Repressive strategies often come in different forms and shapes, depending on the context in which they are actually implemented. At a closer look, though, the aim is always the same: isolating, shutting up, criminalizing.
Whoever in the world wants to fight against an unfair system, for a free information, for his own independence, whoever stands against the main ideology in general, has to face a form of repression which aim not only at the ending of the struggle, but at discouraging its reprise too. That is why today we have chosen to talk about jails and preventive repression, but also we want to tell the horrifying story of Jon Anza.
We put them together because we see them as part of an European repressive strategy, and because as terrible the sentence inflicted by the state may be, and whatever the state inflicting it is, leaving alone the comrades who undergo such a condemn, only fuels further this plan. Whether it is about standing on Jon’s comrades side when they try to reveal his death as a state murder, or showing our solidarity to Manolo and Costantino, regardless on the specific charge against them, this seems to us to be the only break through against such a repressive system.
On the 18th of April 2009 a basque separatist militant, Jon Anza, gets on a train at Baiona station, in Spain, directed to Toulouse, France. At that moment, he doesn’t know yet that it will be the last train ride of his life. Three days later Jon’s family reports his disappearance while Eta separatist movement declares that Jon is a militant of the organization who was supposed to take a considerable amount of money to Toulouse. The state’s medias, which have no problems in trample on their dignity, push for the hypothesis of Jon running away with the money. But the basque people immediately understands that it is just the last move of the “dirty war” fought by the Spanish state against the separatist militants. Eleven months of silence. It’s the story of a desaparecido in the heart of Europe. Only a month ago the Spanish authorities declared that they “found” Jon’s corpse in a hospital obituary in Toulouse. The authorities declared to his family that Jon was found the 29th of April 2009 by the fireman in a park in Toulouse, seriously injured and with all the symptoms of a heart attack. Taken to the hospital he will die 13 days later. From the 18th, day of the departure, to the 29th of April, there are eleven days of nothing. Eleven days that make us shudder.
It is the ultimate upgrade of the “guerra sucia”, although we reckon that until now kidnappings of political prisoners and tortures by the Spanish Antiterrorism have been definitely not extraordinary events. Spain, as other European countries, did not wait to gear up to fight a war on every level against whoever might be suspected of “social dangerousness”. The most clear example is the FIES, a special jail regime. This regime, which may last indefinitely, imposes a nearly total isolation; the little courtyards for the out of cell time are fenced with iron; strip searches take place repeatedly; arbitrary expositions to X rays; physical tortures; pharmacological treatments with psychotropic drugs. The modules are planned and divided in five sections which include people catalogued basing on their social dangerousness: FIES I- people who took part in riots and actions against the system and the authorities, or tried to escape. FIES II- people charged for drug traffic and money laundering. FIES III- suspects of being part of revolutionary organizations. FIES IV- it includes state security forces to protect their integrity; FIES V- antimilitarists and those who rouse social alert (*by autprol).
These cases perfectly fit in the European strategy on repression matter. We have been assisting for years at some kind of mutual aid between European states and European Union, as when one of the states adopts a more effective policy, more adapt to reach the goals (and often more ferocious), then the EU formalizes the law on a general level, fixing a standard. The recent Italian’s security act is a perfect example, as it has become, after some initial criticisms, the model of re-enforcing European borders from the immigration flaws.
Often the situation in jails, even though similar overall, it is different as for the consequences and the repercussions on the comrades arrested. In France the inmates face a total isolation, from the outside world as well as from the inside of the prison itself, following the international idea to isolate as much as possible political prisoners from the common ones. In these cases any kind of internal organization becomes really difficult and even who is used to fight, finds himself to face a total annihilation, consequence of the complete isolation. The number of riots lowers down- and that’s the point Europe was aiming to reach- but the suicides in jail keep increasing. In France (but it is not very much different in the other European countries) we see an exponential increasing, which raises every year more.
Moving a bit more on the eastern side and attempting to leave the EU borders, it is possible to notice another phenomena.
The adaption to the EU standard in matter of repression to favor the its own country’s EU membership. Presently in Turkey, just in the imminent event of the country joining the EU, reports on the conditions of the prisoners in jails are appearing everywhere. Just to get a feeling, in Turkish jails almost 80% of prisoners belong to Kurdish population – out of which a considerable chunk are there because of been members or having supported the PKK – and the life conditions in prison do not go beyond the survival level. As already happened in the EU states years back, in Turkey has been introduced a law on cooperation which guarantees conditions above the prisoners’ average, obviously only in exchange of delations. The issue of life conditions in prison is more and more present in comrades’ campaigns all over Europe, so much that it would be quite difficult to make an up to date report here in this editorial. What we would like to notice, though, is that the level of attention that in Italy is paid on international campaigns is indirectly proportional to the attention paid on internal issues, regarding which the preferred choice becomes often the silence.
Coming back to the Italian cases, the repression tries to take moves on a big scale toward the preventive level, using the precautionary measures of arresting before the charge for the arrest has been actually proven. We can refer at the recent case of Luca and Pasquale, antifascists from Verona, which have suffered house arrests before the final condemn to 8 months with suspended punishment was even emitted. Condemn which is far weaker then the preventive measures they have suffered.
But we also think at the association crime (270bis) charged on Manolo and Costantino, detained first in Rebibbia jail and then moved to Siano-Catanzaro’s prison, special prison for political prisoners, with the accusation of being part of the “new Red Brigades”, before the emission of any kind of verdict of guilty against them. It is a preventive measure but it has the form of a detention that not only exceeds the presumption of innocence, but that aims also at the complete isolation of the comrades. It is just at “cautionary title” that they were not allowed to get in touch with their lowyer, to speak with their families, but in particular, as usually happens when even the legal barrier is crossed, the comrades have been kept in isolation for the first month of detention. Even today, after the have been moved in Siano, waiting still for the first hearing of the trial, it is not possible to write at the comrades since they undergo a total mail censorship. The negative tendency we would like to report is that often the crime charged against them generates an isolation first of all by that part of the movement that favours to keep quite in these cases, preferring not to stand with whom undergo such serious attacks, attacks that in fact aim at the political and personal annihilation of the accused comrades.
This editorial is meant to highlight once more on the one side the links between repression and the EU, which nowadays are fused together in one single strategy applied and applicable not only within the countries belonging to the EU but also in the ones which aim at becoming members, and on the other side the need of keeping an active and high level of solidarity to whom is hit by the such a repression not allowing the ultimate aim of such a strategy to be accomplished: the isolation of the comrades.