Why would we keep quiet?
Damaging adults or minors, jails have always been shaken by revolts. Regardless of the name by which penitentiary institutions are called, several facts remain: the sound of a key in the lock of a cell is a daily torture; solitary confinement is an abomination; reaching the end of visiting time is a pain; and awaiting the end of one’s sentence slowly kills .
In May 2011, most of the detainees of the Lavaur Etablissement Penitentaire pour Mineurs (Youth Detention Center — hereon referred as EPM) riot and vandalize dozens
of cells. The response of the Administration Penitentiaire (Penitentiary Administration — hereon referred to as AP) and Protection Judiciaire de la Jeunesse (juvenile justice system — hereon referred to as PJJ) is sadly common: solitary confinement, hearing before a disciplinary board, transfers, and raids conducted by Equipes Regionales d’Intervention et de Sécurité (a masked special unit created to suppress prison riots — hereon referred to as ERIS).
Employees of the PJJ further destroy juvenile delinquents in an effort to prevent them from rioting. Meanwhile, the employees seize opportunities to complain to the media about their work conditions and that the « kids [are] beyond help. »
Thus, the discourse carried by the local and national papers and other media puppets
of law enforcement officials manages to fool some, but not everyone. A certain number of individuals touched by the anger expressed by the young detainees decide to demonstrate their solidarity. In their effort to learn the young detainees’ version of the facts, in their search for the means to broadcast it, and in their effort to break the unanimous condemnation of their revolt, these individuals express to those inside the prison walls that those on the outside think about them and organize in their support.
Supporters of the young detainees visit the Lavaur EPM as often as possible during visitation hours in order to speak with relatives of the detainees. This simple act surprises, disturbs and upsets the local authorities who rush to call the police in order to keep any exchange from happening.
On July 5th, 2011, about ten people entered the PJJ Inter-regional Headquarters in Labège (located in the suburbs of Toulouse) to protest against underage imprisonment. According to the July 6th, 2011 edition of the news publication, La Depeche — which is based on Prosecutor Valet’s immediate press statement — these people were « ‘armed’ with bottles filled with liquid, which they poured over the desks and computers. A brown liquid — resembling the odor of ammonia — that could contain urine and human feces. » The demonstrators were separated « after throwing leaflets containing offensive words about the correctional action carried by Nantes’ PJJ. » No group claimed responsibility for the Labège act. It happened a few weeks after the Orvault, Loire-Atlantique incident when people wrote on the Nantes’ PJJ’s walls : « the EPM kills » following a minor’s suicide after he was put in that city’s EPM.
The action ‘traumatized’ the youth workers and the staff who were busy doing their everyday work : tear kids apart from their families and close ones considered unfit to raise them, lock kids in a large number of structures every one of them more repressive than the other (reinforced educative centers, closed-up educative centers, juvenile prisons..)
Who’s traumatizing who ?
Four months later, on Tuesday November 15th in Toulouse, 7 homes were searched by about a hundred cops who seized computers, phones, books, posters and the personal possessions of all the inhabitants. After these searches, 7 people have been put in custody, 4 people were heard by the justice, and a family who was in the process of getting legal documentation was detained then freed during the day.
After 32 hours in custody, 4 people were put ordered to provisional detention by the examining magistrate. A fifth person was put in custody and a sixth must stay at the judge’s disposal as an ‘assisted witness’.
They are being judged for ‘ participating in a group formed to conspire violence against people or destruction or damaging of goods’, ‘violence committed in a group’, and ‘damage or deterioration of others’ goods in a group’. All of this for what? Two pieces of graffiti and a bucket of poo ? Daytime demonstrations at the offices of social workers are intolerable. Let’s be serious, regarding the imprisoned minors’ situation, and on a larger scale the whole of the imprisoned population, this action appears to be very moderate.
Who’s making fun of whom?
The police control, pacify, kill. Justice imprisons, shatters, kills. Repression is not blind and is even less innocent. It targets those who — despite their position in a society that would likely leave them poor and docile — refuse to go to sleep. Sometimes anarchists, sometimes university students, sometimes striking workers, the list of criminalized social movements is never-ending. In Toulouse, during the retirement pension movement some people got probational sentences of months of prison, in university some students were condemned for occupying places during a strike, in firms workers are sanctioned for this or that action, squats evicted by the special forces and where justice takes liberty with its own rules.
What is targeted is not a milieu, it’s the capacity of action of all struggles. As soon as dissent goes out of the legal system — which leaves no choice apart from organizing a cute little protest authorized by the prefecture — it exposes itself to an over reactive repression. Sprinkle over that words like ‘anarchist circles’, ‘anarcho-autonomous’, ‘leftists’, which Justice and media like so much and here comes the media-judicial grub!
Deliberately depicted to make people believe that these struggles only concern a pack of extremists, incurable maladjusted people. In Toulouse like in other places, police and repressive bodies are everywhere, making life a misery for everyone, from suburbs to city center, every time more numerous and with more weapons. What they call ‘a clean city’ is a city given to rich people and business, deadly. sterile, where nothing sticks out and where everything is under CCTV, police and good citizen control.
Who terrorizes who ?
Regardless of their innocence or guilt, we stand in solidarity with the imprisoned.
We do not want this world that controls and imprisons us.
Their batons will not shut us up or make us obey!
Let’s express our solidarity with rage and determination !
Demand a drop of the charges and the liberation of the November 15th accused!
Let your imagination free for any act of solidarity in every city!
Contact : nonalepm@riseup.net
https://pourlaliberte.noblogs.org
