Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.activism.d,alt.society.revolution
Subject: Re: AF/ATS: Spanish political prisoner needs solidarity
From: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca (Ken Mcvay)
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 92 18:32:43 GMT
Followup-To: alt.support.diet
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Summary: 435 days without food may be injurous to your health :-)

In article <1992Jul25.041044.22304@uvm.edu> aforum@moose.uvm.edu (autonome forum) writes:

>About one year ago, prisoners from the PCE(r) [Spanish Communist Party - 
>reconstituted] and GRAPO [1st of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups] ended
>their 435-day hunger-strike in Spanish prisons. By means of this life and death
>struggle against the state, the prisoners sought to be regrouped inside one
>prison.

435 days without food, eh? Boy, are THESE guys tough!

>After 6 months, Jose Sevillano died, and several other prisoners were in 
>serious condition. The murderous policies of the PSOE [Spain's ruling social
>democrats], including hand-cuffing the prisoners to beds in order to force-feed
>them, inflicted great physical and psychological injury upon the prisoners.

I can see how being forced to eat could really piss a guy off...

>Several doctors and human rights organizations, including the Red Cross,
>who visited the prisoners during the hunger-stike, verified these conditions.

What conditions? That they were force-fed instead of allowed to starve to
death and embarrass the state? Zounds.

>But this did not deter the PSOE from its strategy of keeping the prisoners 
>barely alive so that they would be permanently injured and eventually abandon
>their struggle.

Run that one by me again, please?

>The prisoners realized this, but persevered, even though death or injury
>would surely result from the hunger-strike. Today, many of the prisoners are
>confined to wheel-chairs and others have to have injection-feeding since their
>stomachs cannot digest normal food. Others have severe muscle damage.

Sounds better than the "damage" they would have inflicted upon themselves...
hell, another three or four hundred days without food and they might have
died, right?

>But the PSOE did not achieve its goal. Even after the hunger-stike had ended,
>reports sent from inside the prison were filled with courage and the deter-
>mination to put forth further resistance for a better future, despite the 
>risks to them as individuals.

Ok, I think I have it - they failed to destroy themselves, or intimidate the
state, or gain anything at all, and that gave them hope. These guys are not
only tough, they're naive as well. (Some might say stupid, but maybe
something's been lost in the translation, yes?)

>Juan Manuel Perez Hernandez, a GRAPO prisoner, suffered many heart-attacks
>during the hunger-strike, and as a result now has permanent brain damage. His 
>situation is so severe, that Balmon, a PCE(r) prisoner, has written us a 
>letter calling for an urgent appeal to get Juan Manuel released from prison:

Hmmm... while trying to commit suicide, Juan damaged his health... hmmm...
what a shocker...

>"I was with Juan Manuel and his doctor at the medical ward. The doctor told me
>Juan Manuel had spent the night outside in the ambulance; they only discovered
>that this morning at 8am when the prisoners were counted.

>"The doctor told me the same thing that the other prisoners living with Juan
>have said, namely that he suffers from disorientation. He has trouble 
>communicating and spends most of the day in bed. He doesn't write, and 
>doesn't even read the letters sent to him. But the doctor says that there's no 
>physical reason for his mood swings from euphoria, depression, and 
>aggressiveness.

Hmmm... while trying to commit suicide, Juan damaged his health... hmmm...
what a shocker...

>"It shocked me to see him lying there in the hospital bed 
> with a blank stare. He

I KNEW it was a shocker...

>"I am furious about this! We must raise hell to get him released! That is our
>humanitarian duty of solidarity!

I don't suppose you're going to tell us how Juan and his friends ended up in
prison in the first place, are you? (What on earth is a "reconstituted"
communist party? Is that sort of like what they do to cheap orange juice?)

>"The warmth of his daughter and his family could help him to lead a normal life
>again and help prevent his illness from worsening. But the longer he remains in
>prison, the more consciousness he loses.

He fails to off himself, so Spain should ignore whatever crimes might have
sent him to prison in the first place and turn him lose, right? What _did_
this poor fellow do that sent him there?

>"After all of his superhuman struggle, something finally broke in this man. Some
>kind of rage or sense of powerlessness, some pain in the soul. Only with great
>effort did I hold back my tears for this man. Something has to be done before 
>he is completely destroyed. I am convinved of this, and I implore you all that 
>this is URGENT!

Who cares if he's "completely destroyed?" After all, he _did_ do his best
(which obviously wasn't much) to do the job himself.

>"Comrades, we cannot abandon this prisoner. We cannot allow Manuel to collapse
>entirely. We have to do something, get publicity, send telegrams and letters to
>the justice ministry, demand freedom for Juan Manuel Perez Hernandez, and get
>him away from the grasps of the fascist beast. That is our humanitary duty of
>solidarity."

What did Manuel do that he ended up in prison?

followups to alt.support.diet, where folks may heed the warnings inherent in
the Story of Juan...
-- 
"The mass killings by shooting proved cumbersome and expensive. Too many
people were needed to shoot 33,711 Jews on September 29 and 30, 1941, at
Babi Yar near Kiev. Eventually, close to 100,000 corpses filled that
ravine, mostly of Jews, but also of partisans and saboteurs." [Laska]
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.misc,soc.culture.latin-america