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----- Original Message -----
TAYAD* Congress - 10,11 and 12th November 2000 -
Istanbul, Turkey
Dear Friends and Comrades, - I will not be very long.
My name is
Alexander Moumbaris from the French language magazine “Les dossiers du BIP”
edited by �ditions D�mocrite.
I am also an ex-political prisoner - or
security prisoner if you prefer - in the struggle against the racist South
African regime.
I was arrested with my wife in 1972, sentenced to twelve
years in 1973, and escaped from prison with two comrades in 1979, on the l1th of
December.
In the year before being sentenced, I had been kept for eight
months in conditions that resembled in some small respects “E” or “F” type cells
in Turkey.
These were cells for prisoners condemned to hang or prisoners who
were punished for some reason or other. They were even smaller than the cells in
“F” type prisons. They measured 2,15 to 2,30 metres long, 1,70 wide and 4 or 5
metres high. There were no outside windows and there was a small yard (very
small) to exercise for an hour every day.
Only one person Dimitri Tsafendas,
who killed Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African Prime minister, in 1966, spend
many years there. The others were either executed or returned to a “normal”
prison life.
I explained all this to show that the racist regime of South
Africa had a kind of “F” type for the more extreme circumstances yet these were
nothing compared to the Turkish “F” type. In South Africa ‘when under
punishment’ we could talk to fellow prisoners in the same section; we were not
under video-surveillance all the time. There were no electric shocks
administered though the doors. Water was available on a tap.
Prisoners,
except Dimitri Tsafendas, were not beaten, tortured, maimed or killed as in
Turkish prisons called “normal”.
In South Africa torture was not systematic.
Law had some significance even though the law was much less respected for the
black people than or the white.
During those eight months, to help me sleep
at night, I used to tie my socks across my eyes. My closest friends were a wasp
- which had built its nest on the ceiling, and used to do the cleaning over my
bed - and a grey wagtail that would come every day and sing under the plastic
corrugated roof of the corridor. We could see the sky when we would go out for
exercise.
The Turkish “F” type prison cannot be compared in any way with the
South African isolation cells. I can say that conditions in ordinary Turkish
gaols do not compare with South African prisons I have known. Turkish “F” type
prison cells remind me of cruel laboratory experiments done to mice.
To
inflict this kind of suffering is simply to have no consideration for the
tortured prisoners as human beings. It is also for the torturers to have no
consideration for themselves as human beings.
The torturers dehumanise
themselves not only in the eyes of the whole world but in their own eyes as
well.
Whereas the courage of the prisoners defending their ideal and their
humanity, beyond the limits of heroism, beyond martyrdom, calls for the respect,
even of their adversaries, and brings honour to their names and to their
struggle.
The price they pay is very heavy.
I take the opportunity to
salute the TAYAD mothers and the families of the prisoners. They remind me of my
own mother when I was in gaol.
I salute the wives, the children and all the
people who pay a heavy price for the struggle that they may or may not have
expected. Now they are frontline combatants. Now they have to be strong
physically and morally because the enemy has many faces and sometimes he thinks
that the most vulnerable way in the prisoners’ defence is through their
families.
I have no lessons to give. The prisoners and their families know
where lies the line of honour. I only wish you all courage.
What I can
ensure is that your struggle, especially the hunger strike of 820 prisoners, in
five gaols, for now - 12/11/00 - 23 days, will be made known as far and as wide
as possible. We will try as usual to break through the silent Western mass
media, and bring in this struggle together with all the other struggles against
inhumanity of man against man, the fight for human dignity, for the emancipation
of humanity against a system where man is wolf to man.
We are in our right;
we will win!
* TAYAD is the association of the political prisonners families in Turkey
--
Les "Editions Democrite" publient un mensuel en francais :
>
"Les dossiers du BIP" avec des traductions d'articles provenant de la
>
presse communiste(grecque, allemande, anglaise, turque, russe, espagnole,
> portugaise...)sur des evenements qui interessent des lecteurs
communistes.
> Editions Democrite, 52, bld Roger Salengro, 93190
LIVRY-GARGAN, FRANCE
> e-mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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