Hunger strikes in Swiss prisons by anarchist prisoners Marco, Billy, Costa and Silvia

Eco-anarchist prisoners Marco Camenisch, Luca Bernasconi, Costantino Ragusa and Silvia Guerini started an hunger strike the past 10th September.

Communiqué from Italy Indymedia:

We – Billy, Costa, Silvia and Marco – eco-anarchist and revolutionary individuals hostages of the Swiss state have decided to start a hunger strike from 10th September 2010. Because of our situation and the delay in communicating with each other (which for 3 of us means we can’t communicate with each other at all because we’re under preventative arrest), the arrangements and organisation of this initiative are very difficult and most probably you will only be able to have more detailed news, confirmations, and individual declarations only later on during the month.

Solidarity with migrant woman detained in Yarl’s Wood detention centre

Please forward widely

Prisoners at Yarl’s Wood immigration prison organised a hunger strike in February this year. They demanded an end to indefinite and abusive imprisonment. The hunger strike lasted five weeks, despite violent attacks by guards at the detention centre. During the hunger strike prisoners were forced into an outside yard and beaten.

Yarl's Wood Detention Centre has been on the spot this year for its treatment of children detained

Strikers forced the government to respond to their demands. Several prisoners were later released. But several prisoners were moved to prison as retribution for the protests. Many are still being held including Denise McNeil who is currently imprisoned in HMP Holloway. During the strike she spoke to journalists about the reasons for striking http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/22/yarls-wood-hunger-strike. She was moved to Holloway prison for her part in the protests.

She would like people to write to her at

Denise McNeil WT4009 HMP Holloway London.

Support the Reykjavík Nine! Fight State Repression in Iceland

As we speak, Iceland’s first post-collapse trial is taking place. To no-one’s surprise, the accused are individuals from the most radical part of the uprising that toppled Iceland’s government during the winter of 2008 and 2009. The people – anarchists and radical leftists – are now facing somewhere between 1 and 16 years in prison, will they be found guilty of attacking the parliament.

On December 8th 2008, a group of 30 people planned to enter the Parliament gallery but was met with a tough response from the Parliament’s guards. According to Iceland’s constitution, everybody can enter the Parliament gallery to follow parliamentary sessions. Therefore it was not only their natural right, as the opponents of current powers, to enter there – but also their legal, constitutional right as members of this society. Only 2 out of the 30 people managed to get there; one of them shouted at the MP’s to get out of the building. In reaction, the people were held hostage by police and Parliament guards, few of them arrested and brought to the police station. A year later, accusations were filed against 9 of them.

Next events and new prisoner list

Thanks to everyone who, despite the annoying rain, came to the Prison? play at the Cube organised in collaboration with Bristol Indymedia. Interesting night, let’s keep questioning things…to break the bars of the prisons within ourselves. Thanks to Charlie Ryder!

We’re having our next letter writing night at Kebele on Wednesday 15th September from 7 pm…as usual, we’re going to bring paper, envelopes and stamps…you bring the solidarity!

For those of you who can’t make it or can’t wait till then to write to prisoners, here’s our updated prisoner list: Sept 2010 Prisoner List.

Before the letter writing night we’ll also be having a stall at the Anarchist Bookfair in Hamilton House this Saturday 11th September: details here.

The Association of Prisoners

A while ago, Bristol ABC was one of a number of groups contacted by Ben Gunn, a prisoner at HMP Shepton Mallet, and nominated general secretary of the executive committee of the soon to be (re)launched Association of Prisoners, essentially a union for prisoners. We reproduce here the aims of the AoP, and calls for support. If you are in touch with any prisoners please pass this info on. This pdf may be a useful format for printing/circulating infoAssoc of Prisoners_aims See also this blog The Prisoners Voice for other background info.

The text is as written by Ben Gunn, although we have changed the order for ease of understanding ie putting the AoP Aims at top, and added in some links to help (and images are by us too).

Why prisoner support is important

We have produced a simple new flyer entitled ‘Why Prisoner Support?’ that we’ll be distributing at upcoming events in Bristol. You can download the flyer as a pdf here why prisoner support and it would help if you can make copies and distro it in your local area.

The flyer is an edited version of a longer article written last year, that sets out clearly why anarchists should involve themselves in prisoner support – the longer article is below.

Video on Gaza demo in London

Received by email: Thought you might be interested in this video about police repression during and after the gaza protests in London. As am sure you know, many people were repeatedly brutally attacked by the police in their own homes. Its only five minutes, so doesn’t go into much detail, but it is punchy and should help to make people more aware of what happened in the past year… Would be good if you could publicise it too, as original attempts at publicising it went flat when the youtube link was stopped..:

For the video click here.

More info on NoMoreIsolation blog.