------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 19, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
AT LOUISIANA'S ANGOLA PRISON: DEMAND END TO DUNGEON CONDITIONS By Marina Drummer An unprecedented rally took place Dec. 7 at the gates of Angola prison in Louisiana. It was to protest the conditions in which prisoners are held at notorious Camp J, Angola's extreme punishment unit. Supporters from all over the country, ranging in age from 9 to 70, attended the peaceful gathering. Robert King Wilkerson, who spent over 30 years behind Angola's gates before being freed in February, and Chui Clark, a former prisoner who spent over a decade in the Camp J unit, rallied the crowd to protest prison living conditions and the sham review board process. The rally was organized by the National Coalition to Free the Angola Three. It came in response to atrocities reported in daily dispatches that Angola Three political prisoner Herman Wallace has been filing from the dungeon in Camp J. Several hundred of the 5,000 prisoners in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola are held in solitary confinement. They are locked in their cells for 23-and-a-half hours a day with no access to work, education, social or religious activities. All meals are taken in their cells. Visiting is very limited; there is rarely contact. Inmates are subjected to medical and physical neglect, and guard harassment and assault, in an environment of boredom punctuated by violence and madness. Wallace has been subject to increased retaliation since March. That's when a state magistrate approved the furtherance of an American Civil Liberties Union civil lawsuit challenging the state's violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. Since that time, Wallace has been set up three times by guards and placed in the dungeon for weeks on end. Interviews with other inmates, and reports on conditions that he has managed to send from the dungeon, chronicle a horrific pattern of guard violence and abuse along with administrative corruption and irresponsibility. All prisoners at Angola, but particularly those in Camp J, are suffering increased punishment at the hands of a prison administration bent on silencing voices of dissent and reform. The Camp J program was meant to administer a more "humane" form of discipline to inmates. But that has been subverted. It has become the weapon of choice against inmates targeted for retaliation by all from the lowliest guard to top prison officials. The Camp J system has been used with impunity for years, especially against inmates who dare protest the conditions there. GUARDS WIELD ABSOLUTE POWER The larger, more significant problem is the guards' absolute power to throw prisoners into the punishment camp for months and--unbelievably-- years on end, based solely on their word. The inmates are poor, mostly African-American men who are powerless to do anything about it. Conditions at Camp J frequently surpass some of the human-rights violations related with horror by U.S. officials describing prisons in other countries. In a desperate effort to stop word about prison conditions in Angola from reaching the outside world, Warden Burl Cain has been instituting new, unconstitutional restrictions and punishments. The latest tactic is a memo stating that all prisoners whose names appear on a website are subject to having their outgoing mail, as well as all legal correspondence and phone calls, checked. Cain is also threatening limit the number of postage stamps prisoners can buy. As phone charges from Angola are exorbitant, this would effectively silence prisoners inside the 18,000-acre plantation. Herman Wallace explains in his letters: "I'm sending you this information in case you can use it as I'm trying to expose the torture going on back here and the best way to do it is to get others to speak out about what has been done to them. I'm talking frame-ups, beatings, four-point restraints, gas shot in the face of inmates-all without provocation; abuse of punishment to keep Camp J a housing unit, simply because there is no place else to house these men. The frame-ups are sanctioned by the warden because there's no place to send these men." A growing stream of inmates who have been freed on new evidence, including DNA testing, attests to the fact that aside from the obvious racial and economic targeting that feeds the prison system, many of these prisoners are innocent of all charges except being a poor person of color. Guilty or innocent, these are human beings who deserve better treatment than to be left in four-point restraints in paper gowns for days at a time, forced to urinate and defecate on themselves; or to be beaten and gassed; to have their glasses ripped from their faces and crushed, their property ripped up and strewn about. The growing prison-industrial com plex makes no bones about being all about punishment, but where is the line between punishment and torture? Readers who want to express concern over the activities at Angola can write Sen. Donald Cravins of the Louisiana Black Legislative Caucus and head of the Senate Judiciary committee that has jurisdiction over the Department of Corrections: Sen. Donald Cravins, 200 West Pine St., Lafayeet, LA 70501; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [The writer is from the National Coalition to Free the Angola Three.] - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
