LETTER FROM GERASIMOS TSAKALOS(greece)

Letter concerning my sudden transfer to the prisons of Corinth

I remain free even as a prisoner…

Saturday 21st of May, while I had been transported a few days earlier from the prisons of Malandrinou to the prisons of Koridallos for the formal examination of the six-month period of my detention, they call me for my transfer back.

However the Hollywood inspired escort, (special forces, cop cars, a special prison-van for transfers) instead of Malandrinou, heads to the prisons of Corinth. For those who do not know, in the prison world, the correctional shop of Corinth is considered a model of a controlled prison with the overwhelming majority of the prisoners maintain almost “family” relations with the warders.

The reasons of my sudden transfer are obvious. The special treatment that has been saved for us by the Central Committee of Transfers which is under the ministry of justice, to all the members of Conspiracy Cells of Fire, with our scattering to eight different prisons, has not completed its vengeful fury against us.

Upon my arrival to Corinth, I made it clear explicit that for reasons of dignity and only, because the question is not that I want to choose prisons, I deny to remain in this correctional shop that often you cannot distinguish who is the warder and who is the prisoner.

I practically denied therefore to comply to the humiliating practices of the employees during the body search, ignoring them profanely. For this disobedience of mine they sent me to isolation for 2 hours and then choosing to keep a low tone they “installed” me in a cell with 4 other prisoners, without a bed which meant I would sleep on the floor.

From the first moment of my captivity I chose not to be the “good kid”, neither the “ideologist” of the prison. The matter, so much for me as well as every decent prisoner, is not “to get through our sentence quietly” “I get quietly through my sentence”, is as if we allow our lives to be locked for as many years as the judges-pimps throw in our faces. It is as if we become shadows of people that are forgotten by the others until they are forgotten finally also by them themselves. It is as if we become one with the endless coming-and-going of our mechanic steps in the courtyard, going nowhere.

However the wolf is still awake in us. I never accepted to be a locked-up individual and I know very well that the first step to freedom now and always is conquered through the awareness that ignores the prohibitions so much of society as well as prison.

This is why Monday 23rd of May I denied to enter the cell and I was led to the disciplinary room. My decision is final and irrevocable. I demand my immediate removal from Corinth prisons. And know that my small insubordination is recorded among dozens of other “anonymous” insubordinations that have been engraved in the walls of disciplinary and isolation rooms by decent prisoners of who we never knew their names.

These actions can constitute a common place of meeting with all those who do not passively count the day remained in their sentence, but clash daily with the mechanism of prison remaining free even as prisoners.

The people responsible and mainly those in charge in ministry of justice and the Central Committee of Transfers, should know that as it has been written “Our day will come…”

After all this, today Tuesday 24th of May my disciplinary transfer was decided. It was what I sought.

Gerasimos Tsakalos

Member of the R.O. Conspiracy Cells of Fire

Disciplinary room of Corinth prisons

P.S. My thought travels and escapes from the walls the disciplinary and it reaches Erithros Stavros hospital where the Comrade Theofilos Mavropoulos is hospitalized after his clash with the cops in Pefki.

Comrade hold strong.

Today, as they informed me at 6 p.m., will be realized a gathering outside Erithros stavros hospital from people in Solidarity.

Such actions prove THAT NO ONE THEY IS AND NO ONE WILL REMAIN ALONE.

boubourAs actforfreedomnow!