Η περίπτωση του John Bowden
Ο John Bowden είναι ένας βαρυποινίτης που πολιτικοποιήθηκε μέσα στη βαρβαρότητα της φυλακής κι ανέπτυξε δράση υπερασπιζόμενος την αξιοπρέπεια των κρατουμένων. Από το 1980 που συνελήφθη, οι μόνες ελευθερίας του ήταν στη διάρκεια μιας απόδρασής του το 1992 μέχρι το 1994 οπότε ξανασυνελήφθη. Έκτοτε, απέκτησε επαφέ με αναρχικούς, όπως τους εθελοντές του Αναρχικού Μαύρου Σταυρού του Brighton. Ο John, 50 ετών πλέον, έχει μεταφερθεί σε φυλακές χαμηλής ασφαλείας ενώ προετοιμαζόταν να αποφυλακιστεί τον Ιούνη. Ωστόσο η τελευταία αίτηση αποφυλάκισής του απορρίφθηκε μετά την έκθεση ενός Matthew Stillman, ο οποίος είναι επίσης κρατούμενος, που εκτελεί εναλλακτική ποινή (παροχή κοινωνικής εργασίας). Οι κατηγορίες που του προσάπτει ο Stilman είναι οι εξής: Ο “Bowden αλληλογραφεί με ένα website αυτοαποκαλούμενων αναρχικών, ονόματι ABC Brighton, και δηλώνει ότι υποστηρίζει πολλές από τις ιδέες και τις δράσεις τους. Μια ματιά στο site τους εγείρει αμφιβολίες για τη φύση της ομάδας αυτής. Τα μέλη της φαίνεται να είναι περισσότερο οικο-τρομοκράτες ή παραστρατιωτικές ομάδες που εμπλέκονται σε κάτι που θεωρούν μάχες εναντίον του πολιτικού συστήματος και των αξιών." Oι ισχυρισμοί του Stillman έγιναν δεκτοί, κι έτσι η αίτηση αποφυλάκισης του John απορρίφθηκε. Ο Αναρχικός Μαύρος Σταυρός του Brighton απορρίπτει κατηγορηματικά αυτούς τους εξωφρενικούς κι αβάσιμους χαρακτηρισμούς, που στοχεύουν στην απόδοση τόσο στην ομάδα όσο και στον κρατούμενο μιας ταμπέλας "τρομοκράτη" ώστε να μεθοδευτεί η απομόνωση κι εξόντωσή τους, και καλούν σε αλληλεγγύη με τον John Bowden.
Στις 2μμ θα πραγματοποιηθεί συγκέντρωση διαμαρτυρίας έξω από το κοινοβούλιο της Σκωτίας, στο Εδιμβούργο.
Για επικοινωνία με τον κρατούμενο: John Bowden, 6729, HMP Glenochil, King O' Muir Road, Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, FK10 3AD. Scotland.
Για επιστολές διαμαρτυρίας κ.λπ στη διεύθυνση των φυλακών: Scottish Prison Service Headquarters, Communications Branch, Room 338, Calton House, 5 Redheughs Rigg, Edinburgh, EH12 9HW. Scotland E-mail: gaolinfo@sps.gov.uk
Το επίμαχο website του ABC Brighton: http://www.brightonabc.org.uk/
Φίλοι του John Bowden: http://www.myspace.com/friendsofjohnbowden
Ανακοίνωση του John Bowden:
Statement of John Bowden for the International Day of Solidarity in Defence of Himself and the ABC:
Friday 25th May 2007 "To describe a perfectly legitimate prisoner support group as "terrorist" and to punish and victimise a prisoner associated with that group, speaks volumes about the current mentality pervading the administration of the British prison system. Just as the accusation of "terrorism is now being used arbitarily by the state in Britain to criminalise and outlaw increasingly wider areas of political dissent and opposition, so any radical resistance to the prison system by groups with a revolutionary perspective is now threatened with the "terrorist" label. The recent claims of prison social worker Matt Stillman concerning the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) might be bizarre and ridiculous in the extreme, but in its subsequent treatment of me the prison authorities have clearly shown that it subscribes to Stillman's views and they have sent out a message to other prisoners that any contact with groups like the ABC will be seen as tantamount to supporting "terrorism", with all the consequences that would trigger in terms of increased repression and prolonged imprisonment. "For many years in jail my struggle in pursuit of prisoners' rights, and my contact with prisoner support groups on the outside, was described as "subversive" by the prison authorities; now the label "terrorist" is applied and the political atmosphere has hardened to the extent to which my release is currently being opposed on the explicitly stated grounds that I am connected with a "terrorist" group (the ABC.) "This criminalisation of radical prisoner support activity MUST be resisted and challenged vehemently, and absolutely no quarter given on our right to openly support prisoners in struggle."
Παλιότερη αρκετά ενδιαφέρουσα συνέντευξή του υπάρχει στα αγγλικά στο: www.indymedia.org.uk/
Γράμμα του John από τις φυλακές του Glenochil: http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/
Κείμενο του Αναρχικού Μαύρου Σταυρού του Leeds: www.wombles.org.uk/
2η ημέρα διεθνούς αλληλεγγύης
Η Παρασκευή 13 Ιούλη ορίστηκε ως ημέρα διεθνούς αλληλεγγύης με τον John και τον Αναρχικό Μαύρο Σταυρό.
Για πολλά χρόνια στη φυλακή, ο αγώνας μου για τα δικαιώματα των κρατουμένων, η επαφή μου με ομάδες υποστήριξης κρατουμένων απ' έξω, περιγραφόταν ως "ανατρεπτική" από τις αρχές των φυλακών. Τώρα χρησιμοποιείται η ταμπέλα "τρομοκρατική" και το πολιτικό κλίμα έχει επιβαρυνθεί σε σημείο να μου αρνούνται την αποφυλάκισή μου βασισμένοι σε μια εξαιρετικά σαθρή κατηγορία που με διασυνδέει με μια "τρομοκρατική οργάνωση" (τον αναρχικό μαύρο σταυρό). Αυτή η ποινικοποίηση της ριζοσπαστικής υποστήριξης κρατουμένων ΠΡΕΠΕΙ να βρει μια απάντηση και να αντικρουστεί βίαια, χωρίς να παραχωρήσουμε ούτε κομματάκι από το δικαίωμά μας να υποστηρίζουμε ανοιχτά τους αγωνιζόμενους κρατουμένους. - John Bowden
Για επικοινωνία με τον κρατούμενο: John Bowden, 6729, HMP Glenochil, King O' Muir Road, Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, FK10 3AD. Scotland.
Για περισσότερες πληροφορίες: http://www.myspace.com/friendsofjohnbowden
Παραθέτουμε εδώ τη συνέντευξη του John Bowden στο Schnews
John Bowden was arrested in 1980 for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1992, after years of brutality and repression, he managed to escape and was on the run from the police for a year and a half. He was recaptured in March 1994 and has since been in Perth Prison in Scotland. Here he talks about various aspects of being inside, including the reasons as to why he committed murder and his subsequent politicisation.
- How do you justify asking for our support, having taken a life?
The murder itself cannot be looked upon as an isolated incident, it has to be tied in with my history. Being identified as Irish I experienced racism as well as extreme poverty very early on in life. Unfortunately my instinctive rebellion against both sets of disadvantages was always blind and misdirected. I rebelled early by committing serious anti-social acts (I burnt a factory to the ground when I was nine!) and so was criminalised and incarcerated quite early on in life. I was fed into the ‘criminal justice system’ as a mere child and systematically brutalised and de-socialised to the extent where I became a complete outsider, made hard and violent by institutionalisation and predatory in my relationship to ‘straight’ society.
The writer Norman Mailer has drawn some interesting and profoundly accurate parallels between the condition of ‘state raised convicts’ (people who had literally grown up in penal institutions) and that of the rebellious slaves sold into the gladiator schools of ancient Rome. Both groups suffered extreme dehumanisation and were turned into killers - the gladiators so that they would kill each other for the entertainment of the rich; the state raised convicts so that they would represent the ultimate social folk devil from which ‘normal’ society must be protected and carefully policed against.
By the time I had reached my early twenties I had already spent the bulk of my time locked away in various prison-type institutions and had accumulated a long criminal record, composed mostly of violent offences, which were becoming increasingly more violent. There was therefore a certain inevitability about my arrest for murder in 1980 and subsequent imprisonment for life. Within a year of being sentenced I was involved in a highly publicised hostage taking incident at Parkhurst Prison when an assistant governor was seized in protest over the murder of a prisoner in the hospital wing. I was sentenced to an additional ten years imprisonment, on top of life, and buried in solitary confinement for over four years. At that point my life was effectively over, and yet in a very real sense it was only just beginning. Somehow in the midst of all that hopelessness, pain and repression I actually began to discover my true humanity and experienced a process of deep politicisation which drew me closer to my fellow prisoners and oppressed people everywhere. From a brutalised and anti social criminal I metamorphasised into a totally committed revolutionary.
My politicisation happened while I was being held in solitary confinement and I suppose it had the intensity of a religious conversion almost. I was held in solitary for over four consecutive years at one point and so read and thought a great deal, and began to make connections between the struggle that I’d been fighting all of my life, albeit in an individualistic and self-destructive way, and the far wider struggles of oppressed people everywhere. I was also radicalised by my direct experience of struggle in prison essentially because in its treatment of rebellious prisoners, the state always reveals its true nature which of course is pure fascism. Revolutionary politics helped me to properly contextualise my struggle in prison and also to sustain and inspire me when I experienced repression of the most brutal and soul-destroying sort.
...Malcolm X once described prisons as universities of revolution. I discovered myself in prison and also a sort of freedom that I had never before known - my body might have been imprisoned but my mind and spirit became completely liberated...
- What’s it like being in prison?
The pain of my recapture and the soul-destroying reality of being back in prison wounded me terribly and at one point caused me to contemplate offering up my life in one final struggle against the system - but then you made contact and I felt as if I still had some link with the outside.
Life here is much the same; I eat, I exercise, I sleep. Someone once described prisons as huge human battery farms, designed simply to warehouse people and maintain their biological existence. We’re fed (badly), clothed and housed in tiny boxes devoid of even the most basic human comforts. Though physically sustained men are spiritually crushed and driven insane almost routinely.
One day there will be a ‘carnival of the oppressed’ (my favourite description of revolution) and these bastards will be held accountable for their actions.
During summer prison becomes even harder to endure and accept and right now my longing for freedom is so painfully overwhelming and desperate. I want to be away from this awful place and free to wander with the sun on my face and the sounds and colours of summer all around me.
There are moments here, especially in the early mornings when I first awake and struggle to make the psychological adjustment from dreams of freedom to the hard edged reality of captivity, when I feel totally overwhelmed by depression and deep deep sadness. It sometimes requires a real Herculean effort of will power just to climb upright each morning and endure yet another soul-destroying day in this place, another day filled with dead time and frustrated desires, with such a desperate craving for freedom. Prison is a veritable evil exactly because it is so deliberately designed and structured to destroy the human spirit. I feel that psychological and emotional violence very keenly.
The experience of such extreme oppression, however, will never break or diminish me because in a sense I’ve been held captive all my life and so have grown hardened to their efforts of breaking me. Being imprisoned wounds and injures me but never will it touch my essential core, that vital source of strength and resistance. Despite all the pain and hardship of prison, I do somehow manage to survive with dignity and integrity and even humour.
...no matter how overwhelmingly bad the odds, retain a powerful hope and belief in the possibility of struggle and a far better world as a result of it...
I’m fortunate that I have apolitical perspective on prisons and so can universalise my struggle and relate it to the struggle of oppressed people everywhere. That awareness does provide a real source of strength and hope in this situation. In prison, especially you learn to understand the importance of collective struggle and mutual support and there really is no way that I could endure and survive this experience merely as an individual prisoner, depending on my own individual dreams and hopes.
- How important is it to write to prisoners?
Prison, more than anything, is designed to isolate and alienate people from any source of support on the outside, and it is exactly that sensation of isolation that often destroys prisoner activists and political prisoners especially. There is no greater feeling of demoralisation than that created by the feeling that one is completely alone and isolated here, because no matter how strong or committed one is we all still need to feel that we are part of a much wider struggle with comrades supporting and assisting us even if they are not physically present. If I know that people on the outside recognise and support my struggle here in prison then I can endure and continue to resist infinitely even if buried in the deepest solitary confinement unit. Your own expressions of solidarity are a constant inspiration and source of so much that makes life bearable at the moment. A single letter is always sufficient to restore my belief in struggling on and reaching beyond all that presently exists to oppress and crush me.
Support John Bowden!