By Gustavo A. Maranges on January 14, 2022
protest outside overcrowded prison in Chowchilla California. photo: Bill Hackwell
In the first part of this article, we went over the ongoing hypocritical accusation of high-ranking United States officials against Cuba for allegedly holding over 600 political prisoners after the July 11 protests. It is remarkable the way that the US, together with its allies inside the island, have manipulated this topic to create a false image of revenge by the Cuban government, and to promote the idea of a country with zero liberties.
Neither US officials and their Cuban allies nor the many websites or news agencies that cover this propaganda campaign seem to have never wondered why nobody talks about political prisoners in the US. I am sure that many people, naïve ones at best, think that in the “land of liberty” such things would never happen, but they do, and shockingly so.
The existence of political prisoners is quite a skeleton in the closet for so-called US democracy and its judiciary system because it is one of the most painful and evident proofs of the oppressive nature of the US political system. It is part of the untold history of a society, which for the most part fervently believes that the US is the freest county in the world while ignoring that there are dozens of people, both American and foreigners, who have spent most of their lives in prison for the crime of fighting for their right to think differently and fight for a more equitable world.
Most of these people have been imprisoned after rigged trials in which it was a foregone conclusion that they were guilty regardless of the circumstances of the court hearing which is a clear violation of the presumption of innocence. In many cases, people were denied a proper defense by hiding evidence from the process, poisoning public opinion against them, and even the acceptance of testimony from unidentified sources.
One of the most resounding of these examples is the case of Sundiata Acoli, who was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years for allegedly killing a New Jersey State trooper. It sounds exaggerated that such an extreme sentence was handed down when it was never factually proven that Sundiata had killed the trooper. Even more egregious was the judge’s statement describing Sundiata as “a red-boned revolutionary”, It is clear that his trial was not to decide whether he was an innocent or not but to make a political example of him as to what can be done to those who decide to oppose the status quo as the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Movement member did.
Sundiata just turned 85 years old, with almost 50 of those years behind bars. He has been denied parole 8 times even when there are legal precedents in New Jersey courts to grant parole to people who fulfills the conditions of release. The last denied petition was in March 2021, when he was 84 years old, and the Parole Board argued that he was still a threat to public safety, a totally ridiculous and inhumane argument. Acoli now suffers from early stage dementia and on top of that he got COVID-19 in 2020, which severely impacted his health, he also has a 27-years record without any disciplinary incidents and before the pandemic, he was teaching inmates. It is unconscionable to keep imprisoning a course titled “Avoiding Criminal Thinking”. Therefore, it is cynical to keep holding him under those circumstances. He represents no threat to anybody and exemplifies the unfair system of social and political oppression ruling the entire US.
Another similar case is that of Russel Maroon Shoatz, who died this past December 17th, only 51 days after being released. Maroon had suffered from cancer for years before he died, and during the last several years in prison, his health was so fragile that he couldn’t even stand up on its own. Despite his lack of mobility, the Pennsylvania Parole Board kept insisting that he was a risk to public safety. This is a form of torture, not only for the prisoners but for their families, who have to experience revenge from the system.
Now, the State of New Jersey can do the same to Sundiata, who will be 93 years old the next time he can appears before a Parole Board. A large political campaign is being waged demanding that Sundiata be freed for medical and humanitarian reasons.
There are so many examples of people being held unjustly under draconian circumstances that could fill dozens of pages with similar upsetting stories like Leonard Peltier’s (two life terms in prison); Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s, 86 years, Shukri Abu-Baker’s 65 years; and Ghassan Elashi’s 65 years, but the point here is even beyond the people whose lives are cut short, this so-called judicial system is about a system ingrained with political repression starting with the police, counterintelligence programs like COINTELPRO, the media and the courts and ultimately the prisons.
All these people, and many more, suffer degrading treatment in prisons, especially in the Control Unit Prisons. These prisons were created to hold “highly dangerous” criminals, which target people who dissent. Sundiata Acoli and the Puerto Rican pro-independence leader Oscar Lopez Rivera, Leonard Peltier and many others spent years in highly regulated conditions in near total isolation. Many are held in solitary confinement in their cells 23 hours a day, even when the International Law considers any time beyond 15 days in isolation to be torture. Today, over 80,000 people in the US are kept under similar conditions.
The United States has an astonishing 2.3 million prisoners, 25% of the world’s in-prison population while the country only makes up 5% of the global population. The conditions and the treatment of prisoners live under are allegedly intended to rehabilitate them. However, it is really a system made to break people down, especially those who are fighting for social justice.
This shocking reality is the result of policies that marginalize oppressed people while doing little to eliminate social inequalities that force many into braking the law just to survive. Thousands of prisoners, disproportionately people of color, languish in prisons and jails under 3 strikes law that exists in 28 states where someone who has 2 previous felony convictions receives life sentences for a third. This could include stealing food from stores. The poorer a person is in the US the more likely they will wind up in the prison system. The US government seems to ignore this reality and has chosen to foster a private prison industry for profit , instead of supporting social movements fighting for a more inclusive, more equitable, and less discriminatory society. This year, the Biden Administration has also allocated 4 million dollars to expand the Guantanamo Bay prison facilities, where torture and other human rights violations have been systematically practiced throughout its 20 years of existence. As of today, 39 people remain there, while another 700 have the traumatic memory of spending years and decades there without a trial or even being charged.
During the last 40 years, the number of prisons in the US has grown quickly, especially private ones. Year after year, federal and states institutions pay millions of dollars to maintain prisons and immigrant detentions prisons. If only a small part of this money was dedicated to the improvement of social services, the development of vulnerable communities, the creation of decent jobs, and to fund the studies of young people from these communities, we would see a very first step in reducing the number of black and Latino people in prisons.
After all, the land of liberty is hardly the best name we can give to the US. A country where people like Sundiata Acoli, Leonard Peltier, or Mumia Abu-Jamal still pay the cost of acting and thinking freely does not deserve to be called that.
Meanwhile the US government and the corporate media have no problem condemning Cuba for putting on trial people who have not only broken the law but many who have been financed by its colossal neighbor to the North to do it. The hypocrisy could not be clearer.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English