From: buckmr@rpi.edu (Ron Buckmire)
Subject: AIDS Deaths Spark Prison Hunger Strikes
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 92 20:45:00 EST
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Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

PRISON HUNGER STRIKE PROTESTS AIDS DEATHS

By Brenda Sandburg

San Francisco

Two prisoners with HIV began a hunger strike Oct. 21 at the
California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Calif. to protest the
terrible deaths of fellow prisoners. Since September, several men
with AIDS have died in their cells calling out for medical
attention.

The most recent death on Oct. 18 was particularly grisly.
According to one prisoner at Vacaville, a score of prisoners
heard the man call out for help the night before, but his cries
were ignored by the prison staff. They waited until morning to
respond to him and found him dead on his toilet. In their report,
the staff said he died of natural causes, AIDS.

Over 150 prisoners at Vacaville had launched a medication strike
in September, refusing all treatment to protest the deaths of
several HIV prisoners and the terrible healthcare conditions at
the facility. A hunger strike was called to intensify the
struggle against the prison system. Yvonne Edy, the mother of
hunger striker Charles Perry, told a news conference Oct. 29 that
the prisoners can only fight with their lives.

But prison officials moved to block this struggle. Six days after
the hunger strike began, the California Department of Corrections
told the prisoners that tubes would be inserted into their
stomachs to force feed them. To keep the hunger strike going,
prisoners are rotating into the strike. Ten men replaced the
first two strikers and five days later they were replaced by 10
others.

At the news conference, Edy read a statement from the men of the
AIDS unit at Vacaville. The hunger strike "is not only about the
prisoners who die in their cells after calling out for help and
being ignored in their pain and illness. It is about humanity,
decency and compassion for the sick and dying in prison. ... It
is about the lack of compassion, the lack of medical care, the
lack of qualified HIV doctors, and the lack of understanding of
the physical and emotional needs of inmates with AIDS by the men
and women that have been assigned to be the protectors of the
public trust."

Edy said prison officials have the attitude that the prisoners
are going to die anyway so it doesn't matter whether or not they
get treatment. "Yes they are terminal, but they may not all die
before they are released," Edy declared. She said she wants to
insure that her son can come home to die rather than "alone in
his cell crying out for help, left to die and be thrown out with
the wash."

Luis Talamantez, of the Prisoners' Rights Union, said that "there
is a courageous fight on behalf of prisoners taking place at
Vacaville that all prisoner and human rights activists should
support with all their consciousness."

                          -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers" on PeaceNet; on Internet:
"workers@mcimail.com".)
 
---
vox:(518)-276-8910 fax:(518)-276-6920 buckmr@rpi.edu buckmr@rpitsmts.bitnet
``No exam-cheating, pot-smoking, draft-dodging, privileged youth Vice-President
in a "Bush The Blamer" administration can speak with moral authority about
abandoned moral values and assuming personal responsibility.''--Jesse Jackson
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