17th April: International Day in Solidarity with Political Prisoners

Four years have gone by since the Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers Con­fer­ence was held in Donos­tia, Basque Coun­try.

Four years have gone by since the Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers Con­fer­ence was held in Donos­tia. Over there, indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions com­mit­ted to the sol­i­dar­i­ty with polit­i­cal pris­on­ers who suf­fer retal­i­a­tion and against the repres­sion, assumed the task to ini­ti­ate mech­a­nisms to improve our com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the start­ing-up of com­mon ini­tia­tives of report­ing and strate­gies. For that pur­pose, the des­ig­na­tion of April 17 as Inter­na­tion­al Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers was one of the mea­sures that were issued and that, to this day, main­tain all its sig­nif­i­cance and impor­tance.

Today we are con­fronting in var­i­ous places of our plan­et a per­sis­tence of gov­ern­ments of repres­sive mea­sures that lim­it more and more the rights and free­doms of the pop­u­la­tion, an exten­sion and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of prac­tices such as tor­ture, iso­la­tion, and even the phys­i­cal elim­i­na­tion of the polit­i­cal dis­si­dent. It is very clear a seri­ous dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the liv­ing con­di­tions of peo­ple who suf­fer retal­i­a­tion in dif­fer­ent deten­tion and pen­i­ten­tiary arrange­ments. This has also caused the wealth of crim­i­nal­iza­tion each time more acute of the orga­ni­za­tions that work to report the repres­sion and show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the ones who suf­fer retal­i­a­tion.

This way, the liv­ing con­di­tions of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Turkey, the mea­sures of crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the protests per­formed by the Mapuch­es, the uti­liza­tion of war mech­a­nisms against third coun­tries con­duct­ed by the nar­co-gov­ern­ment of Colom­bia, the exten­sion of the “anti-ter­ror­ist” fight to the legit­i­mate polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion­ism and dis­si­dence in Cataluña, Madrid and Italy, the start­ing-up of rad­i­cal mea­sures con­fronting the basic inter­na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion and the respect to the sov­er­eign­ty of third coun­tries con­duct­ed by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and the cre­ation of new spaces out­side the law, like Guan­tanamo or the secret flights with detainees exempt of any rights, the start­ing-up of new deten­tion mea­sures and the length­en­ing of sen­tences sine die in Spain and France, the repres­sion con­tin­u­ing in Sahara or the mil­i­tary aggres­sion to the polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions and civ­il pop­u­la­tion in Pales­tine, the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the ones who show sol­i­dar­i­ty with Basque peo­ple who suf­fer retal­i­a­tion in the Basque con­text…

Let’s make April 17 a day to give voice to these com­plaints and claims, to cre­ate a com­mon space for shared strat­e­gy, a retain­ing wall against these mea­sures that lim­it our rights and free­doms, a meet­ing place for the anti-repres­sive resis­tance. Again we are call­ing on you to work towards these objec­tives and to once more, find each oth­er, rais­ing the flag of sol­i­dar­i­ty with polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

They suf­fer the glob­al­ized repres­sion; let us glob­al­ize the will­ing­ness and the hope.

Inter­na­tion­al Ini­tia­tive for the Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers KALERA
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