Coronavirus And Prisons.

        While all of us try to take what precautions we can in protecting ourselves, friends, family and neighbours from this Coronavirus attack, perhaps we should also be thinking of those who can do nothing to protect themselves from this pandemic.
      I am of course talking about those individuals locked up in the state's cages of repression, the prisons. Most prisons are overcrowded, conditions are far from perfect hygiene, due to lack of facilities, ideal conditions for the spread of infections, with the individual having no control over their conditions. Prison guards live in the outside society and make constant contact with the prisoners. They could be carriers of the infection into an environment that has no way of protecting itself.
      What is being done to protect these individuals? Absolutely nothing, and the prisoners and their families are well aware of this lack of assistance for this section of society in our community.
      In certain cases the prisoners themselves are trying to draw attention to their precarious, and yet avoidable situation, and are rebelling against this gross injustice. We owe them our full support and solidarity, they are being treated worse than animals. They are being contained in unacceptable conditions no matter the dangers to their health and well-being. Prisons in normal times are an abomination, in times such as this, they are a callous, vindictive gross injustice and totally inhuman and unacceptable institutions.

This from Anarchists Worldwide:

For the spread of the revolt!
     About the mutinies in Italian prisons against the state’s measures against Coronavirus       For several weeks now the Italian government has been testing increasingly radical measures to restrict freedom in order to manage the Coronavirus pandemic.
       While isolation and control are becoming increasingly harsh on the outside, the situation is becoming unbearable on the inside. For two weeks now, the visits, work and recreational activities have been restricted. In recent days, people who were on day-release are no longer allowed to go out and special permissions are no longer allowed. This also means the deprivation of access to basic necessities and goods (food, clean clothing, money…).
      Following these decisions, the first mutinies broke out on Saturday the 7th of March, spreading to around thirty prisons in the space of two days throughout Italy.
       The methods of revolt are simple and effective. From the north to the south of Italy, fire spread from one prison to another, prisoners climbed to the rooftops shouting “freedom and amnesty!”, prison guards were taken hostage, bars were twisted, official documents were reduced to ashes. There are no more traces of law enforcement officers in some wings of the buildings. In Modena, the entire prison closed down because the revolts made it unusable.
The figures that are beginning to circulate speak of more than a hundred escaped prisoners. We wish them good luck!      As the smoke rises high in the sky, relatives and people in solidarity gather at the bottom of the prisons, either to shout their support or to organize street blockades, thus blocking the arrival of the police, the GOM (prison police) and the military.
     The revolt is intense, the repression is ferocious: water and electricity cuts, helicopters flying over the prison walls, police violence…There are at least 12 dead in several prisons. The bourgeois press and the prison administration speak of overdoses following the looting of infirmaries, however relatives of the prisoners [gathered in solidarity outside the prisons] have heard gunshots. And several prisoners are hospitalized in intensive care.
     At the same time, politicians of all kinds are trying to pacify by offering access to telephones or Skype, while asking families to calm their loved ones…but it hasn’t been enough to break their determination.
We send them all our solidarity!
     We don’t need to make analyses of the current revolts, they speak for themselves of the attack on a system that locks up and controls through fear and threats.
       By relying on an urgency and a generalized fear that they have helped to create, the different states place themselves as saviours in the face of the catastrophe and impose their logic and their measures on us. They compete in inventiveness to deepen control and surveillance and experiment with different tools for population management.
       Moreover, France is talking about setting up a specific system for prisons in the coming days.
       Apart from these situations, the reality of prisons is always disgusting.
Faced with imprisonment, there are always good reasons to revolt!

Coronavirus or not, in Italy or elsewhere, fire to all prisons!

March 11th, 2020.
[Originally published on Nantes Indymedia on 12.03.2020]

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