Grevena March 31st 2016
Prisoners detained in Grevena prison co-signed this letter and sent it to the Ministry of Justice to inform officials regarding the following demands which relate to our day to day survival in this ”correctional facility”. Officials must ensure these demands are fulfilled as a minimum gesture of humane treatment towards people with deviant behaviour, since their implementation is commanded by the -violated against us- penal code. For the past two weeks we asked to organize a committee that will manage the issues affecting us, but the fascists running the prison with authoritarianism refused this in the complain letter we sent to the ministry.
Before the upcoming visit of the Minister of Justice we asked for a meeting where a few members of the committee would present him with our demands. We provided the names of the committee members to the inspecting prison guard who deceived us as he had an understanding with and was following the orders of the cowardly fascist bully who runs prison but also the corruption that reigns here. What they did was to create a fake committee, composed of people irrelevant with these issues, a committee of ”their own boys”, snitches, who planned on deceiving the minister since their purpose was to have our demands previously mailed to the ministry not fulfilled and to make fun of the institutions.
This kind of manipulation from the fascist extremist prison manager, explicitely demonstrates his guilt and frustration in the possibility of these issues becoming considered by the minister, issues we unfortunately have to live with in this ”correctional” facility. The fascist and extremist behaviour of the management does not affect us because we know we are dealing with people who like to concentrate power with impressive arrogance and to mostly abuse this power against people who based on their status are in an adverse position. But we are affected by the stance of the inspecting district attorney of the correctional insitution who does not want to get involved and washes his hands as another Pontius Pilate wanting to shake off responsibility prompting us to the ministry despite the fact that these issues should be solved by the prison management.
Following extensive communication with the assistant of the Secretary General of the Ministtry we were informed that he has all the information. But that is not the point since our goal is to immediately resolve the fundamental problems we are facing and not to start a blame game. We feel very disappointed from the stance of the Ministry of Justice, of the ‘second time left-wing government’ which instead of proceeding to inspections to identify these very obvious problems and pay attention to people who express a certain set of behaviours and do not abide by the dictates of the system of government and as an extent the constitution regaridng the issue of equal treatment and equality before the law as well as the non-negotiable protection of human rights, he answers that these demands will be examined based on the priority number, without having given us a certain time-frame. We are saddened by the indifference of the Ministry, we did not anticipate this and it contradicts the political declarations of the officials, something that reinforces our belief that the current administration tends to become an integral part of the old political regime with the only difference that it now shamelessly uses leftism as an excuse.
Until our demands are fulfilled, we refuse midday lock-down. We call on everyone fighting against fascism and considering the defence of human rights as the greatest duty, to stand by our side so we could fight united these phenomena and put them away in the cabinets of history once again.
WE DEMAND:
*decent meals (in terms of quality and quantity) that would suffice for adults
*Free healthcare and provisison of medications
*Systematic provisions of furloughs to all those who are entitled to them
* to re- activate the inactive social worker and to provide help to all resourceless prisoners, regarding basic products that are very necessary
*daily distribution of letters and money from the mail man of the of ”correctional” facility as it happens everywhere else
*to get a receipt with every purchase from the ”correctional facility” for self- evident reasons
Vasileios Demakis, member of the struggle committee
(via Athens Indymedia, translated by BlackCat)
https://insurrectionnewsworldwide.com/2016/04/08/greece-dire-consequences-of-detention-corruption-authoritarianism-in-grevena-prison/