The people's solidarity is grounded in the movement of revolt.
We, the prisoners of the RAF, have recommenced our collective hunger
strike.
We shall not stop fighting against the torture, overt and covert
extermination, the whole institutionalized strategy to destroy our
identity, which is today being increasingly imposed against us.
We shall not let the State attain its goal. On the one hand, their plan
consists of forcibly destroying the unity and collective structure of
the
group, by means of an intentionally and systematically segregated
detention
program - total isolation, isolation in small groups in perfected
special
security units or sham integration.On the other hand, their plan
consists
of protecting itself against the national and international public
protests
of the International Commission and even Amnesty International. It will
not
succeed because our concrete experience of the fact that this State is
ready
and able to carry out any brutality was part of our decision to take up
arms.
Having been isolated from one another for years now, isolated from all
collective processes and from the outside world, it is our aim to break
this disconnection by employing the only effective means we have -
unlimited collective hunger strike - and to fight for conditions in
which would allow us to take part in a collective learning and working
process in order to survive as human beings.
We demand:
the application of the minimum guarantees of the Geneva Convention for
prisoners of war to the prisoners of the RAF and other anti-imperialist
resistance groups.
This means:
association in conditions where interaction would be possible,
which is excluded by automated perfection, that is to say, acoustic and
visual surveillance,
in isolation units where air, light and sound are controlled. And this
implies
the control and surveillance of prison conditions by an International
Commission. [1]
the liberation of Günter Sonnenberg, because his continued
detention makes recovery from his head wounds impossible. [2]
Nor does the struggle stop in prison. The objectives don't vary, only
the means by which and the terrain where the guerilla-State
conflict-war is waged differ. This is why, even though we are
imprisoned and unarmed, the State reacts against a collective hunger
strike as if against an armed attack.
When you see the measures used against us, there is no ambiguity: we
are prisoners of war with the status of hostages. At each escalation of
the confrontation, an imprisoned cadre of the RAF was executed: Holger [3], Seigfried [4], Ulrike [5].
When the politico-military offensive of the RAF exposed the failure of
the huge repressive effort aimed at exterminating the RAF by all
possible means, the special coordination committee of the US
National Security Council decided on the final solution; the execution
of
Andreas [6], Gudrun [7], Jan [8], Ingrid
[9], and our brothers and sisters of
the Martyr
Halimeh Commando [10]. In this
way, it
was hoped that every trace of their resistance, their example and the
continuity
of their struggle, would be destroyed, "Snuff out the flame before it
becomes
a forest fire" in order to snatch all hope of liberation from people
here
in the metropoles.
The torture and murder of political prisoners, like the executions in
the street, is no longer just a police tactic in this State, which
really is the
successor to the Third Reich, with identical aims and means. For German
imperialism's
present onslaught - its third, this time allied with, rather than
against,
US capital, and not independently, but as a function of American
foreign
policy, a global domestic policy – it is imperative to liquidate the
militant
prisoners and the whole resistance movement. That means all those who
raise
the question of power and directly attack, right here, the heart of the
US
system of States - the economic, political, and military launching
padfor
America's aggressive policy since 1945.
The torture and murder of political prisoners and the death squads in
Turkey, Ireland, Italy, and Spain all originate from the NATO Supreme
Command, which wants to impose this as a centralized domestic policy
for the whole of Europe through the BKA [11]
and other intelligence services. This is the same Supreme Command
which, in the latest "NATO Review", openly reminds governments that
there must be no question of considering demands
for political status or for international inquiries on the torture of
militant
prisoners, and that they must respect the already agreed upon
directives
considering the strategy of criminalizing revolutionary resistance.
The human face of the resistance grew on the scorched earth of
bourgeois resistance and the German Workers Movement, from the naive
humanism of the Easter March [12]
to the pacifist ban-the-bomb movement, through the youth revolts and
the Vietnam opposition to the urban guerilla. Against this human face,
they set the inhuman face of massacre, because humanity gets in the way
of their solution: to present brutality, misery, the total violence of
property and genocide as "the cultural tasks of humanity". They project
their crimes onto the guerilla - "poisoned drinking water, nuclear
contamination, deadly bacteria" - to divert the fear that they
themselves produce, so that no resistance can possibly develop out of
an
understanding of the real origins of these crimes. The culmination of
the
hunt against the RAF is now to prevent, at all costs, militant protest
against
rearmament, militarization in all fields and the deployment of the Bundeswehr[13] in the streets, all of which
are
meant to bring Germany back to where it was 35 years ago. It is further
meant
to prevent the resistance from declaring its solidarity with the
guerilla
and drawing exactly the same conclusion we did: that illegality is the
liberated
zone of resistance in West Germany, that militant protest creates its
own
capacity to act.
The State's reaction reveals its weakness and vulnerability and the
possibility for us to accelerate the process of decomposition by
constant attack, transforming it into a "real state of siege;" we
cannot prevent the process of the transformation into a fascist State -
in which the state of siege is legalized – since it is inevitable.
Since capital is now creating the conditions for its own aggressive
reconstruction on a world scale, we must - all of us who want
liberation, responsibility, and a humane way of life - prepare
ourselves, in the countries from which this violent expansion springs,
to prevent the realization of their project. In this phase, we have to
develop the political and military counter-force in order to establish
a "political barrier" which can prevent the military use of US
imperialism's overkill potential, and in order to ultimately destroy it.
If the militant left can learn what imperialism has learned each time
it has been defeated - that its power ends at the point where its
violence no longer succeeds in intimidating – then it will have laid
bare the whole secret of imperialism’s seeming invincibility.
Solidarity excludes constraint and it cannot be cancelled like a credit
arrangement. It is the practical expression of each person's
consciousness
that there is no contradiction between individual and collective
liberation,
despite what the pathetic apologists of the satisfaction of individual
needs
believe. Rather, there is a dialectical relationship - just as
liberation
here cannot be separated from the liberation struggle of the peoples of
the
Third World.
Solidarity manifests itself as proletarian internationalism, which
means attacking the common enemy, US imperialism, at its strategic
points wherever we confront it; solidarity is the basis on which the
anti-imperialist battle lines will converge.
Our hunger strike is an expression of solidarity:
with the prisoners of the IRA and the INLA and their long and
determined struggle for political status.
with the prisoners of the Red Brigades in their struggle against
the strategy of extermination, in which they have seized the political
initiative.
with all prisoners from the anti-imperialist resistance in West
Europe, especially in Turkey.
with the struggle of the Palestinian prisoners for Prisoner of
War status.
with all prisoners who have begun to resist in prison and are
struggling to organize themselves.
ARM THE RESISTANCE
ORGANIZE ILLEGALITY
ORGANIZE ARMED RESISTANCE IN WEST EUROPE
Footnotes
N.B. All footnotes in this document were
added by the translator and editor. None are originally from the RAF.
[1] The hunger strike demanded minimum groups of
15 prisoners. [return to text]
[2] Günter Sonnenberg - RAF prisoners, shot
in the head when captured in 1977, suffers from epilepsy, his recovery
is hindered by mistreatment and isolation in prison Sonnenberg, like
many RAF prisoners, was finally released from prison in the early 90s
following the organization’s decision to cease armed activity and
effectively dissolve itself. [return to text]
[3] Holger Meins - founding member of RAF, died
in prison on hunger strike in 1974. [return to text]
[4] Siegfried Hausner - died as a result of lack
of treatment for injuries sustained in an RAF action against the German
embassy in Stockholm in 1975. The objective of the action was the
freeing of imprisoned comrades. [return to text]
[5] Ulrike Meinhof- founding member of the RAF,
murdered in prison in 1976. [return to text]
[6] Andreas Baader — founding member of RAF,
murdered in prison on Oct. 18, 1977. [return to text]
[7] Gudrun Ensslin - founding member of RAF,
murdered in prison on Oct. 18, 1977. [return to text]
[8] Jan-Carl Raspe - founding member of RAF,
murdered in prison on Oct. 18, 1977. [return to text]
[9] Ingrid Schubert - RAF prisoner, murdered in
prison on Nov. 11, 1977. [return to text]
[10] Martyr Halimeh Commando - Palestinian
Commando that hijacked a Lufthansa airtliner on Oct. 18, 1977 and
demanded the release of RAF prisoners. [return to text]
[11] BKA - West German equivalent of FBI. [return to text]
[12] The Easter March - a traditional peace
march held on Easter weekend each year in West Germany. [return to text]
[13] Bundeswehr - West German Federal
Army. [return to text]
