Words of international solidarity with the CCF prisoners, from one of the accused in the “bombs case,” Chile

from culmine, translated by war on society:

From the distance, words arrive translated in the only language we all understand: that of the struggle for freedom. It does not transform any fear, person, name or sign into a fetish; in the anti-authoritarian language that possibility simply does not exist, much less those of leaders, professionals or authorities.

Today, for the moment, I no longer see the grey of the cement surrounding everything in those tombs, but that doesn’t mean that forgetting clouds my mind. The jails, the cells, the jailers and the prisoners remain there… some meters or kilometers away.

Because the prisons here may very much resemble those there, because the sound of the bars and locks must not be very different, however the internal conditions and regimens may vary, FIES (Spain), TIPO-F (Turkey), Maximum Security Units (Chile) share a common structure and objective. Without a doubt the oppressors learn from each other.

Solidarity between imprisoned comrades–between them through the cells, modules, prohibitions, prisons, borders–is the urgency unleashed by the daily and permanent repression.

THROUGH THE WALLS

Rarely do the hoods go up, rarely are barricades or confrontations seen like in the streets, riots are scarce (perhaps the most common confrontation is between the prisoners themselves, encouraged and welcomed by the guards).

The confrontation is routine, daily, minute by minute, the spaces and positions battle constantly, sometimes symbolically and other times in far too real of a way. To reject a prohibition, to break some disciplinary code, to keep communications out of the jailer’s sight, to maintain dignity in social relations. But this exercise of daily revolt, replete with dignity and rebellion that enriches the spirit, also carries a cost, the arrival of repression–threats, delays in opening the cells, hampering the receipt of letters, beatings, isolation, transfers, more threats, segregation, restrictions, prohibitions, or hardening of discipline–these are a small sample of the carceral terrorism.

In the prison, perhaps more explicitly than in the street, the attitudes of prisoners and jailers mark a confrontation of positions within the prison. To not try to improve them, to not try to obtain benefits, to travel by the road of rebellious dignity wherever we may be, to strive to be able to look in the mirror the next day and not see slaves, to not support nor bear domestication.

To the comrades who have managed to avoid this undesirable fate, to the fugitives who have had to choose on the basis of the judgments of power and the arrest warrants issued for them. Even when not passing through the gloomy halls of the prisons or the labyrinths of justice, your path is not exactly more comfortable, and it is to form among the gaze of possible informants, the suspicious passage of police patrols and the constant reinvention of oneself. Comrades of different places, familiar or not, in your path of the unknown, you are not alone.

International solidarity, interprison solidarity and the fluid communication of shouts between different regions across the length of the territories cannot wait for even one second.

Across the distance. Indifference will not be precisely the sensation that is felt during the rituals of punishment that the judicial power practices against those who oppose them. The trials are not mere procedures–in addition to being courts they are spaces where power lets itself be seen with brutality, where it founds and tries to validate and legitimate its order, its world. It is in these trials where, in addition to solidarity with those comrades who they seek to stone to death, it is possible to disseminate and project a complete critique of the fabric of justice, of the legitimacy of their order and the cruel arguments they use to defend their power. The brutality of your special treatment is fertile ground to expand the total critique of their world, it is a continual opportunity that we cannot let pass.

Imprisoned comrades of the CCF, scattered in the different prisons of the Greek territory, which try unsuccessfully to submit you to the carceral rhythm: Panagiotis Argyrou, Michalis Nikolopoulos, Giorgos Nikolopoulos, Gerasimos Tsakalo, Christos Tsakalos, Giorgos Polydoros, Damianos Bolano, Haris Hadjimichelakis, Olga Oikonomidou — indomitable and insubordinate spirits will not appease themselves to a couple of bars, cameras and guards. Nor can their sacrificial rituals in the courts counter the struggle for freedom–even further, these intentions to punish justify once and a thousand times the reason to oppose their world. To each of you, a huge embrace full of strength for times to come.

In these lands, November 28th, 2011 will bring the political trial based on lies and inventions with the single end of criminalizing and imprisoning those who express our total rupture with their values and moral codes.

Political prisoners, prisoners of war, revolutionary prisoners… a strong, sincere and honest embrace to each of you–whatever our differences, the affection for captive revolutionaries remains immune.

With the steadfast memory of all who have fallen! Mauricio Morales, Claudia Lopez, Johnny Cariqueo, Lambros Foundas

 One of the accused for the “caso bombas”
awaiting trial.

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