kolchenko is in the jail?
Alexander, who has undeniably proved his antifascist stance over many years, is facing preposterous accusations of belonging to “Right Sector”, a radical Ukrainian right-wing organization, whose real role in Ukrainian events is blown out of proportion by Russian official propaganda.
In modern Russia any activist — left-wing, anarchist or liberal — can be slandered as a member or sympathizer of “Right Sector”. This situation is comparable to the hunt for nonexistent “Trotskyists” under Stalin, or the McCarthy witch-hunt for communists. Putin’s authoritarian and nationalist regime, which uses in its propaganda everything from religious prejudices and conspiracy theories to outright racism, shamelessly steals “antifascist” rhetoric. And yet anyone who is considered bothersome is called a “fascist”, even if he/she stands on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
The case against antifascist Alexander Kolchenko and civil activist and film director Oleg Sentsov (investigators enrolled them into the same “terrorist” group) is political. It is meant to intimidate inhabitants of Crimea and prevent any resistance on the peninsula. The most authoritarian of methods are now used in annexed Crimea to repress all discontent. Many people were obliged to leave Crimea because their life and freedom were threatened: lawyers, left-wing activists, students and trade union activists, anarchists, antifascists and Crimean Tatar activists who have fallen victims of ethnic discrimination.
What threats does Alexander Kolchenko face?
A terrible prison sentence of up to 20 years threatens Alexander Kolchenko for a non-existent “terrorist attack” in which he was not involved. Kolchenko and other Ukrainian political prisoners are detained only in order to demoralize opposition by show trials. Their freedom is directly linked to the stability of the Putin regime: if we can shake the confidence of Putin in his impunity, the prisoners will be set free. There is no hope that Kolchenko, Sentsov and others would be judged by the law. Their arrest was unlawful, the charges against them are far-fetched. It’s not a mistake, the regime knows what it’s doing.
How can you help Alexander Kolchenko?
We’re asking international left-wing and libertarian forces for help. You can organize and lead actions of protest and solidarity, write letters to Kolchenko, send donations for lawyers and food parcels, help his family. It is also important to spread information about his case. Most of all, we need to dissociate ourselves from any forces that support aggressive expansion of Russian nationalism, even if they cover it up with “leftist” and “anti-imperialist” rhetoric. Putin’s regime is doing just fine without your sympathy, better save it for those who have become its victims.
When to start?
You can start right now by helping us to spread this text, translating it into other languages and sending it to comrades. We also strongly encourage you to organize demonstrations in support of Alexander Kolchenko and other political prisoners jailed in Russia from April 1 to 7, 2015. On April 11 and 16 Sentsov’s and Kolchenko’s custodies end, respectively. In the first half of April Lefortovo District Court of Moscow will decide again whether they should await judgment in jail or have the right to exit under the injunction not to leave or under home arrest. Only strong and massive pressure on the Putin regime, protests around the world would give a chance to set our comrades free. We demand their immediate discharge and the end of their prosecution.
More information below
Interview with Alexander Kolchenko
http://noborders.org.ua/en/fields-of-work/other/aleksandr-kolchenko-i-am…
Repressions against Crimean activists: political context
https://avtonom.org/en/news/repressions-against-crimean-activists-politi…
Multilingual Facebook group
www.facebook.com/groups/1444685555784296/
Contact us: freekolchenko[at]gmail.com
Write to Shilan at:
Silan Ozcelik
Prison No: A8733DK
HMP Holloway
Parkhurst Road
London N7 0NU
Shilan (Silhan) Ozcelik, an 18 year-old Kurdish comrade from London, has been held on remand in Holloway prison charged with preparing to commit acts of terrorism. Her charge relates to allegedly trying to join the fight against Daesh (ISIS) in Syria.
Shilan was arrested at Stansted airport in January after returning from a trip to mainland Europe, but appeared in court only last week charged with the offence under section 5 (1)(a) of the Terrorism Act 2006. She is accused of trying to join fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK. It’s the first known prosecution in relation to people in the UK joining the fight against Daesh.
An emergency demo was held outside Holloway on Friday to support her. Shilhan is due to appear at the Old Bailey on 1st April – updates will be shared here if further demos are called.
Undercover is no excuse for abuse. Protest in Cardiff, Tuesday 24th!