On April 9, 2020, Azizel Deniroglou dies in a prison in Thebes. She had had health problems for many days. On the fateful night, she asked for help due to fever and difficulty in breathing. As usual, the service did not pay any attention to her, as a result of which Azizel became another victim of the murderous regime. The reflexes of the State were once again indicative, with the gen. Secretary of anti-crime policy Nikolaou announcing death from “pathological causes”, without waiting for either an examination for the corona or an autopsy.
Azizel’s death confirms the law and the urgency of the demands of the country’s many prisoners, who are calling for measures to protect them due to the Covid 19 pandemic. From simple information on precautions that can be taken to access gloves, masks and antiseptics, to granting leave to sick inmates and disinfection of the prisons. Their main demand, however, is the decongestion of prisons, through the release of vulnerable groups, the elderly or prisoners who have served much of their sentences. Demands that seem self-evident when we talk about places where hundreds of people are stacked in conditions of misery – without access to medicines and medical care, where falling sick almost automatically means transmitting the virus to all prisoners – measures that in a number of countries have already been implemented.
The State ‘s response to the above is as expected. It imposes a number of measures against prisoners’ rights, such as stopping permits and visits, as well as prohibiting the receiving of any object (books, food, etc.) from individuals in solidarity, or their families. Otherwise, it shows complete indifference to their demands, in addition to commitments to decongestion that are never implemented (with the exception of course of the release of former PASOK minister Papantoniou) and assurances from government officials that everything is going well. This, of course, only in cases where prisoners’ requests remain within the “permitted framework”. In cases where prisoners are mobilizing and rebelling, refusing food or to return to their cells, the treatment changes. Threats, calls for “disciplinary action”, retaliatory transfers, the closure of exercise yards, raids by EKAM and MAT and relentless beatings. This happened in the prisons in Korydallos, Larissa, Chania and even in Thebes, in the uprising of the detained woman Azizel on the occasion of her death, where the MAT dragged the prisoners into their cells, sent many to the hospital and did not hesitate to beat a woman held who suffered from epilepsy.
This treatment, no matter how outrageous, does not surprise us. Prisons have always been places where all the people considered problematic by the State have been thrown out of reasons of revenge and control of society through fear. Survival inside them has been and is a secondary issue. After all, the only concern on the part of the State is that these people will not “contaminate”, in general, metaphorically, but at the present time also literally, the social body. That’s why they bury them in tons of cement so that their voices are not even heard.
With the city streets being handed over to cops and people locked in their homes bombarded daily with fear of the “invisible enemy”, the State thinks it is playing in an empty stadium. It obliges employees to work exhaustive hours without any protection against the virus (hospitals, pharmacies, supermarkets, deliveries), gives a minimum wage allowance for some groups of workers and leaves the new wave of laid-off workers to find their own way. The supposed protection measure for employees is equally volatile, as it only requires bosses to guarantee the same number of employees when they reopen their companies and businesses, without any requirement to retain the same employees or the salaries they paid. At the same time, it is bombarding us through the TV channels with the narrative of “individual responsibility”, trying to cover up the fact that the dismantled health system, without sufficient medical equipment (gloves, masks, ICU) is completely insufficient to deal with a pandemic of this magnitude. As for the prisoners, it counts on the fear and indifference it has been trying to cultivate in society for years, as well as on the increased possibilities of direct repression against the struggling sections of society, so that it can leave the prisoners to their fate. And in the case of Azizel, the first (if not the only) concern is to ensure that the image of the government fully in control of the issue of the pandemic is not tarnished.
For us, Azizel’s case is clear. With or without corona, her death is another State-sponsored murder. A completely conscious murder, the causes of which are not limited to the attitude of the guards on duty that day, but are the result of the very condition of the confinement and the misery that it brings. Any such murder is yet another moment when the State is stripped of its democratic face and shows what is hidden under its vulgar narrative of just punishments and “imprisonment”: the harsh condemnation of people in miserable conditions of survival and death.
In the difficult times we are in, we choose not to be “all together” as the government and the media are trying to convince us. We are on the side of the oppressed but also the “invisible” of this society, those who even in “all together” are excluded, imprisoned in prisons and detention centres, homeless, drug addicts, etc. Against the pseudo-solidarity created by the State, the crumbs of sponsorships from various companies and capitalists, against individualism and social cannibalism, we propose the solidarity of the oppressed.
Solidarity with the struggles of the prisoners
Immediate decongestion of prisons
Let’s stand in solidarity against the pandemic of corona and capitalism
Fire to all cells
IN-OUT anti-info and solidarity group for political prisoners
PS : 800 masks sent to the prison of Larissa by comrades of the Squat of Dougrou in larissa city, remain unavailable with the excuse from the chief screw that they could be used in an insurrection. This is the State and the way it treats prisoners.
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