Prisons within prisons

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday March 20, 2003 20:00 by Karen Fallon Limerick Prison

The reaffirmation process

By locking up your body they think to lock up your mind - but they are in a prison of their own making while we are truly free.

Limerick Prison, Mulgrave St., Limerick. 12th March.

Prisons within prisons – Karen Fallon
The reaffirmation process: conscience clarification.

By locking up your body they think to lock up your mind and dampen that “passion”” which so offended by having the audacity to take a stand and say “NO” to their lies.
Well the de-humanising process does not work. The same people who make the law, break the law and lie. They are also the people who believe that locking people up 22 hours a day and allowing them to be treated as “illiterate dregs” of society will rehabilitate them to the “program”.
It does not work.
The process of my incarceration reaffirms my beliefs and justifies my struggle for a more peaceful world and an end to war.
To be held as a “criminal” by a Neutral Government which knowingly opted to be complicit in an illegal war whilst breaking its own laws/Constitution should cause more damage and embarrassment to them than I ever could.

Watching the farcical war on Iraq unfold from a prison cell whilst being held by such a government does not deny yur freedom, it intensifies it. Blessed are the Peacemakers – for we shall lock them up!
The care support and solidarity that we receive in prison, compassion from complete strangers who also wish for peace, frees our spirits and our conscience. Can the Government say the same? I think not.
Any democratic power which goes to war or is complicit in the preparation or support to a war against the will of its people creates its own prison. A prison of lies, deceit, hypocrisy and associated murder, a prison without walls, a prison of its honesty. As impotent as I feel against the impending war I know within myself that I am not alone. There are thousands of us the world over in jail and on the streets doing everything for peace.
My liberty was given up in protest against war in a fight for peace. Although my body is in prison my conscience is clear and my mind is free!
Can the US British and Irish Governments say the same in all honesty? I think not. The International Court against War Crimes has just been established in the Hague. The US Government refuses to acknowledge it as do many others. The US and UK are still accountable for their actions in this war and may find themselves appearing before this court in due course along with all collaborators. Think on it! Karen