A System That Destroys Human Beings.

     Prisons are never welcoming places, they are there to repress and intimidate, but it is difficult to imagine the depth of deprivation and inhumanity into which the Greek prison system has collapsed. The prison hospitals are really misnamed, they are no more than human disease incubators, and the prisons are not far behind them. This is a supposed, developed European country in the 21st. century, but has all the qualities of pre-middle ages conditions. The State's treatment of those it considers a threat to its power are always dealt with in the most brutal manner, no matter where that state exists. There is nothing in the rule book that says that it couldn't happen here.

Greece's Korydallos Prison Hospital

This from Contra Info:  

       Regardless of a “typical” dispute between an anarchist and a prosecutor, whose CV surely contains many more cruel accomplishments and sad stories that remain in the dark, I have to focus on what “special detention wings” actually mean. In order for her to be assured that her command was executed, her insanity and vengefulness have led her to the disciplinary wings for the first time. She didn’t pay much attention though to what this place, where she sends so many people, really is. Obviously, her time is too precious to care about the fact that 20-25 people live in nine 2m×2m cells in a 25m×0.5m narrow corridor, while in some cells 4 people live with 2 mattresses on the floor and with literally no space to step on. Obviously, the fact that there is only one double bunk bed and a toilet with improvised flushing without a door or even a partition in these cells, whilst they also lack windows, sink, tables, chairs, heater and a refrigerator, is not important. Obviously, the fact that the whole area is dipped in filth and stench, that is now impossible to remove, is of no importance. Trash everywhere, cockroaches, mice and germs compose an actual sanitary bomb.

       Obviously, the fact that the prisoners constantly ask for de-worming and cleaning materials in order to clean the cells themselves, as the cleaning crew doesn’t come here like it does to the other wings, and the fact that the prison authorities never give these things to them, is not important. Obviously, the fact that the things that the prisoners order, only come once in a while, is not important. Obviously, the fact that the prison yard, which is a 5m×5m concrete hole with barbed wire serving as a ceiling, is never accessible to them, is not important. Obviously, the fact that there is only one shower for all the prisoners, from which you come out dirtier than before, only one outdated and dirty water cooler and only two pay phones, out of which only one is working, is not important. Obviously, the fact that there is a rickety electrical table and rickety plugs ideal for electrocution and in some cells, like mine, instead of a plug there are two bare electric wires, which results in prisoners making improvised constructions, is of no importance. One of my cellmates, without realizing what he was doing and because he was trying to help me, was carving the bare wires with a plastic knife until I stopped him. Obviously, the fact that the disciplinary wings were closed down after a sanitary inspection, but were re-opened after a superficial painting of the walls, is not important! Obviously, these things are not important since the locks and the camera, the only things considered important here, are also the only things that function properly in this storehouse for souls.

Read the full article HERE:

Most Greek prisons are grossly overcrowded.

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Solidarity Has No Borders.

      The hunger strike by thousands of prisoners in prisons all over Greece, is still ongoing. One of the prisoners on hunger strike has been removed to hospital and more are joining this nation wide protest. The full horror of the Greek prison system, the overcrowding, degrading inhuman conditions of the prisons and prison hospitals should be shouted from the roof tops. Prison governors are refusing to take any more prisoners, due to gross over-crowding. These are middle ages conditions, in so called developed democratic 21st. century Europe. 

 A photograph smuggled out of a Greek prison hospital.

Governors are refusing to take any more prisoners due to overcrowding.

This update on the hunger strike from Contra Info:

      As of June 27th (5th day of mass hunger strike), more inmates have joined the hunger strike in the prison of Corfu, taking courage from the warm supportive intervention outside the extermination centre.
On the same day, the network of imprisoned fighters called for solidarity with the ongoing struggle in Greek prisons, referring also to the case of hunger striker Nicolò Angelino, hostage of the Italian State.
       In the night of the 27th, the inmates in all wings of Koridallos men’s prison refused to be locked up in the cells for one hour (until 10pm), protesting because there is a huge lack of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, like stretcher bearers, in the prison and its ‘hospital’ in particular, but also due to the fact that the screws have declared a ‘work stoppage’, thus actually blocking visits between the prisoners and their lawyers or relatives.
Since the 28th of June (6th day of mass hunger strike), protest mobilizations have intensified ahead of voting, on Thursday, July 3rd, 2014, of the new draft law on maximum security prisons.
       In the morning of the 28th, five incarcerated comrades currently on hunger strike were moved to the infirmary in Koridallos men’s prison, namely Yannis Michailidis, Argyris Ntalios and Nikos Romanos, as well as CCF members Michalis Nikolopoulos and Panagiotis Argirou. Meanwhile, over 30 hunger strikers have been transferred there already. As expected, the prison director Maria Stefi (whose car was blown up by anarchists in 2013) has demonstrated a total disregard for their health condition sending most of them quickly back to the wings.
       On June 29th (7th day of mass hunger strike), more hunger strikers reportedly had a fainting episode at Koridallos.
ACTIVE SOLIDARITY WITH THE PRISONERS’ STRUGGLE

Solidarity has no borders.

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European Prison System At Its Worst.

        Today sees the start of a mass hunger strike by prisoners in Greek prisons. The conditions in Greek prisons are sub-human, to refer to them as “third world” would be insulting to those “third world” countries. Every prison in Greece is massively over crowded, as the government gets on with its crushing repression of any resistance to their “austerity” plans, at the dictate of the Troika, (EC European Commission, ECB European Central Bank, IMF International Mankind Fuckers).

        Forget about Golden Dawn, the present Greek government is marching along the road to fascism all by its self, and needs no lessons from that band of thugs. It has instituted mass concentration camps for immigrants, where conditions are deplorable.

          Prison hospitals in Greece are are without doubt the worst in Europe. All this is quietly accepted by the European Union, as they are fully aware that for their austerity and privatisation plans to continue, all resistance must be crushed. Greece is the experiment that is being watch carefully by the financial Mafia, if they get away with it, it could become their preferred template for the rest of Europe, if and when needed.

          It is not just the conditions that are driving the victims of the Greek prison system to take drastic action, it is a raft of new legislation that will condemn some to life in prison without hope of release. If ever there was a case for pan-European solidarity, surely this is it.

This from Contra Info:

ANNOUNCEMENT OF HUNGER STRIKE
      From June 18th, 2014, prisoners in all Greek prisons have abstained from prison meals as a way of protest against the fascist bill for type C prisons, and in defense of the right to furlough and release on parole.
      However the minister of Justice and the government insist on ignoring our protest. They have not responded in any way to our just demands, and provocatively aim to pass the bill in summer sessions of the parliament, in their attempt to prevent people’s reaction.
       Against this bill which condemns us to remain prisoners for life without rights or hope, we put our bodies and souls as a shield. This is the only thing we have left.
     From Monday, June 23rd, 2014 we start a mass hunger strike in all prisons across Greece. We claim our rights, and we fight to remain humans, instead of human shadows locked up and forgotten into despair.
We demand:
     1) The withdrawal of the fascist bill for type C prisons. We say no to the Greek Guantanamo, a prison within a prison, without furloughs, without visitations, without tomorrow…

Read the full article and the full list of demands HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Finances Inhumanity To Man.

        How far has the social structure of Greece been crushed since the "help" from the financial Mafia and the Troika, (EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers) was first given to that unfortunate country? Apart from the 27% unemployment, approximately 60% among the young,  the doubling of suicides since 2010, the rocketing figures of homeless, the epidemic of substance abuse, and the massive increase in hunger and deprivation, there has been an increase in the prison population to the situation of gross overcrowding and inhumanity, as well as an unprecedented increase in immigrants being held in filthy overcrowded detention centres, (concentration camps).

         As the following extract shows, even in the prison hospitals, this inhumanity has reach new levels of inhumanity. It is difficult to believe that this is a 21st. century country in "modern" Europe. It is however, a level quite acceptable to the powers that be, as they continue their plundering of the public purse in an endeavour to regain some of their gambling losses. 

 

       Besides, prisoners’ fight is a struggle for survival and a one-way road, considering that complaints sketch out an obscure Medieval-inspired stage set. Two hundred and nine (209) patients at the prison hospital ward are cramped to suffocation in filthy “warehouses” fit for 60 people. All are suffering from severe, particularly contagious and painful diseases and 131 are HIV-positive. The number of cases of scabies, TB etc remains to be determined.
      Medical care provided consists in just two (!) permanent physicians, while the relevant appeal for the obligatory public prosecutor’s supervision as required by law has crushed into the indifference of the people responsible, who in fact claim that they “have a family” and are thus unable to enter the premises.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk