Four years have gone by since the International Solidarity with Political Prisoners Conference was held in Donostia. Over there, individuals and organizations committed to the solidarity with political prisoners who suffer retaliation and against the repression, assumed the task to initiate mechanisms to improve our communication and the starting-up of common initiatives of reporting and strategies. For that purpose, the designation of April 17 as International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners was one of the measures that were issued and that, to this day, maintain all its significance and importance.

Today we are confronting in various places of our planet a persistence of governments of repressive measures that limit more and more the rights and freedoms of the population, an extension and justification of practices such as torture, isolation, and even the physical elimination of the political dissident. It is very clear a serious deterioration of the living conditions of people who suffer retaliation in different detention and penitentiary arrangements. This has also caused the wealth of criminalization each time more acute of the organizations that work to report the repression and show solidarity with the ones who suffer retaliation.

This way, the living conditions of political prisoners in Turkey, the measures of criminalization of the protests performed by the Mapuches, the utilization of war mechanisms against third countries conducted by the narco-government of Colombia, the extension of the “anti-terrorist” fight to the legitimate political associationism and dissidence in Cataluña, Madrid and Italy, the starting-up of radical measures confronting the basic international legislation and the respect to the sovereignty of third countries conducted by the United States of America and the creation of new spaces outside the law, like Guantanamo or the secret flights with detainees exempt of any rights, the starting-up of new detention measures and the lengthening of sentences sine die in Spain and France, the repression continuing in Sahara or the military aggression to the political organizations and civil population in Palestine, the criminalization of the ones who show solidarity with Basque people who suffer retaliation in the Basque context…

Let’s make April 17 a day to give voice to these complaints and claims, to create a common space for shared strategy, a retaining wall against these measures that limit our rights and freedoms, a meeting place for the anti-repressive resistance. Again we are calling on you to work towards these objectives and to once more, find each other, raising the flag of solidarity with political prisoners.

They suffer the globalized repression; let us globalize the willingness and the hope.

International Initiative for the Political Prisoners KALERA
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