According to the law, the health care of prisoners is proportional to the care of the rest of the population (Article 27 (1) of the Penitentiary Code). But that is not really the case.
Lack of medical staff, lack of doctors, delays in transfers of detainees to hospitals, special security measures and procedures in some cases such as mine, make the supposed right to care a dead letter. In Domokos prison where I have been for the last 4 years there is a doctor, usually a pathologist, for 2 days a week who in many cases when it comes to cases that do not fall within his specialty, simply fills in a referral for an appointment at the hospital of Lamia, which can be done in a period of a few weeks to 2 months, sometimes more. In many cases, due to lack of medical staff, prison guards take on the role of nurses.
Several deaths of prisoners have been caused from time to time in prisons by obstruction by the authorities and prison management in providing timely care to which the prisoner is supposed to be entitled, according to the law. Of course, for this whole situation, which will never change because it does not want the state apparatus to change, the responsibility lies with the so-called ministry of “citizen protection”, the ministry of “justice”, the prison directorates and the prosecutors-supervisors of prisons who supposedly ensure the implementation of the law and the fair treatment of prisoners. Besides, the main concern of the Ministry of “citizen protection” and “justice” in recent years, as the successive reforms of the penal and penitentiary code have shown, is to fill prisons more with prisoners and the further stay of prisoners in prisons.
During my long stay in prison I have experienced, due to the nature of my case (Revolutionary Struggle), a special regime that had consequences in terms of the health care provided by the system. After I was arrested in July 2014, injured with a broken right humerus in a fight in Monastiraki – shot by a “protector” of the citizen of the DIAS team who two years later robbed and killed a taxi driver in Kastoria – I remained disabled by one arm for over a year.
Although I needed a second operation after about six months, the state did not keep me in the prisoner hospital. It ordered my transfer initially to Diavata prison in Thessaloniki and at the end of December 2014 to type C prison in Domokos. These type C prisons had been built by the Samaras government, and the then government had already announced from my arrest through the then Minister of Public Order, Kikilia, that I would be the first prisoner to be sent to them when they were ready.
During the time I was in type C prison, I was taken once a month just for an X-ray to the hospital of Lamia without offering me anything for care and rehabilitation. More than a year had to pass, in August 2015, when, due to the trials I had in the case of the Revolutionary Struggle, I was transferred to Korydallos where, under my own pressure, I was operated on for the 2nd time in Evangelismos by the same doctor who operated on me the first time after my arrest. If I had not been transferred due to courts in Korydallos, I would probably have had one limb amputated. As the doctor who operated on me had told me, the 2nd operation to repair the wound should have been done six months after the first.
In another case, the prosecutor superintendent of Korydallos prison – today responsible for “organized crime” – had canceled surgery that was scheduled to be done for the nasal septum because she did not consider it necessary! This is the care that the law says is commensurate with the rest of the population!
Of course, in times of constant crisis, generalized impoverishment, austerity and degradation of the public health system by the state itself, which promotes neoliberal dogmas and privatizations – including health – for the benefit of capital, basic health care is difficult for the broader popular strata and the majority of the population. Let alone prisoners in prisons that the system considers inferior. This is even more difficult for cases like mine due to the nature of my case (Revolutionary Struggle), in contrast to the care of their own children, the fascist parastatals, those who once did the dirty work of the state, but spoiled them after the murder of Fyssas, and sometimes used them against us alongside the police and riot police. One such is the recently released neo-Nazi leader of Golden Dawn who for almost three years was in a rehabilitation center due to coronavirus. Probably no citizen during the pandemic years had the care that this neo-Nazi had. It has been proven over time that the Greek state has always supported collaborators and their descendants, and has always persecuted freedom fighters. Because from its origin it is a collaborationist state, a state that has in its DNA the culture of rayadism.
There were also cases where the police officers of the external guard of Domokos prison refused to transfer me to the hospital of Lamia, once for an eye examination and once for an ENT because I refused the undignified way they wanted to do the body search, i.e. to take off my clothes when they could use a metal detector. The second time was recently, during the period that in the last two years I have taken several regular licenses. And this proves that there are not even safety reasons that can be invoked for such an undignified body search. The only reason is humiliation.
Recently, in an examination (MRI) that I did during the last leave, I was diagnosed with chronic rupture (relapse) of the gastrocnemius muscle of the right lower limb (third degree contusion), which requires immediate treatment and rehabilitation. Any obstruction for treatment and rehabilitation is the responsibility of the director of Domokos prison himself and the supervising prosecutors. Any refusal by the officers of the external guard of Domokos prison to transfer me to the hospital of Lamia – as has already happened twice in the past – because I refuse to be searched in an undignified way, thus endangering my health, is borne by them and the supervising prison prosecutors.
Just as I did not surrender my dignity two years ago to the judicial council of Lamia, which asks me for statements of revision, correction and repentance in order to release me, I will not even hand over my dignity to the guards in order to receive the care I deserve. Medical care is my inalienable and non-negotiable right and it is unacceptable for it to become a tool of pressure to accept degrading methods of treatment.
13/5/2024
Nikos Maziotis, convicted for the action of the Revolutionary Struggle, imprisoned in Domokos prison