Text written in May 2009, in solidarity with the “Caxias 25”, twenty-five prisoners and ex-prisoners who were judged for participation in the alleged “mutiny” in the prison of Caxias (Lisbon) on the 23rd March 1996. The judgement, held between March and July 2009 resulted in the absolution of all the accused.
More information in several languages at: http://www.presosemluta.tk/
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Background
Since 1994, a huge prisoner’s movement started in prisons all around the country, in struggle against the very bad conditions in which they were jailed and simply asking for the State to comply with its own laws: right to medical assistance, right to individual cells, end of the beatings by the guards and mysterious deaths... The prisoners wrote communiqués denouncing the situations and asking for their demands and initiated several hunger and work strikes.
In 1995, a newly appointed General Director of Prisons, Marques Ferreira, without prior relations to the prison underworld, tried to renovate the prison system, appealing to the prisoners to denounce all the “illicit, corrupt and unjust” situations they knew of, substituting people in various positions and leading a “moralization crusade”. This lead to responses from inside the threatened prison establishment - including death threats by the prison mafias - and many pressures which lead to Marques Ferreira resigning in the beginning of 1996. He was then substituted by Celso Manata, who putted an end to the “moralisation” effort and proclaimed his commitment to assuring everything continued as usual.
Meanwhile, the situation inside Portuguese prisons had deteriorated even more. By 1996 there were 12797 prisoners in the space meant for only 8599. This overcrowding figure reached, in the main prisons, 247% and, in the regional ones, 503%! There was a high number of suicides and other deaths in the prisons of that time (Portugal had, according to official numbers, in 1997, 106 deaths for each 10000 prisoners).
Many international human rights organizations denounced the disrespect for the dignity of prisoners, the total absence of minimal hygiene conditions, the spreading of numerous diseases, the beatings and assassinations by the guards, and a long etc...
The truth about the Caxias “mutiny”
During the months of January and February of 1996, agitation arose in Portuguese prisons, after the President of the Republic, for the first time since 1974, refused to give a presidential amnesty to “common prisoners” while he gave it only to the members of the armed leftist group “FP 25”. In March, all the prisons in the country were on strike, either hunger or work strikes, with many prisoners signing the communiqués and declarations. The movement was gaining lots of media attention and public support. For the government, the prisons administration and the prison guards unions, this struggle had became very inconvenient.
On the 23rd of March, the prisoners of the Prison of Caxias decided to demand the right to an individual cell, as established by law, and demanded to speak directly to the journalists. In the north section of the prison, when night came, they refused to enter more than one in each cell. Before, the prison guards had served no food to the prisoners and in its place gave then a mixture of non-identified (as usual) drugs, that they call “medication”.
Instead of entering in conversations with the prisoners, the anti-riot group of the prison guard was called and entered trough the prison corridors firing rubber bullets and giving severe beatings to all the 180 prisoners of the north section. This intervention was directly coordinated by the General Director of Prisons Celso Manata and by the Minister of Justice Vera Jardim.
More than a hundred detainees were injured, and one of them lost an eye due to the impact of a rubber bullet. While being taken, the prisoners were pushed down the stairs and forced to pass trough two lines of guards who continued to beat them. Celso Manata, the Director of Prisons was present at the time and watched all this happen. In 2005 this same man, Celso Manata, was designated by the Council of Europe as member of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture!!!
The “democratic normality” had been re-established and the prisoners were forced to return to their suffering silence again.
Thirteen years after, the Portuguese State shows it doesn’t forget to punish those who fight against it. While all the prisoners’ complaints about the beatings where quickly filed, just before the time limit to have a trial would end, these 25 men, chosen randomly among 180, are being judged for the sole “crime” of fighting for their own dignity.
