After many long years in solitary confinement, I’m just asking

by Mutope Duguma, Pelican Bay State Prison, California

Mutope-Duguma-090214-web-193x300, After many long years in solitary confinement, I’m just asking, Abolition Now!
New photo of Mutope

How can we the people of this nation and world end the suffering of countless men and women held inside man-made, manufactured torture chambers called solitary confinement?

Can we call on the humanity of this nation and world to lend their voice, their time, their strength and heart, their money toward ending torture in Amerika?

Is it reasonable to ask why so many human beings have been allowed to suffer for so long such a cruel and brutal fate, simply because they’re considered the outcasts of a society?

How can we the people of this nation and world end the suffering of countless men and women held inside man-made, manufactured torture chambers called solitary confinement?

Do the state and federal government have a responsibility to their citizens? Do they have the right to subject their poorest incarcerated citizens to ongoing physical and psychological torment with no end in sight?

I’m just asking.

Send our brother some love and light: Mutope Duguma, s/n James Crawford, D-05996, Pelican Bay State Prison SHU D2-107L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532.

Witnessing torture in the 21st century

by Mustafa-EL K.A. Ajala, Wisconsin Secure Program Facility, Boscobel

Solitary-Confinement-Is-Torture-091713-by-Michael-D.-Russell-web-192x300, After many long years in solitary confinement, I’m just asking, Abolition Now!
“Solitary Confinement Is Torture” – Art: Michael D. Russell, C-90473, PBSP SHU D7-217, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532

Last night I witnessed a formerly sane prisoner bang his head against the cell door until it bled. Medical treatment was required. This wasn’t an isolated incident. It is the reality of daily existence defined by the nations of the world, the U.S. included, as torture, a deprivation of human rights.

We are being held for years on end in boxcar style cells – though a fraction of the size – that are like ovens in summer, deprived of all natural sunlight and fresh air for but two and a half hours a week, unable to turn off the lights in the cell, denied all physical contact other than during the handcuffing, shackling and pat searching of us on the rare occasions we exit our cells.

The sane and the insane are housed together, the latter exhibiting frequent air shattering meltdowns – arguing with themselves, fighting, cutting, hanging themselves, overdosing etc., resulting in an atmosphere of extreme sleep deprivation.

The response to any resistance to these conditions? Brutality, which is rewarded. I’ve been here now for seven and a half years and have witnessed acts abhorrent to the hearts of the most hardened criminals – and apparently the world. Then why do these crimes against humanity persist?

NO MORE TORTURE!

Send our brother some love and light: Mustafa-EL K.A. Ajala, aka Dennis E. Jones-El, 223971, WSPF, P.O. Box 9900, Boscobel, WI 53805. For more information on this letter and prison issues in Wisconsin, contact the prisoner advocates at Forum for Understanding Prisons (FFUP), 29631 Wild Rose Drive, Blue River, WI 53518.