Today, 29 August, Thomas was released after almost 27 years imprisoned!
Best action during the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners!
First prize: FREEDOM!
We are all really happy and wish Thomas all the best and welcome home!
We still share his letter of solidarity for this year’s week.
Thanks for supporting the Week of Solidarity for many years.
Solidarity greetings for the Soli Week for Anarchist Prisoners 2023
Also here from Freiburg in southern Germany, solidarity and warm greetings for the Soli Week. For almost 27 years I have been observing the world behind bars from the perspective of a prisoner. First in pre-trial detention, later in criminal detention and finally since 2013 in preventive detention. Preventive detention was introduced in Germany in 1933, yes, it was the Nazis who amended the criminal law accordingly on 24.11.1933 – since then, people can be held in prison in Germany for an unforeseeable period of time even after serving their prison sentence. In the 1990s and 2000s, other European countries followed suit, always in the name of “public security”: Belgium, France, Sweden, Great Britain, Switzerland and many more.
In many cases, normal imprisonment is already a death sentence in installments, first the soul dies, and often in the end the body dies as well. Just a few weeks ago, a man in his early 40s took his own life in the Freiburg preventive detention, apparently seeing no realistic prospect of regaining his freedom. His wife, children, adoptive mother and siblings mourn him – but so do some of the other inmates. However, it must be clear that prisoners also have the right to take their own lives. No one should be allowed to forbid them to do so. But it must also be asked what responsibility the state institutions bear for such a decision? It would be too easy to release them from their responsibility by referring to the autonomous decision of the respective inmates.
Anarchists argue and fight for the autonomy of the individual, but always embedded in a social network. Because no human being ever stands alone, we are all woven into a network of social relations! No one is an island! We are all part of social togetherness. Something that seems to be lost in the modern consumer world, where people only interact with each other in seemingly “social” electronic worlds, but in reality are often thrown back into isolation in front of their smartphones.
Prisons are usually internet-free zones. My contribution today is only being circulated because people in solidarity are typing it up and distributing it online, thus bringing the prisoners’ perspective to the critical attention of a certain public. This possibility points to the emancipatory potential of electronic media. When previously unconnected people find contact with each other, when the previously nameless, faceless and voiceless are finally given names, faces and voices.
The structural abandonment that characterises the lives of prisoners is to be brought into particular focus this week. The often inhuman, degrading prison conditions will be scandalised.
The freedom of the prisoners is demanded! Over and over again! Year after year! But only if these demands are continuously raised and carried from generation to generation, if those who live and die in prisons are remembered, only then will we change something.
For a world without cages and prisons!
Thomas Meyer-Falk
Source: International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners