Anarchist Black Cross- Exposing prison abuse and neglect in the North!

national | rights and freedoms | news report Sunday February 03, 2008 17:30 by Sean Mac Maitiu - ABC

Belfast Anarchist Black Cross held a small picket outside Maghaberry prison on Saturday the 2th February to raise awareness of the ongoing prison abuses and neglect of prisoners as well as leafleting families outside the gates to build solidarity and support. We were also paid a nice visit by the local pigs, no doubt at the behest of the screws that were wary of our presence. Belfast ABC will continue to picket Maghaberry and other prisons in the future and provide a forum for prisoners and their families to raise their grievances. You are not alone!

Belfast Anarchist Black Cross held a small picket outside Maghaberry prison on Saturday the 2th February to raise awareness of the ongoing prison abuses and neglect of prisoners as well as leafleting families outside the gates to build solidarity and support. We were also paid a nice visit by the local pigs, no doubt at the behest of the screws that were wary of our presence. Belfast ABC will continue to picket Maghaberry and other prisons in the future and provide a forum for prisoners and their families to raise their grievances. You are not alone!

Below is the text of leaflet.

As we enter the ‘new era’ in the north, our rulers at Stormont plan to build a new £200m US style prison in Magilligan, while stress and overwork affect more and more people while others are flung on the dole; we live in a world of plentiful resources yet millions starve; some people make vast fortunes just because they own companies, land, property or natural resources, but those of us who create the wealth, work the land and build the properties are left struggling to pay for the natural resources; politicians tell us there’s no money- not for wages, benefits or local amenities, but there’s always plenty for prisons and war; both locally and globally the gap between the richest and the poorest sections of society has never been so great and for all humanities technological advances we spend more time working than people did 40 years ago; instead of a war on poverty they’ve got a war on ‘benefit fraud’, a war on drugs and a ‘war on terror’ and the same institutions that create war, poverty and environmental destruction stigmatise, imprison and deport the resultant ‘refugees’. Sound familiar?
On the outside, fear of prison is built up to stop us from fighting back against the injustice in our lives and myths are created about prisoners to divide us from them. Most people are inside for trying to survive. In Britain, over 94% of recorded crimes are against property, and about one third our inside for non-payment of fines or taxes. Thousands are on remand. Full prisons give us the impression that the police are 'cracking down on crime' and remind us who is in control.
The press hype up stories of 'violent crime' to give the existence of prison some justification and to divide us from prisoners. But the fact is that only a tiny percentage of crimes are violent or anti-social such as rape. It is also true that such crime is not prevented by prisons. The system we live in encourages competition, power relationships and self-interest. This system is also anti-social; while it remains intact there will always be violence.
A stronger, more militant and confident working class will be able to and must, take on responsibility for tackling anti-social crime in its own communities, because the police won’t do it. In the future we need a system that is not bound to capitalism or acts as the enforcer of the state but that can, and will, make use of investigatory skills, ‘forensics’ and a ‘closed environment’ for those repeating offenders, to tackle what anti-social crime may still remain after the crime that is capitalist exploitation has been eradicated.
You'll rarely see the bosses in court - no matter how many laws they might break or deaths they might cause. The rules are there for their own protection. Even if they do end up in court they can swindle millions and get suspended sentences or are let out of prison after a few days. WE GET YEARS.
Prisons kill, rates of prison suicide are staggering and are directly related to overcrowding and neglect which translates into torture. The north’s prisons are no exception as the case of Rosanne Ervine and many others have been highlighted. Her case was the tip of the ice berg. Screws here as elsewhere are getting away with every imaginable crime including slavery, torture, sexual abuse and even murder, and now with the reintroduction of CS SPRAY!
Belfast ABC aims to support prisoners (depending on individual cases) in their day to day fight for better conditions just as we support strikes and all forms of ongoing struggle and we want prisoners and their families from Maghaberry, Magilligan, Hydebank and elsewhere to contact us either through our email address or phone number below in efforts to expose day to day abuses in the system which all too often go ignored.

Contact Belfast ABC –abc.belfast@googlemail.com
More info – www.myspace.com/belfastabc
07778539089