A reporter with the newspaper Le Matin de Paris asked former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young about the Soviet Union and its treatment of political dissidents. Young famously raised the issue of such prisoners here in the United States. He said, “We still have hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons,” this in reference to jailed civil rights and antiwar protesters.
Soffiyah Elijah talking:
Political prisoners are defined internationally as people who are incarcerated both for their political activities and their political views. Some here in the U.S. have expanded the definition a bit to include people who went to prison for social crimes and who became politicized inside, and then their treatment, such as their continued denial of release for parole, was tied to their acquired political beliefs.
Marilyn had been labeled by the FBI as the sole white member of the Black Liberation Army and was originally from Texas, became politicized in the Bay Area of California, and was ultimately sentenced to 40 years of incarceration. During the time that she was incarcerated, she helped many women with—in translation, because she was a very skilled Spanish translator, but ultimately she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was a victim, as many people who are incarcerated, of medical neglect. And her possibility of being released before she died was decreasing, and so I pulled out all the stops and went really behind the scenes and ultimately was successful in getting her release just 21 days before she died.
Marilyn became politicized during the civil rights movement and the black liberation movement and other national liberation movements—the Puerto Rican independence movement, for instance. And she was part of a larger movement of North American anti-imperialists who challenged issues of racism and capitalism in the U.S., and they also challenged the U.S. foreign policy, like the war in Vietnam. All of those factors that were going on helped to shape who she was. And she was really committed to anti-racism, and she carried that strongly in all of her messages and in her activities.
She, as you know, became more and more involved in the black liberation movement. She was accused by the FBI as being a person who purchased guns, produced false identification, in an effort to protect people who were targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. As they engaged in what ultimately was determined to be illegal activity, the FBI targeted many members of the black liberation movement and other liberation movements for frame-ups, assassinations and long periods of incarceration.
Lynne Stewart, another person who is currently incarcerated in federal prison in a Fort Carswell Medical Center. It sounds like a hospital, but it’s a prison down in Fort Worth. And she also is suffering from cancer and has been given, by her oncologist in prison earlier this year, 18 months to live.
ironically, Marilyn and Lynne were in the same facility. And Lynne, who I actually clerked for in my early years as a lawyer, has, as you said, been diagnosed and is having a really difficult time getting the federal government, the Bureau of Prisons, to release her. There are a number of efforts. A number of people are calling for her release. And this actually is a larger problem in our prison system, with respect to compassionate release and medical release. Far too many people are medically—are suffering from medical neglect in facilities and our prison system, and our society is not compassionate when it comes to how these people should be handled, and not providing opportunities for them to be released.
Jihad Abdulmumit talking:
Jericho list has 66 prisoners, though these particular political prisoners have been members of different liberation movements in the past, legitimate struggles against the capitalist system at that particular time. But, no doubt, there’s hundreds now, particularly when you look at the “war on terrorism,” against the Muslim population and the singling out, fabricated cases, contrived cases and conspiracy cases that mean a hill of beans, really, this aggressive prosecution. So I would say there are hundreds of political prisoners. But on our particular list, those that have been actually attached to organizations and movements from the ’60s and ’70s, we have about 66.
Robert Hayes is a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was arrested in 1973 and convicted in 1974. So, I guess, doing the math, that puts him up to about 40 years, which all of our—most of our prisoners for those days going back to the ’70s, we’re talking about 40 years, which is much more time than Nelson Mandela had served in prison. And these are our Nelson Mandelas.
But he’s 65 years old, and he’s suffering from diabetes that he’s had now, I guess, for about 15 years or so, fluctuating sugar levels all the way from up to 400 to all the way down to 20, where he’s falling out—I think he fell out about two weeks ago—from this hypogyclemic type of reaction to low blood sugars. And it seems like the jail authorities just cannot get it right. So we recently had a national call-in campaign, which is one of the things that Jericho does for our prisoners when issues arise, to have—to kind of mobilize people across the nation to call in and put pressure on the prison authorities so that he can get medical care. So, hepatitis C is what he has, and diabetes, acute diabetes, right now that he’s suffering from.
he’s supposed to go into infirmary, I guess, in the first week in January. And once again, this is only the result of many, many people calling in and putting pressure on the administration. They just can’t seem to get it right. I guess their response to his diabetes is to give him no candy and cut down his sugar. So, there’s no really healthy diet that goes along with that. The modulation of his insulin injections has always been awry, and can’t seem to get it right. And except for the fact of his fellow comrade prisoners that look after him and can see that he’s going through different bouts and he’s getting kind of loopy and/or that he’s even fell out—fallen out, he probably would be dead by now.
67 political prisoners around the country that Jericho Movement monitors. Herman Wallace, a member of the Angola Three. He was released from prison in Louisiana after serving nearly 42 years in solitary confinement, longer than any other prisoner in the United States.
Herman Wallace was released from prison after a federal judge in Louisiana demanded he be released immediately, within hours. And he was. Two days later, he died of cancer.
Juan Méndez talking:
the medical literature is pretty strong on the effects of just social isolation on the way the mind operates. And, you know, that effect can be as early as 15 days of being subjected to 23 or 24 hours a day of just looking at a wall. So, unfortunately, international law has very little to say about solitary confinement, but that’s what we are trying to change. And I wrote a thematic report two years ago to the United Nations General Assembly, in which I tried to promote standards, first prohibiting indefinite solitary confinement—because it goes without saying that the anxiety of not knowing when will it end, you know, just adds to the psychological mistreatment—but also prohibiting prolonged solitary confinement, however defined.
I proposed that anything beyond 15 days of absolute solitary confinement should be considered prolonged and therefore banned—maybe a slightly longer term, but measured in days and not even weeks or months, for conditions that are a little more moderate, like, for example, a couple of hours of social interaction a day. And then, of course, for certain categories of prisons, there should be a complete ban for even a few hours of solitary confinement, and I mean juveniles, I mean the elderly, I mean pregnant women or women feeding young children, and particularly the mentally disabled. Solitary confinement for those categories is just punitive and unreasonable, and it should be banned.
As far as how it’s applied, it is applied, unfortunately, all over the world in different settings and different situations. And my sense is also that it is growing rather than diminishing. And unfortunately, the United States sets a very bad example, because literally tens of thousands of people in the United States are, on any given day, in solitary confinement, whether that’s called like that or given some other name, like “special administrative measures” or “isolation” or “segregation.” The fact is that the conditions are that at least 22 hours a day are spent without any meaningful social interaction.
Herman Wallace, who served 42 years in solitary confinement consecutively. those are the extreme cases that illustrate why solitary confinement is cruel, inhuman and degrading. I did—my report did find some legitimate uses of solitary confinement, but as long as it’s short-term and not repeated and, you know, used only for addressing a very specific situation.
nobody knows for sure, but the estimates that I have seen—and I have not seen them contradicted—are about 20,000-22,000 people in solitary confinement in prisons in California at any given day. And I’ve been trying to visit prisons in California, in New York state, in Pennsylvania, in federal prisons. And I’m waiting for the United States government to tell me when I can do it.
a daughter of Mr. Russell Maroon Shoatz contacted me two years ago and, you know, gave me the information about his treatment in solitary confinement for many years. Since the 1980s.
I wrote to the U.S. government. We exchanged notes on that. And I published a report stating that the United States was in violation of its international obligations by keeping Mr. Shoatz in solitary confinement, because the reason, as far as I could tell, was purely punitive in nature. It was about something that had happened 20-some years ago. Now, I don’t—I don’t consider questions of political prisoners, because that’s not my mandate. My mandate applies to solitary confinement as applied to common crime offenders, to political prisoners or to anybody.
Matt Meyer talking:
I think it’s important for people to realize that despite whatever issues, political or otherwise, related to Shoatz’s conviction, the reason he’s in solitary confinement is because he was elected by an official prison-approved body to be the head of this lifers’ group. And it was because he was seen, correctly, as a key organizer, even amongst his fellow inmates, that he was put into the hole. He was not put into solitary confinement initially, once convicted; it was only an immediate and very direct reaction to his organizing work.
He is currently at Frackville, and there is some breaking news about that story that I think is important for folks to know. Just this last weekend—and we’re still getting the information right now; his lawyers are actually meeting with him via conference call today—he learned from the program review committee that his attempts within the institution to get release from solitary into general population have been denied.
Now, this has happened before, where he has asked and requested. But, in fact, in the last two months, the prisons transferred him into a facility, the State Correctional Institution at Frackville, Pennsylvania, with the explicit and clearly stated purpose to move him into general population. They have a program for that, called the Step Down Program. It’s a 60-day program that he began in late September. And every 20 days in this Step Down Program, prisoners, Maroon included, get review from the prison authorities. After 20 days, a very positive review. After 40 days, again a positive review. And after 60 days, in a panel in front of this entire program review committee, even some of the most conservative guards and people within the facility at Frackville said, “You have done an amazing job. You have been fully compliant. You have acted in good faith. We give you a thumbs up.”
And so, now, just on the verge of this holiday season, where people are supposed to be compassionate and thinking about peace on earth and goodwill towards all people, he found out—again, just a day or so ago—that, in fact, the appeal, the paperwork necessary, to move him into general population was being denied.
He’s been consistently in solitary confinement since 1991. There was a—so, over 21 years. There was a break, actually, because he was in solitary for a few years before that. But it’s been consistent, 23-hours-a-day lockdown, seven days a week, since 1991.
Juan Méndez talking:
in this case, they responded to me that his subjection to solitary confinement was because of his past history of violence and having escaped a prison and committed acts of violence. But those are things that happened way before, sometime in the ’80s, I believe. So, for me, it was clear that, you know, whatever else he might have committed was included in his punishment and that solitary confinement then becomes strictly a punitive measure. It may well be that Matt is right, that the real reason may have been his organizing, but that’s not what the U.S. government told me. What they told me was that it was related to his crimes of violence. And I just don’t find that persuasive. I don’t find it justifiable. Once you’re convicted and sentenced to a prison term, that should be the end of it. There shouldn’t be any additional punitive measures, especially not punitive measures that are so cruel and inhuman and degrading as subjecting somebody to complete social isolation for so many hours a day—and many years, at that.
Matt Meyer talking:
the U.S. government says there are no political prisoners in the U.S. So you can’t always take what the U.S. government says on face value.
But Oscar López Rivera’s case is extremely unique, even in the context of political prisoners, because here’s a man who has been in jail, along with more than a dozen of his colleagues, since the early 1980s, and every single one of his colleagues are out, granted clemency by President Clinton. And his campaign has been signed on for release by the highest levels of international humanitarian and Puerto Rican leadership. The entire nation of Puerto Rico is united in calling for Oscar’s release.
The president of the Puerto Rican Senate has called for it, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as well as others. Now, he was also included in the clemency that President Clinton gave, but he refused because two other Puerto Rican activists were not being freed at that time, who have since been freed. And he’s still in jail.
there are no reasons, except for punitive ones, for him to still be behind bars. And, of course, this issue for clemency has come up again and again and again.
And it’s not even just the Nobel laureates, that I’ve worked with directly—and, of course, we see them monitoring a number of political prisoners’ cases, Archbishop Tutu monitoring the case of Maroon—but in Oscar’s case, political activists in the parties that are closely associated with the Republican Party, with the Democratic Party, independentistas, across the political spectrum. When I was last in Puerto Rico, Catholic Archbishop González Nieves, the head of the Catholic Church, was strongly in favor of his release. And we just had a statement a week ago from the leadership of the United Church of Christ about their affirmation of the need for his release immediately.
— source democracynow.org
Soffiyah Elijah, is an attorney who has represented many political prisoners, and successfully won the release Marilyn Buck so she was able to die from uterine cancer outside of prison. Elijah also has a separate career as the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, which monitors conditions in state prisons. She is former deputy director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School.
Jihad Abdulmumit, the national chairperson for the Jericho Movement. He joined the Black Panther Party as a teenager and served 23 years in prison for convictions related to two bank robberies while he was a member of the Black Liberation Army.
Juan Mendez, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. His reports have found that the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons can amount to cruel and unusual punishment, and even torture.
Matt Meyer, longtime leader of the War Resisters League, and previously served as coordinator of the international Nobel campaign for Puerto Rican political prisoners. He co-wrote the introduction to Oscar López Rivera: Between Torture and Resistance and is the editor of Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners. He can be reached for details about Russell Maroon Shoatz at Freemaroonshoatz@gmail.com.