Many of us are spontaneously and long since aware of it: prisons are places of ethical, humane, moral and cultural decay. There is no desire for life, freedom, humaneness conveyed there but instead the guards and any other staff treat the detainees as dead objects; they manage people as piece goods in a storehouse.

So prisons are necrophiliac places.

It was only a few weeks ago that a prison inmate – who was kept in solitary confinement for a couple of years after having broken a guard’s nose with a headbutt in 2012 – was starved to death in Germany.

Koala Rosmane was only 33 years old; he came from Burkina Faso, where he had been forcibly recruited as a child soldier.

After his death, a lawyer brought charges against the competent administration of the detention facility, as a right-wing extremist network was operating on the inside. Surprisingly the prison director, Thomas Müller, was suspended after the death of Koala Rosmane. They had knowingly let him die (in Bruchsal prison).

This may illustrate what we are supposed to imagine under a necrophiliac place.

What we set against that is our love for freedom, life, diversity and colourfulness. Certainly the fight for freedom also means to make sacrifices because the state power will do anything to retain further control.

Freedom is not given; we need to take it, fight for it and defend it.

Whenever they put us in their prisons, trying to silence us by all means, a solidarity movement outside the prison walls is vital for our survival.

For life and freedom!

Thomas Meyer-Falk
currently held at JVA Freiburg

source: antiknasttage2014 via machorka

* the Anti-Prison Days take place in Vienna between the 7th and 9th of November 2014

http://en.contrainfo.espiv.net/2014/10/22/german-prisons-thomas-meyer-falk-a-contribution-to-the-2014-anti-prison-days-in-vienna/