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In the context of the Philippines, the term “political prisoner” was deeply popularized at the height of the Marcos dictatorship from the 1970s to the early 1980s. The nature and condition of imprisonment, however, seems to be changing as the nature of the regime’s oppression varies. While the fundamental character from the Marcos dictatorship to the present regime remains unchanged, something peculiar as to how the phenomenon appears to us as images seems to be present.
Across Philippine cinema, political imprisonment appears not only as a legal condition but as a visual and ideological problem. From early documentary testimony during the Marcos dictatorship to contemporary films produced amid intensified counterinsurgency campaigns, images of detention reveal how the state names, frames, and disciplines dissent. This trajectory is examined through The Politics of Detention, a 1984 documentary released by Haring Ibon and KAPATID (Families and Friends of Political Prisoners); Orapronobis, a 1989 narrative feature directed by Lino Brocka; River of Tears and Rage, a 2021 documentary released by Kodao Productions and directed by Maricon Montajes; and Bloom Where You’re Planted, a 2025 feature-length documentary directed by Noni Abao. These films span four decades of political struggle and cinematic intervention.
My analysis will try to unite the images and depictions made by the above films regarding the nature of political imprisonment, particularly how the state faces its political detainees. Treatment here is seen as a superstructural symptom: How the state forces treat their political detainees reflects how the Philippines positions itself within the US-imperialist framework.

Armando Malay, one of the interviewees of The Politics of Detention, stated that the phenomenon of political imprisonment does not discriminate between classes and “spares no one who dares defy the US-Marcos Regime.” It is from this perspective that the documentary frames its subject matter, naming several people who have been jailed—from farmers and workers to company executives and university officials.
The first subject to be highlighted by the film is Fidel Agcaoili, a committee member of the Communist Party of the Philippines, who was the longest to be imprisoned: 10 years by the time of his interview. At the time, he was on trial for rebellion and subversion, similar to the cases of other detained members of the Communist Party, including Jose Maria Sison and Luis Jalandoni. Outside of the communists, other personages named in the documentary such as Rommel Corro (publisher of the Philippine Times), Horacio Morales (executive vice-president of Development Academy of the Philippines), Nemesio Prudente (president of Philippine College of Commerce), and a priest named Fr. Jose Dizon all faced similar charges.
Rebellion and subversion are charges taken as a violation of a law penned during the Cold-War-era red scare, painting communists as an “organized conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the Republic of the Philippines… for the purpose of establishing in the Philippines a totalitarian regime subject to alien domination and control.”7 Similarly, anyone who expresses anti-imperialist or anti-capitalist sentiments are painted as communists.

While being a fictional narrative, Orapronobis utilizes close realism to situate the context of the post-dictatorship Philippines. Fr. Jimmy Cordero (played by Philip Salvador), a political prisoner who was pardoned by the new regime, continues his activist work as a human rights advocate in light of the promises of democracy under the Corazon Aquino presidency. The film’s depictions of former political prisoners reflect the kind of politics brewing at the time. Some have chosen the parliamentary side, working with concerned groups and NGOs like Jimmy, while some of his former comrades chose to pursue the militant line underground.
Jose F. Lacaba’s screenplay treats the then contemporary politics of the left as they weigh their options during a moment of great political confusion. Unlike in the Marcos dictatorship, activists are not “forced” to commit to militant forms of activism under the Aquino faux democracy. The movie concludes with Jimmy deciding to participate in the underground struggle once again, after experiencing firsthand the new face of fascism after following the loss of a loved one. Militancy is not just a byproduct of necessity (as the only truly viable means against fascist oppression) but also of reason as driven by the inseparability of personal and political stakes: the militant activist as a humanist agent of history.
In this sense, depicting Jimmy the humanist (one who factors in the personal aspects of his political decision making) is an important counterpropaganda to the kind of image the enemies of the militant activist would use. Aided by “former” activists like Commander Kontra (Bembol Roco) in the film, these enemies depict activists as inhuman and sacrilegious through the semiotic legacies of the imperialist red scare and Satanic panic.

Brocka’s examination of former political prisoners and how their enemies depict them in Orapronobis is an important precursor to more recent contemporary cinematic treatment of the subject—such as the documentary River of Tears and Rage directed by the former political prisoner Maricon Montajes—matter as these concerns unfold on an accelerating scale in real life. The documentary follows detained human rights worker, Reina Mae Nasino, attending the wake and last rites of her infant, River. Montajes interestingly juxtaposes the feed from the livestream of the wake, exposing exchanges between online spectators with contrasting remarks: One side appeals for the police to respect the grieving parties, with some questioning about how the police treats the family of Nasino; the other side echoes state propaganda that casts activists as terrorists.
How the police forces treat Nasino, as captured by the documentary, can be seen as a glimpse of how the Philippine state treats political prisoners. Activists who face persecution from the state are commonly given unbailable criminal cases, such as possession of high-powered ammunition (as with the case of Nasino) or terrorist financing. Given the legal nature of the cases, the state can deny “politics” as motivation for persecution. Defense witnesses claim that the cases are trumped up from planted evidence—thus the pursuit comes not from any valid criminal claims but from the stature of the people accused as activists. Montajes was able to capture Nasino in moments of vulnerability and anger, as a mother whose unjust imprisonment led to her months of pregnancy behind bars, only to be separated forcefully despite appeals.

In recent years, the depiction of the activist—by extension the political prisoner—as painted by Philippine state propaganda has moved on from the image of the rebel, the godless heretic, towards the image of the terrorist. There is no question that the reactionary government is following the script of the imperialist US with the similar development of their boogeyman of communism. In 2025, the Philippine national budget allocated 1.95 billion pesos (33 million USD) on these campaigns through the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)29. The NTF-ELCAC couples community livelihood programs with militarized red-tagging forums, promising financial rewards to those who point out alleged “communist” fighters and sympathizers. It is within this context that we can situate the subjects of Noni Abao’s Bloom Where You’re Planted. Running at 80 minutes, the documentary follows two activists dealing with state persecution and a journalist remembering a friend slain by reactionary forces. In the same spirit as the humanism in Brocka’s feature and Montajes’s documentary, Bloom Where You’re Planted depicts a counternarrative against the state’s claim of terrorism by highlighting the daily lives, worries, and hopes of its subjects.
With the lush and healthy lands of Cagayan Valley used as the film’s background, we first follow Agnes Mesina, regional coordinator of Makabayan People’s Coalition, as she carries out her activist work alongside her life as a mother and a friend. She is being pursued by the Philippine government with the charge of financing terrorism. The film then follows a peasant community organizer, Amanda Echanis, who was arrested with her one-month-old child just months after her father, agrarian-rights activist Randall Echanis, was brutally murdered. Highlighted in the film is Echanis’s attempts at creative work and returning to school while still being held in pre-trial detention for the illegal possession of firearms.
Cagayan Valley is a relevant terrain of political contradictions. While the presence of organizers such as Mesina and Echanis in this part of the Philippines signals a significant reach for activist work and resistance for the benefit of the people, especially the peasantry, the state’s response is further militarization and continuous NTF-ELCAC campaigns. The documentary depicts how the images of these two organizers, especially Mesina, are being branded by state operatives through scare campaigns, aligning her with communists that the Philippine government conflates with terrorism.

Across dictatorship, liberal democracy, and the present moment of intensified counterinsurgency, political imprisonment in the Philippines persists as a structural feature of governance rather than a historical aberration. These films demonstrate that the figure of the political prisoner evolves in name—from subversive, to rebel, to terrorist. The mechanisms of the name remain anchored to the same function: the neutralization of dissent that threatens entrenched power. What this cinema makes visible is not only the violence of incarceration but also the ideological work that accompanies it, shaping how repression is justified, denied, or normalized.
At the same time, these cinematic representations insist on a humanist politics that refuses the state’s dehumanizing narratives. Whether through Brocka’s militant humanism, Montajes’s intimate portrayal of grief and injustice, or Abao’s attention to everyday resilience amid persecution, these films assert that political commitment is inseparable from lived experience. In foregrounding care, memory, and collective struggle, they affirm that resistance not only survive imprisonment but redefines it. The political prisoner, as rendered in these works, stands not as a symbol of defeat, but as evidence of unresolved contradictions that continue to demand historical reckoning and political change.

 

 

Editor’s Note: The first letters below are taken from an anthology edited by Luise Kautsky, Letters to Karl and Luise Kautsky from 1896 to 1918, translated and published in English in New York by Robert M. McBride & Co. in 1925. The letter to Sophie Liebknecht dated November 21, 1916, is taken from the compilation Letters From Prison produced by the Publishing House of the Young International in 1923. As for the remaining letters, they are from various other sources, including Soviet ones.

***

To Karl Kautsky

Zwickau Prison, 1904.

Dear Carolus:
Thanks for the information. I, too, had not expected much from the Press Committee.1 I shall now refrain for the present from publishing the article, for I can well understand that a press discussion can’t be conducted adequately from the prison cell. There is one thing, though, that I want to urge most earnestly upon you: write a few words to [Georgi] Plekhanov2 (his address, if necessary, is to be found in my home), in order to inform him as to the fate of the article; he is waiting for its publication. Will you do that? Thank you in advance! Reassure him that later, when I am free again, we shall certainly find an opportunity to raise the whole question and to say the right thing in our press. (Tell him, too, that the executive committee of the party is on our side.)
So you now have other fights to fight! I am quite happy about this, for it shows that these dear people felt our victory in Amsterdam quite severely. As far as I can judge the situation, they intend to have their revenge at Bremen—and that is a broth that we shall salt good and hard for them! That’s why I am vexed at your envying me the cell. I don’t doubt but that you will hit Kurt,3 George4 & co. quite thoroughly on their so-called heads. But you must do it with spirit and joy and not as though it were a bothersome intermezzo, for the public always senses the spirit of the combatants, and the joy of battle gives resonance to a controversy and ensures moral superiority. To be sure, you are now quite alone, as I observe; August5 will surely remain in the vineyard of the Lord till Point 18, and Arthur dear and Pauly dear6 are “elegiac,” as you put it. Would that thunder and lightning struck them seven fathoms deep into the ground, if they can still be “elegiac” after such a congress!!—between two battles, when one is happy to be alive! Carl, this present “brawl” is certainly not a forced skirmish, fought out in the gray atmosphere of listlessness, such as you have been compelled to fight many a time in recent years! The interest of the masses is astir again; I feel it even here, penetrating through the prison walls. And don’t forget that the Internationale is now looking with bated breath upon us—I should rather say, upon you, for the starting point of the whole controversy is Amsterdam. I am writing you all this not to stir you up to rebellion—I am not so devoid of good taste as all that, but rather to make you happy at the controversy, or at least to transmit my joy to you, for here in No. 7 I can’t do much with that commodity.
Do you know, I have thought a great deal about Amsterdam, about the general position of the international movement and the prospects of our Marxism in the Internationale.7 There is so much to say to you about it, but that must wait. The moral of the whole story for me is this: there is an immense amount of work to do and especially an immense amount to study—I mean the movement in the different countries. I have a feeling that we (the Germans) will gain a supremacy and influence even by the mere knowledge of the movement in the other countries; and on the other hand I feel that we shall strengthen our position (in the narrower sense) within the German movement by our very approach to the Internationale. In a word, I am happy to be alive.
Please send me your articles, but in the form of clippings. I am sure that Clara is not “elegiac” but appreciates her contact with you and me. Both of you will have hot days ahead in Bremen. Do arrive at an understanding with her in time; one can depend on her. I should so much like to have a letter from her. À propos of the 4th Volume,8 when will it appear? You see, I should like to write a review of it; a number of thoughts about this material are crowding into my head.
And now to you, dearest Luise, or rather, now only to you, for this whole letter is for you too. Oftentimes you understand my mood better and more quickly (if there is anything to “understand”). There was so much I wanted to write, and yet I must be so brief! Well then, only this much, that your letters put me in the sunniest frame of mind. Thank you a thousand times for every word. You are giving me such a vivid picture of your surroundings! Send the heartiest letters from me to Holland. Write often, but only when you like to—don’t force yourself to. I kiss you all and the boys. Greetings to Granny.

Your
Rosa.

[P.S.] Louise dear, write to Troelstra9 and tell him that I shall embrace the first opportunity to visit Frau Sjoukje when we get there. You may send a photograph perfectly safely. Write me two words immediately from Bremen11 as to what the situation there is.

 

To the Editors of the Neue Zeit

Barnim Street Jail
Berlin, December 25, 1915.

Comrades: In February Franz Mehring12 will be 70 years old. I should like to ask whether you would like to have me write a short article of about 1½ printed pages, for this occasion and how long before I should have to send it in?13 I cannot send this inquiry openly to you, since the article would have to be in your hands before my liberation [February 18, 1916] and I am anxious to publish it without having it censored here. (It would appear, of course, only after my return to freedom).
For this reason I request you to send me the reply by the same route.

With socialist greetings,
Rosa Luxemburg.

 

To the Editors of the Neue Zeit

Barnim Street Jail
Berlin, January 6, 1916.

Comrades: I am engaged in writing a counter-criticism in defense of my book on “Accumulation” and should like to ask whether you would be ready to publish this work as a supplement to the N. Z.,14especially since it is in the main a reply to the criticism by Otto Bauer15 published in the N. Z. I estimate that it will be 4–5 printer’s sheets long. My observations will be conveyed in the most popular manner possible, without any mathematical schemes and will be calculated to give the wider public an idea of the problems involved and an insight into their practical, political significance. At the same time I should like to request you kindly to inform me how much time, in that case, I should have in which to furnish the manuscript so that it may reach you in time for the next supplement.16

With socialist greetings
R. Luxemburg.

 

To Luise Kautsky

Barnim Street Jail
Berlin, September 13, 1916.

Carissima,17
I really don’t know where my thoughts are to look for you now (your last sending bore the postmark Krummhübel18). In any case I trust these lines will reach you.
Your birthday greeting on the 11.8 [August 8th]. brought me rather sad joy: for the first time I could not even send you a letter; I am permitted to write but two letters monthly, added to which is the time it takes for them to travel—four days to three weeks—I hope you have gained something out of your summer and have recuperated nicely.
I now have a request to make. You know about the Korolenko translation on which I am at work.19 Could you look about for a publisher? I am hardly in a position to stir here. Dietz20 has declined, just as I expected. There remain therefore only bourgeois publishers or possibly the Neue Welt21 or Döscher in the Vorwärts. Turn in my name to whomever you consider best (only not to Diedrichs22 in Jena). For your information the following: the exact title is A History of My Contemporary. In reality it is an autobiography of Korolenko, an excellent work of art, at the same time a first-rate cultural and historic document; it embraces the period of liberal reforms under Alexander II,23 the Polish uprising, the first oppositional and revolutionary stirrings in Russia, and thus reflects the transition from the old feudal Russia to the present capitalistic. Moreover, the scene is laid in Volhynia,24 in other words, in the western border provinces, where Russian, Polish and Ruthenian25 elements make a curious mixture. Size 28 printer’s sheets. Hannes Diefenbach26 acted as godfather to the first chapters. I know that he would be pleased. Ask him whether it is possible to send him the continuation out to the front, i.e., whether between his ever equally victorious spring and autumn offensives and defensives he would find leisure to read this thing and of course to return it soon. You see, I have great respect for his literary taste, and for him it would be a change from his rough warrior’s task. Write soon, for then I shall receive the letter “in due time.” I embrace you and send many greetings to all Hans-es, including the young painter and your boys.

Your Rosa.

[P.S.] Many thanks to Hannes for the Triumphgasse.27 What is his address, anyway, I have already forgotten it.

 

 

N. Ravi is a revolutionary activist. He joined Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union (APRSU) in 1985 while studying for a Master’s of Science (Agriculture?) and became a full time activist of the Revolutionary Student Union. He was arrested in 1988 and spent a year in Musheerabad jail with TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act) cases. After his release on bail, he joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi for his Ph.D. In 1998, he left his studies to join the revolutionary movement in Bihar and later Jharkhand. He worked there till 2009. He was arrested in November 2009 along with his wife, and spent nearly seven years in the prisons of Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. Upon his release in April 2016, he has been participating in democratic and progressive movements and is engaged in writing political and polemical articles from a Marxist point of view and translating books from English to Telugu and vice-versa. He was again arrested for eight months for working in an anti-fascist organization, Forum Against Hindutva Fascist Offensive. His collection of articles on the Caste Question in India is published as a book in Telugu, English, Hindi, Punjabi, and Tamil languages. He is currently an Executive Committee member of the Former Revolutionary Students Forum.

***

There are about five and half lakh28 prisoners in Indian jails. Among these prisoners, over 75% of them are under-trial prisoners. In the European countries, this figure is less than 25%. The ratio of under-trial prisoners to convicts in India is one of the highest in the world. Prisons are severely overcrowded, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. The occupancy in these jails is nearly 125–140% beyond their capacity. An overwhelming proportion of the prisoners belong to Dalit, Adivasi, OBC,29 and minority communities.30
The slow judicial process is the main reason behind the large number of under-trials. Due to overcrowding the prisons are beset with the problem of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions.
Medical facilities in prisons are understaffed and under-resourced. Many prisoners die due to delayed medical treatment. Custodial torture and abuse by prison staff remain widespread despite legal prohibitions. Illegal punishments (solitary confinement, beatings) are quite common. Bribery is often demanded for basic facilities, relatively better placement in the barracks, visits from relatives, etc.
Weaker prisoners additionally suffer from abuse from the goons, mafia gangs etc., who enjoy special privileges by bribing the jail officials.
These are the general conditions that prevail in Indian prisons.

Let me now describe these issues based on my personal experience. I have spent eight years in prisons in Musheerabad, Hazaribagh, Charlapally, Visakhapattanam, Tenughat and Khammam31 as an under-trial Maoist prisoner in 1988–1989, 2009–2016, 2019–2020. Except for a few months in Tenughat sub-jail in Jharkhand’s Bokaro district and for two weeks in Khammam district jail in Telangana, I was always kept in single cells and the infamous Anda cell (in Hazaribagh) [See below]. I have observed various prison conditions, though I do not have much direct experience of general barrack life.
Here one has to say that there are certain differences in the prison conditions for political prisoners and for other prisoners. I will attempt to present a picture of both.
As far as food and other jail facilities are concerned, the conditions are similar. Political prisoners—especially the senior ones—face many restrictions regarding their movement in the jail. Their contact with other prisoners is often severely restricted. However, they are generally treated with respect by the fellow inmates and jail officials as they often lead struggles for the improvement of prison conditions such as better food, medical care, and premature release of convicts, etc.
During my first stint in Musheerabad jail during 1988–1989, I was kept in cells along with other political prisoners. At that time newspapers were provided, but many parts were redacted—especially news related to jails or the Naxalite movement. During interviews with relatives and friends, special branch police personnel would stand beside us listening to the conversation. We were allowed only two books at a time for reading. Despite the Supreme Court rulings forbidding it, we were handcuffed when taken to courts.
In 1994, Naxalite prisoners led a state-wide hunger strike that lasted for 58 days (December 26, 1994 to February 21, 1995) with 32 demands regarding callous conditions of the jails and 11 political demands. A strong solidarity movement was built outside also by the Struggle Committee to Defend Prisoners Rights led by now deceased Professor G. N. Saibaba and others. Various mass organizations joined and conducted various solidarity programs. Relay hunger strikes, where people sat on a hungers strike daily, were continuously held in Hyderabad and other cities as long as the hunger strikes in the jails continued. Seeing that the prisoners are not budging, government bowed to the pressure and accepted the demands. Many convicts were released through a special government order after a Sentence Review Board was constituted and recommended the pre-mature release of prisoners who fulfilled certain conditions like minimum number of years spent in prison etc. Censorship of the newspaper, eavesdropping at the interviews stopped. Food allowance were increased. Naxalites prisoners were allotted separate barracks and kitchens, which allowed them to focus on political studies, discussions, etc. These improvements lasted nearly a decade. However, due to the decline in the revolutionary movement in the then united Andhra Pradesh and later in the twin Telugu states32 and the decrease in Naxalite prisoners, the jail authorities gradually revoked these facilities. Now, every time, one is forced to fight for basic rights like medical care, books, etc. Sometimes, one is forced to fight it out in the courts and take orders from the courts. Recently in Charlapally jail, on behalf of comrade Amitab Bagchi (72), lawyers had to file a petition in the High Court to direct the jail officials to take him to hospital as his long incarceration for 16 years as an under-trial prisoner took its toll on his eyesight and hearing. Likewise, jail authorities even denied dictionaries as part of the harassment and they were only allowed after a court order.

Conditions in Jharkhand Jails

From my personal experience, I can write about the conditions in Jharkhand prisons. In Jharkhand jails there is much overcrowding. Therefore as soon as a new prisoner comes (interestingly called “naya aamad” meaning new income) he or she is asked to cough up money to the prisoner warder of the aamad ward. (Generally repeat offenders or regular jail birds are made prisoner warders of the aamad wards. They have to regularly pay a commission to the jailer or head warder for getting this coveted post). If the new inmates are from relatively middle class backgrounds and don’t cough up the money, then they are allotted beds near the toilets and made to clean them. In Tenughat jail, the prisoner warder along with his goon friends beat the new inmates and threaten them on the first day itself and made to call their families to deposit money in the given bank accounts. The amount varies depending on their assessment of the financial condition of the newcomers. Prison authorities ignore this, as they get their monthly commission. This is more or less the case in all the jails in Bihar and Jharkhand.
That was the prevailing situation when I was taken to that jail in January 2014. So, we, the Naxalite prisoners, decided to end this practice. It was routine matter for Naxalite prisoners to meet daily during lunch hour or otherwise. One day we decided upon the next course of action. So, the next day when all prisoners gathered for taking food, we announced that we are going to teach these goons a lesson and asked all to join us. We went to the yard where those goons were resting and we beat them. Within minutes, siren was sounded and security guards from outside the prison rushed inside to lathi-charge33 and to disperse all.
The beating of the new inmates stopped, but the administration and the goons found new ways of extortion after some time.
Food quality in Jharkhand prisons is generally very poor. There is a lot of corruption here. Though by law the prisoners have to be given meat once a week, it is never provided. In the name of providing special food on the occasion of Durga Puja (Dussehra), Holi, and Sankranthi, (Hindu festivals), Ramzan (Ramadan), and Christmas prisoners are asked to sign away their weekly meat allowance in exchange for occasional special meals. But there is a huge gap in the costs involved in providing the special food twice or thrice a year and the weekly meat provision.34 In fact there is also directive by the Bihar government against this practice. But this goes on with impunity, violating the directive. We had to take up a hunger strike to stop the reduction of the weekly meat to once a month prior to the festival. General prisoners were not strong enough to insist on it. As we were confined to Anda cell, there were limitations in organizing them. Ultimately, we succeeded in securing weekly meat for those in Anda cell and other solitary cells. The authorities continued cutting down the meat provision for the general prisoners.
The general quality of the food is very poor. Dal and curry are watery. In central prisons, generally sufficient quantity of rice is provided. But in Tenughat, one has to fight daily even for rice. When we confronted the superintendent regarding this and regarding the general quality and quantity of the food, he was so shameless to say that he had to give five lakh rupees 7 in bribes to the higher authorities to stop his transfer from there, at the far end of his career. Therefore, he had to earn that amount from somewhere, apart from monthly fixed amounts he had to give to the higher-ups.
The Tenughat superintendent openly admitted this fact, and it is the case almost in all the jails.
In Hazaribagh jail, the milk used to make tea was made of very cheap milk powder, perhaps only manufactured only for use in jails. There was a directive regarding this that only milk or milk made of Amul (the brand of a quasi-government cooperative milk federation) milk powder had to be used. When we, in Anda cell went on a hunger strike in 2011 for three-four days on some other pressing demands, one of our demands was that the directive be implemented. From then on they had to shift to providing proper milk for tea, as well as curd.
Another huge source of income for the jail officials is stealing the convicts’ wages. They are never given their full, entitled wages. Even when they are given some of their wages, they have to bribe the officials. The wages to be given to the convicts are not regularly increased as per the Supreme Court judgement that dictated that the minimum wages prescribed to the workers outside must be given to the prisoners depending on whether they are skilled, semi-skilled, unskilled, etc., after the deducting the overall expenditure incurred by the jail department per person. Minimum wages outside are increased after worker struggles once every few years. But the wages of prisoners are not increased correspondingly.35
It is a general rumor that the contractor who supplies provisions to the jails in Jharkhand can get even jailors and superintendents transferred if they don’t fall in line. However, it usually never comes to that as they enjoy mutually beneficial “arrangements.”

Common Features Across Indian Jails

There are some common features in all the jails of India, as they basically follow the British era jail manual and the feudal practices established at that time by the colonizers and their puppets. In the Telugu state jails, all new entrants are asked to stand in line, and the superintendent comes for inspection. At that time, prisoners are told to stand barefoot. Only the “Naxalite” prisoners do not obey this feudalistic practice. The submission of the prisoner to the authority starts from there. Even though the under-trials are only accused persons and not convicts, jail authorities view them as only criminals. By law, under-trials should not be assigned any work. But they are engaged in all types of cleaning works in the jails. Only for certain kinds of jobs they are paid. But they are just paid as per the whims and fancy of the jail authorities. No system is followed for that.
In the Telugu states, every morning the superintendent goes to visit all the barracks. During this “round,” prisoners can air their grievances also, regarding their cases, medical condition if any, etc. They also inspect for the cleanliness of the barracks and toilets etc. But in Jharkhand jails there was never ever any such “rounds.” So prisoners do not get to air their grievances. It is nearly impossible to get audience with the superintendent or jailor. Sometimes we had to refuse to take food even to visit the jailor/superintendent, even though it is clearly stated in the jail manual that it is the duty of the superintendent to go for a daily round. Tenughat sub-jail, and sub-jails in general in Jharkhand, used to be very filthy, sometimes with the overflowing sewage. Superintendent never set foot in the barracks and the yard for inspection. We had to force the jailor to come and take a look at the conditions. Only then it was repaired.

Medical Facilities

Every jail has a hospital, but there is always a paucity of funds for the medicines. After the formation of Telangana, the budget allocated for medicines and supplies in jails was drastically cut down. Only a meagre INR36 2000 (USD 70) per day is allotted towards medical expenses for all the inmates in Charlapally central jail, which houses 1500-2000 prisoners. Many inmates suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure etc. who need daily medication. Apart from them, there are outpatients. Superintendents also urged us to fight with the government for more allocation of funds or file petitions in courts.
In Jharkhand jails, the situation is far worse. Many sub-jails37 have no doctors. In Tenughat jail, where I was stationed for some time, an RMP (Registered Medical Practitioner) lifer convict was the in-charge doctor. He was not even a medically qualified and legally registered RMP. He could however treat the patients for all minor ailments, and he was indispensable. Therefore, when a Government Order was issued by the Jharkhand government after a hunger strike by the lifers (and a bandh call—a general strike—was made by the CPI(Maoist) in support of it in 2014), for the release of convicts who were qualified and recommended by the board constituted for that purpose, the superintendent did not recommend him, though he was more than qualified.
Prisoners have to be taken to outside hospital for treatment when treatment cannot be done in the jail hospital. Some criminal Dons, or bosses, misuse this provision to bribe the doctors and other officials and go out in the name of treatment and enjoy luxurious lives in the outside hospitals. Bihar and Jharkhand high courts ruled that a medical board has to be constituted to recommend treatment outside. These Dons circumvent this provision relatively easily though they now had to bribe more persons. However, this made the life tougher for the general prisoners. A medical board could not easily be assembled as the doctors in the outside hospitals were already overburdened with their work there. Even when they recommend outside treatment, there was a problem of the provision of an escort. Escort police had to be provided by the general police and not the jail officials. Sometimes, escort police were not provided for months. For Naxalite prisoners this was much harder as they are supposed to get more “secure escort.” In one such instance, we had to go on hunger strike for three days demanding that a “Naxalite” prisoner be taken to hospital. Only then was she taken to the hospital. Sometimes, we in Anda cells had to go on hunger strike to be taken to the jail hospital as well.
In another instance one general prisoner in Tenughat jail was taken to an outside hospital and a catheter was inserted into his urethra. He was asked to come again after 15 days for removal. Meanwhile, Assembly elections were declared in Jharkhand and for almost two months no escort was provided.38 He had to walk around carrying that urine bag. He could have been taken to the hospital with prison security staff as they do in case of emergencies. But the superintendent did not provide that escort. Such are the pathetic medical conditions prevailing, especially in Jharkhand jails.

Situation in Anda Cells

Anda cells are prisons within prisons. They got this name because of their egg shape. There are certain differences in the structure of Anda cells in different jails. These Anda cells gained notoriety throughout India and afar after G. N. Saibaba39 was incarcerated in them.
These cells in egg-shaped barracks are a closed structure. There is a grate above, in the small open space in front of the cells. As a ‘Maoist’ leader, I was directly taken to the Anda cell on my second day of entry into the jail, after spending the first night in the Aamad ward. Throughout my incarceration in Hazaribagh Jayaprakash Narayan central prison, I was kept only in an Anda cell.
There were no fans in Anda cells or, for that matter, in any cells in Jharkhand prisons. There was no scope for any cross ventilation in Anda cells. It was unbearable in summers. There was no sunlight in winters. We went on hunger strike demanding that fans be provided in cells on par with other barracks. Deputy Inspector General of Jails from Ranchi, the state capital, visited Hazaribagh jail. He argued that there was the risk of committing suicides in cells if ceiling fans were provided. Then we brought to his notice that in the prisons of Andhra Pradesh, ceiling fans are indeed provided in cells also and that if they are so apprehensive about that then they could as well provide wall fans. Finally they accepted all our demands. From then on, fans were provided in all the cells in Hazaribagh and later throughout the Jharkhand jails.

Visitations

Prisoners have a right to visitations by relatives and friends. Under-trial prisoners are entitled for one visit per week and convicted prisoners for one visit per fifteen days. Hazaribagh prison has perhaps the worst facility for these visitations. There were only two windows with two three layers of iron meshes. Visitation was permitted only from 8 AM to 12 Noon. Within these four hours of time nearly 150 to 200 hundred prisoners have to complete their conversations through those two windows. So, at any time, fifteen to twenty people would be standing on both the sides of the windows and keep shouting so that something is audible to their near and dear ones. After repeated fight with the jail authorities they extended the time of visitation up to 4 PM. The requests to increase the space and windows did not yield any result. They typically came up with the answer that the jail is up for renovation, which never materialized due to red-tapism and some legal hurdles.
Though it is clearly mentioned in the prison manuals and pronounced in various judgements that family and friends can visit the prisoners, authorities in various states issue orders restricting these visitations in the name of security.

Literature and Letters

Many jails are notorious for not delivering letters to and from prisoners. Though there are many judgements about giving any non-proscribed books to prisoners, they do not always follow these rules and judgements, especially in the case of Naxalite prisoners. For one year, I was in Charlapally prison, in Hyderabad while my wife, B. Anuradha, was in Hazaribagh prison. Naturally we wrote letters to one another, always taking care to register-post them so that we could track them. Initially, in Hazaribagh prison either they were not posting her letters or not delivering my letters to her. The books I sent her were also not given to her. Then she filed a petition in the Sessions court (District courts) regarding this violation of her rights and also went on hunger strike for three days demanding that the books and letters be given to her. When the judge ruled in her favor, the jail authorities started to deliver every letter and book.
In Jharkhand and Bihar, general police conduct raids on jails to confiscate illegal mobile phones, etc. In one such raids, the police took away all my letter correspondence, other written records, and court judgements etc. Immediately, the next day, we protested by observing a day’s hunger strike and also wrote petitions to the High Court, Human Rights Commissions, etc. They had to return every single paper confiscated after Human Rights Commission ordered the Superintendent of Police of Hazaribagh to return them.

Handcuffing

There are explicit Supreme Court rulings that the prisoners shall not be handcuffed while transporting them from or to court or hospital. But the police, as well as the jail authorities, and even the judiciary do not care at all about these rulings, which constitutes the law of the land. We petitioned the courts to implement the Supreme Court judgements. Only then, they stopped handcuffing us.
Thus, in our experience we had to take recourse with hunger-strikes on many issues from time to time and also file petitions in the courts to fight for our rights. Sometimes we just wrote slogans on papers and held them aloft in the court premises to catch people’s attention. “Prison Rights” published by the Human Rights Law Network40 and various judgements by high courts and supreme courts and circulars (Government Orders) by the governments aided us in our fight. We also had to try to mobilize outside support, as well as the help of the media for the struggles. Only then we could we be successful in our struggles for our rights.
There is a saying in Jharkhand jails that “jail kaa kanoon dhain din kaa”: rules in prisons only last for 2, 3 days. Prisoners’ rights are also won and lost depending on the officials, prisoners, and their strength, etc. One needs to constantly keep fighting for them.

 

 

The International Red Aid was founded twenty-five years ago. It has extensive experience in supporting revolutionary prisoners. Twenty years ago, it spearheaded the campaign for the release of Georges Abdallah. The International Red Aid sees its work as an integral part of the revolutionary process, and its relationship with prisoners is therefore of a particular political nature.
Since the International Red Aid operates through its various branches, all of which face specific local and national realities, we, as the International Secretariat, are unable to answer the specific questions Material posed. However, due to its transnational nature and long experience, our organization has a unique perspective—global, political, and concrete—on the reality of revolutionary prisoners. It is this perspective, which transcends the diversity of national realities, strategic projects, and political cultures, that we will outline here.

Imprisonment as a Stage of Commitment

Imprisonment should not come as a surprise to revolutionaries. The timing and manner of arrest, the conditions of interrogation and confinement, the procedures of the trial, and the severity of the sentence—all these factors may lead to unexpected outcomes. But the prospect of being detained is one that the revolutionary has accepted upon entering the struggle.
By leaving the struggles waged on the street, in clandestinity, through guerrilla warfare conducted in jungles, in cities, or in mountains, the revolutionary entering his prison cell is merely changing trenches. While many people on the outside perceive this as a break, as a major disruption (all the more so if they are politically uneducated), revolutionaries see it as a continuity—the continuity of their commitment.
Revolutionary prisoners can be categorized in many ways: by their ideology and political project; by their country of origin; by their conditions of detention; the length of their sentence, and so on. But beyond all these differences, however significant they may be, a shared determination drives them—a determination that alone can explain their choices and positions. This determination is the will to remain political subjects.

A Single Imperative…

Therefore, the question that immediately arises for the imprisoned revolutionary is, “How, in this new situation, can I be useful to the revolutionary process?” Sometimes he or she is a member of an organization (or a tradition) that has already provided an answer; sometimes he or she must deduce it for themselves based on their concrete current conditions.
The imperative for prisoners is to refuse being reduced to objects, to victims of repression appealing for solidarity based on pity and compassion. They must once again become political subjects, influencing events, transforming reality, calling for solidarity rooted in the fraternity of struggle. This is the primary motivation, the most decisive of imperatives.

…With Different Approaches

How do imprisoned revolutionaries remain useful to the revolutionary process?

1. Publicly demonstrating a position of resistance

This involves refusing to collaborate or to betray one’s principles. The public, ostentatious nature of this stance is particularly important. If the position of resistance is known to the outside world, it strengthens the revolutionary cause. By presenting themselves as unbroken and unrepentant, prisoners counteract the negative impact of the announcement of their capture and weaken the deterrent effect of imprisonment on the wider movement. They transform what is, at first glance, a demoralizing event into a source of subjective strength.

2. Becoming a Better Revolutionary

Revolutionary prisoners read, study, educate themselves, learn foreign languages, etc. This explains why it is so important for them to receive books and newspapers, to be able to keep their notes, etc. They generally strive to maintain their physical condition, do sports, and it is not uncommon for them to quit smoking.

3. Contributing politically and theoretically to the struggles on the outside

Prisoners use the time available to them to read (and ideally discuss) with the aim of producing analyses useful to the revolutionary struggle. These can be assessments of their actions, statements explaining their organization’s policies, calls to mobilize, declarations of solidarity with other struggles, and so on.
For long-term prisoners whose organization has been dismantled, this also means carrying forward the proposals and achievements of that organization and leveraging its experience for the benefit of the entire revolutionary movement.

4. Organizing and politicizing “social” prisoners

This ranges from the politicization of a cellmate (and sometimes even prison guards!) to the organization of strikes, riots, prisoner unions, or simply acts of solidarity (sharing food with destitute prisoners, etc.). We know how effectively the Black Panthers were able to recruit and politicize “social” prisoners.1

5. Organizing riots and escape attempts

We will mention two examples here:
The prisoners of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front,2 most of whom had been captured after the ambush that nearly cost General Pinochet’s life, were held at the Santiago prison in 1987. They set out to dig a tunnel in order to escape. It took them three years of work and overcoming countless difficulties to finally succeed: 49 political prisoners escaped on January 30, 1990.
On June 19, 1986, political prisoners from the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) rose up and took control of the prisons in Frontón, Lurigancho, and Callao. Armed with knives, firearms, and homemade bombs, they fiercely resisted the assaults of the Peruvian army, which subsequently carried out summary executions, bringing the total number of prisoners killed to over 300.

6. Fighting for amnesty

In some countries, such as Spain, the tradition of fighting for amnesty is deeply rooted in the traditions of the labor and revolutionary movements. However, this demand has not been taken up by prisoners belonging to movements that refuse to appeal to the authorities (which would amount to acknowledging their legitimacy), such as the RAF prisoners in Germany,3 who did not even fill out forms requesting their release. Thus, in some countries, prisoners fight for their own release provided it can be achieved under specific conditions (such as not renouncing their beliefs, etc.). In other cases, prisoners may fight for the liberation of prisoners other than themselves, making the effort purely political. One can think of the various movements led by Kurdish prisoners for the release of Öcalan.4

A Battle of Symbols

The example of the demand for amnesty shows that prisoners’ choices depend (and must depend) on the political culture of their class and their country, because the front lines of the prison struggle are often shaped by symbolic issues. The same symbol can have a strong ideological impact in some societies and none at all in others, which explains why the same factor can lead to a fight to the death here and be of no meaning whatsoever elsewhere. For example, wearing a prison uniform is unacceptable for prisoners in Turkey or Ireland, but of no consequence to prisoners in Belgium or the United States. Another example is speaking to the court during a trial: unacceptable for prisoners belonging to the Red Brigades in Italy (since, symbolically, within the Italian revolutionary movement, this amounts to collaboration—an acknowledgment of the court’s legitimacy) and customary for prisoners of Revolutionary Struggle in Greece (where, within the Greek revolutionary movement, one must defend the revolutionary cause through speech). If we try to understand these differences in terms of “more radical/less radical,” or “more just/less just,” we are missing the point entirely. The battle of symbols can only be judged in direct relation to the specific political culture to which it resonates, and within which it serves as an echo.
The prisoners (and thus their resistance) themselves have symbolic value. And this value sometimes extends far beyond the struggle of their organization or their specific political choices. This is how Leonard Peltier5 became the symbol of the oppression of Native American peoples, how Mumia6 is the symbol of systemic racism within the US police and justice system, and how Öcalan has come to symbolize the Kurdish nation as a whole. In general, even when they are committed to a specific revolutionary project (that of their organization), prisoners become a symbolic rallying point for the revolutionary cause in the broadest sense of the term.

Hunger Strikes

It is only in light of all these imperatives and all these determinations that we can understand prisoners’ struggles and, in particular, hunger strikes. Let us consider three historical examples: the hunger strikes of the Red Army Faction prisoners, that of the Irish Republican prisoners in 1979, and the one of the revolutionary prisoners in Turkey in 2000.
The prisoners of the Red Army Faction carried out several collective hunger strikes, two of which cost the lives of prisoners: Holger Meins on November 9, 1974, and Sigurd Debus on April 16, 1981. The goal of these strikes was to end solitary confinement. This was seen as a necessary condition for political activity (and particularly for the collective preparation for trials, which were viewed as a platform where the revolutionary project could be defended).
The hunger strike by Irish republican prisoners, which claimed the lives of seven IRA and three INLA inmates in 1981,7 was the culmination of a series of struggles centered on the “special status” of republican prisoners, which had begun with the struggle of the 300 “blanket men”: prisoners who remained naked under a blanket because they refused to wear the prison uniform. This special status distinguished them from common criminals and brought them closer to the status of prisoners of war, which held immense symbolic value in Ireland (as seen in the “military” forms adopted by the republican forces: uniforms, ranks, etc.). This hunger strike also placed the IRA within its historical continuity (several major figures of the Irish national liberation movement died in hunger strikes8). The prisoners also demanded access to mail and visits.
In 2000–2002, revolutionary prisoners in Turkey (belonging to several organizations) staged a major hunger strike to oppose their transfer to separate cells housing one to three people, whereas until then they had lived in large communal dormitories. It was an extremely deadly strike: 112 prisoners died (including 30 during the assault on the dormitories where they had barricaded themselves), and many were left disabled or had their lives cut short. The culture of sacrifice is strong in Turkey (as throughout the Muslim cultural sphere). The fact that a person gives their life for a cause directly elevates that cause within this cultural sphere. Hunger strikes that lead to death (and other forms of action resulting in the revolutionary’s voluntary sacrifice) have a political and ideological impact quite different from that in Europe. This struggle therefore had a dual purpose: to preserve the large prisoner communities, and to demonstrate the prisoners’ spirit of resistance and sacrifice.

Community and Communication

The issue of prisoner solidarity (and thus the struggle against solitary confinement, the separation of prisoners across different facilities, etc.), and the issue of communication (receiving books, mail, and visits), recur in nearly all struggles waged by revolutionary prisoners. Community and communication are indeed the prerequisites for nearly all political activity. They are political demands in and of themselves, rather than requests related to comfort, the humanization of detention, etc.

The Enemy’s Intentions

When dealing with revolutionary prisoners, the authorities, in addition to security concerns applicable to common criminals (preventing riots, breakouts, etc.), have a specific additional objective: to prevent “contagion.” Revolutionary prisoners are therefore confronted with an enemy who assesses the stakes in much the same way as they do, and who will tend to cut them off, if not from the rest of the world, then at least from the rest of the prison.
There is sometimes a tendency to overestimate how the enemy plans detention, imagining a large group of decision-makers and specialists scientifically devising a program that impacts every detail of the prisoner’s life in order to destroy their political consciousness.
Conversely, there is also a tendency to underestimate this planning by attributing it to a “villain in charge” hostile to revolutionaries, or to a prison warden seeking to maintain order by isolating potential troublemakers. The reality lies somewhere between these two extremes; it varies by country and era, and requires a specific analysis in each case, without negligence or paranoia.
It is true that counter-revolutionaries have carried out studies and developed highly elaborate programs to break prisoners. Their foundational program dates back to 1963. That year, based on research in experimental psychology, the CIA formulated a scientific program9 aimed at breaking prisoners by inducing a state of psychological regression to bring them under control. This program combined isolation, sensory deprivation and over-stimulation, sophisticated interrogation techniques, etc.
But the police, judicial, and prison systems are like any other state apparatus, similar to the postal service or the railways: it certainly has zealous and intelligent decision-makers, but it also contains idiots and negligent individuals; there are vast resources but also bureaucratic red tape; there are flawless PowerPoint presentations but also prison overcrowding that needs to be managed on a daily basis; there are precise instructions for officials but there is also their sloppy enforcement when they are burdensome or tiring for those same officials; and so on. Once again, each situation deserves a specific analysis.

Unity as a Tendency and a Choice

Outside prison, the revolutionary movement is generally fragmented into different factions, tendencies, and political and strategic positions. But when it comes to confronting repression as revolutionary prisoners, a tendency toward unity quickly emerges. The terrain of struggle is simplified; choices are less complex than on the outside; there are fewer “opportunities” to disagree; and the reasons to fight alongside one another are more numerous and more obvious.
This explains why the struggles of revolutionary prisoners (and, on the outside, support for these struggles) exhibit a higher level of unity than other fronts of struggle. The three examples of hunger strikes we gave above illustrate this well: Sigurd Debus died during a hunger strike by RAF prisoners, but he was not a member of said organization; the Irish prisoners’ strike brought together members of the two major republican organizations, the IRA and the INLA. As for the strike in Turkey against Type F prisons,10 it brought together prisoners from a dozen different organizations, which on the outside were sometimes at each other’s throats.
Revolutionary prisoners thus play, by virtue of their objective situation, a role as catalysts during moments of unity and in processes of rapprochement between revolutionary forces.
The most successful example of this trend toward unity is the “June 19, 1999 Platform,”11 in which more than a hundred revolutionary prisoners—communists, anarchists, anti-fascists, and anti-imperialists—from a dozen countries affirmed their common principles of resistance and defined themselves as a community of struggle. The International Red Aid was formed in response to this process of unification among prisoners.

Support for Revolutionary Prisoners

The primary duty of those supporting revolutionary prisoners is therefore to recognize and respect their identity. This involves understanding the priorities of their demands and providing them with the means to continue acting politically. It involves removing obstacles to this political activity (and notably solitary confinement), supplying prisoners with political information, and amplifying their voices. This does not imply endorsing their theoretical or strategic choices, their positions, or their methods. Yet, to refrain from speaking on behalf of a revolutionary prisoner due to a political disagreement would be the most criminal manifestation of sectarianism.
Similarly, support for prisoners must not be conceived as “caring for the wounded.” Prison itself is a battlefield, and it has direct repercussions and influences on the broader battlefields of proletarian and people’s struggles. Depending on the course of the struggle within prison, the struggles outside will be strengthened or weakened. Prison does not serve merely to neutralize revolutionaries; it also and above all serves to intimidate our class. Moreover, it is a weapon of deterrence.
Allowing prisoners to act as revolutionary agents strips prison of its dark, mysterious, and frightening nature. The revolutionary process is marked by cycles of “struggle/repression/resistance.” The ability of revolutionary forces, inside or outside prison, to emerge victorious and strengthened from this third phase of the struggle, is crucial for the future of the general process. Prisoners play a central role in this phase.

 

 

Editor’s Note: For this fourth issue of Material, dedicated to the question of (political) prisoners, we sought to pose a series of key questions to several organizations engaged in the struggle against imprisonment. We believe this exercise allows readers to compare the approach taken by each respondent as well as the broader political context in which they operate. For this first iteration of this interview process, we received responses from two organizations: Samidoun (Paris-Banlieue) and International Red Aid (Toulouse).

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Material: Could you describe how, in your context, the state, through laws, policing, detention practices, or other mechanisms, produces political prisoners on a mass scale—and how this process fits into its broader strategy of containing, disorganizing, or destroying revolutionary movements in this time of history? How does imprisonment seek not only to punish individuals but also to break collective morale, instill fear, or isolate revolutionary forces from the masses? In this regard, we would like to hear how your organization/movement has analyzed and responded to this in the past and present.

Samidoun (Paris-Banlieue)12: Regarding this question, we will discuss the specific context of Palestine, which lies at the heart of Samidoun’s international struggle.
In Palestine, imprisonment is part of a wider context of settler colonialism, similar to what Algeria, Ireland, and other countries have experienced. As a result, in Palestine, prison is a tool of repression designed to subdue society as a whole. However, it targets those activists and fighters involved in national liberation movements with particular intensity, as they are the most advanced segment of the oppressed masses engaged in struggle. Dialectically, it is through the repression of these fighters that the Zionist state affects the people as a whole: workers, peasants, fishermen, students, and intellectuals. This reality is pervasive throughout Palestinian society: there are prisoners in every family and every generation.
Israel attempts to fragment the realities of the different areas of Palestinian territory in order to divide its population: there are around a hundred arrests per day in the West Bank; prior to October 7, Gaza was under blockade; Palestinian refugees face specific forms of discrimination in Jordan and Lebanon; and so on.
Repression through imprisonment is a pervasive phenomenon in the Palestinian context. A quarter of Palestinian men have been incarcerated since 1967, and since 1948, there have been over a million prisoners. In occupied Palestine, those arrested are tried by military courts and subjected to daily raids carried out by the Zionist army. Those imprisoned civilians are then sent to interrogation and investigation centers and subsequently brought before military courts where the conviction rate is around 99%.
This type of administrative detention is a tool of repression that allows Zionist authorities to imprison Palestinians based on “secret” records and files to which neither the defense nor the prisoner has access. Without a trial or judgment, provisional sentences of several months are often extended, and it is common for prisoners to remain under this “administrative detention” regime for years. Currently, as of March 2026, there are nearly 3,500 detainees held under this system, not counting those in Gaza.
The repressive prison and legal system we have just described dates back to Mandatory Palestine.13 Its tools were originally developed by the British colonial administration even before the establishment of the Zionist entity in Palestine, clearly illustrating the colonial continuum that exists between British imperialism and the Zionist entity. Prisons are, in fact, often located on the sites or foundations of detention facilities from the British Mandate era, as is the case with the Damon Women’s Prison.14 This legacy is also reflected in the legislative framework, as seen in the law on “illegal combatants,” modeled after similar legislation in the United States.15
The history of mass incarceration in Palestine dates back to the 1930s, during the time of the first anti-colonial strikes and actions, which in turn triggered the earliest forms of state repression against this emerging resistance.
In the 1960s, with the advent of political parties such as Fatah, the PFLP, and the DFLP, the prison population increasingly consisted of activists engaged in political-military actions, numbering several thousand inmates at the movement’s peak. In this context, the enemy’s objective was—and still is—to weaken the resistance by cutting off its fighters from the popular base on which the guerrillas draw their strength. It is vitally important for the occupying power to silence the most determined resistance fighters, to cut them off from their communities, and to make them disappear. The prison experience thus aims to deter any return to the struggle by former prisoners, scarred by multiple traumas and the weight of reprisals threatening their families, rendering it increasingly costly for them to continue participating in the struggle for liberation.
From this situation grew the need for an organization of political prisoners inside the penal institutions themselves. It was necessary to create the material conditions to transform the destructive prison environment into a place of confrontation with the enemy and a school of revolution. This is how the reality of prisons has evolved throughout history, in step with the ebb and flow of prisoner exchange agreements or periods of rapid increase in the number of prisoners, forcing the movement to continually adapt.
What is important to emphasize—if not to reiterate—is that the enemy’s desire to break the morale of the resistance fighters has, on the contrary, given rise to a movement that turns prison into a school of the Palestinian revolution. Prisoners are the vanguard of the liberation struggle. When referring to them, terms like “Palestinian hostages” tend to be overly humanitarian or even moralistic: the men and women in question are, above all, individuals who have been repressed by a colonial entity, with previous generations having fought to ensure the political dimension of their incarceration is recognized. (Similarly, there were no Zionist “hostages,” only prisoners of war.) Whatever the reason for which a Palestinian is imprisoned, all the decisions made by the colonized are linked to the overall fate of their people.

International Red Aid (Toulouse): As part of their strategy of preemptive counterrevolution, imperialist states have developed a vast legislative arsenal. In this context, and in the face of the structural crisis it is currently undergoing, French imperialism has, in recent years, introduced a growing number of new measures aimed at strengthening its instruments of coercion. These measures do not target only revolutionary movements—which do not currently exist on a mass scale—but seek above all to contain any inclination emanating from various sectors of the proletariat, particularly non-white segments of the population, toward challenging the established order.
Under these conditions, it cannot be said that the French state produces political prisoners “on a large scale.” (However, it is noteworthy that France held one of Europe’s longest-serving political prisoners, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, for over forty years.) This statement nevertheless warrants some nuance. During every phase of heightened antagonism with the state, many people are imprisoned, as was the case during the Yellow Vest movement in 201816 or the riots following the police killing of Nahel Merzouk in 2023.17 Furthermore, several anti-fascists have been repressed and incarcerated following clashes with neo-Nazi groups. The most emblematic case remains the pretrial detention of nine antifascists in the case linked to the death of the neo-Nazi Quentin Deranque in Lyon.18
The fact remains: In all these situations, the issue of incarceration—and even more so the struggle against it—is largely ignored by broad segments of the revolutionary movement, and even more so by progressive circles. This can be explained in particular by years of pacifism and by the dominance of social democracy in various spaces of struggle, which have largely contributed to depoliticizing the issue of repression, even though it is an integral part of the revolutionary struggle. This observation must, however, be updated: we are seeing the development of self-defense frameworks, particularly in Autonomist circles,19 which have been hit hard in recent times.

Material: How has “lawfare”—the strategic use of the legal system as an instrument of repression—been deployed in your context recently and how has it evolved? Have there been recent national or international judicial frameworks (such as anti-terrorism legislation, deportation regimes, or administrative measures) that have targeted militants and organizations? Is the balance shifting, in terms of states investing more into lawfare compared to “regular military” anti-insurgency tactics, or vice versa? How does lawfare-based repression function to demoralize, isolate, or contain the revolutionary movement in your experience? Has your movement been able to effectively resist or undermine this use of lawfare?

Samidoun (Paris-Banlieue): In our context, as an international solidarity network in support of Palestinian prisoners operating in many different countries, we have faced numerous manifestations of “lawfare” waged against us by imperialist states. While these repressive offensives did not begin after October 7, 2023, they intensified during the imperialist-Zionist genocidal onslaught. Founded in support of hunger strikes led by Palestinian, Arab, and internationalist detainees in colonial prisons since 2011, our network confronts lawfare in a variety of ways.
In November 2023, the German government banned our organization within its borders. We had a very active chapter there, made up of several refugee comrades, most of whom came from camps in Palestine or elsewhere in the region. This broad crackdown was accompanied by attacks on activists and their families, including attempts to strip them of their refugee status, bans on demonstrations, and regular arrests. Germany is home to the largest Palestinian population in Europe and occupies a dominant position within the European imperialist order. The fact that the assault on our organization was launched after October 7, 2023 follows a clear political logic. These two factors (Germany’s position within European imperialism and the fact it hosts the continent’s most important Palestinian diasporic population) make it a central strategic battleground.
One of the major offensives against Samidoun in the current period took place in North America with Samidoun’s designation as a “terrorist organization” in Canada in 2024 and sanctions against the network by the US Treasury at the same time. In 2024, the French government dissolved the Collectif Palestine Vaincra (“Palestine Will Prevail Collective”).20 In the Netherlands, a dissolution order was also issued against our chapter there, though it was not enforced. To wage this legal war effectively, states are adapting and drawing inspiration from one another. In Belgium, this is reflected in particular by the so-called “Arizona” reactionary government’s determination to implement procedures aimed at dissolving organizations, explicitly targeting Samidoun and other components of the social movement. This offensive is part of a broader logic of repressive cooperation among imperialist states. The criminalization of Samidoun thus prolongs the process that began in 2021, when the Zionist regime classified Samidoun and five other organizations as “terrorist,” paving the way for their international ostracism.
These sanctions are never isolated. Whenever a state succeeds in banning or criminalizing a section of our network, Zionist groups in other countries rely on these designations to legitimize new offensives against Samidoun or its affiliated organizations. The mechanisms vary depending on each state’s specific legal arsenal—whether or not an organization can be dissolved, the use of administrative procedures, “designations” made at the national or European level,22 etc.—but the logic remains the same. In most cases, a convergence of actors from political and media circles works to create a climate conducive to these attacks, laying the groundwork for repression. In France, moments of high social tension, such as the feminist demonstrations on March 7 and 8, 2025, gave rise to a sustained series of media attacks. These intensified when activists from Urgence Palestine and Samidoun organized to prevent the presence of fascist and Zionist groups (like the femi-nationalist, Nemesis collective) at the demonstrations themselves, or when the March 7 protest focused on the release of political prisoners, with slogans calling for the start of a new intifada. This political and media campaign has even led to explicit threats of dissolution made by ministers against the two organizations.23
Furthermore, it is important to clarify that this is not an attack on Samidoun as an organization, but rather an attack on the political work centered on prisoners and martyrs, in support of the Palestinian Resistance, and against the active role our governments play in the colonization of Palestine. The imperialist states fear the formation of a broad and strong movement against imperialism, capable of standing alongside the resistance forces in and around Palestine, to confront our own rulers. The issue of prisoners and the honoring of martyrs are therefore primary targets of Zionist repression. A recent illustration of this is the “Palestinian Authority’s” submission to Zionist and imperialist demands—notably those of the European Union and the United States. For example, on February 10, 2025, Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree ending the payment of financial allowances to the families of Palestinian prisoners and martyrs.
The legal tools deployed against Samidoun, particularly in Canada, are part of the anti-terrorist arsenal that has been used for decades against Palestinian organizations, which are placed on “lists of terrorist organizations.” These lists also include numerous anti-imperialist and revolutionary movements around the world. Such dynamics are therefore not new and are part of the security-driven, Islamophobic, and imperialist paradigm that solidified after 2001, particularly in the United States. The case of the Holy Land Five is emblematic in this regard. On November 24, 2008, five Palestinian community activists who were members of the Holy Land Foundation—one of the leading Muslim charitable organizations in the United States—were sentenced to lengthy prison terms by the US courts for supporting humanitarian aid efforts to Gaza. Even today, two of them, Shukri Abu Baker and Ghassan Elashi, remain incarcerated, serving sentences of up to 65 years in prison.
The example of the Holy Land Five shows that, in the imperialist centers, Palestinians in exile face particularly intense repression, and increasingly so since October 7, 2023. The ban on Samidoun in Germany and the attacks against Mohammed Khatib, the network’s European coordinator and a native of the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon,24 are part of this assault. Repression is intensifying and relies on the racist and imperialist legal systems of Western capitalist states. From border controls to anti-terrorism laws and the repression of social movements, these states have a full arsenal at their disposal to strike ever harder against Palestinians.
At this time (March 2026), several Palestinian refugees are incarcerated in European prisons. In France, Ali, a Palestinian refugee from the Balata camp, has been in pretrial detention since May 2024 on charges forwarded by the Zionist authorities.
In Italy, Ahmad Salem, a 24-year-old Palestinian, has been imprisoned for over six months awaiting trial. Anan Yaeesh, an activist from Tulkarem, has been imprisoned for two years and was sentenced to five and a half years in prison on January 16, 2026, accused of “association with terrorism” based on intelligence provided by the Zionist authorities to the Italian government.
Also in Italy, on December 27, 2025, during a series of coordinated raids, Mohammed Hannoun, president of the Associazione dei Palestinesi in Italia (API), along with Ra’ed Dawoud, Yasser Elasaly, Khalil Abu Deiah, Adel Abu Rawwa, Raed Al-Salahat, and Reyad Albustanji were arrested by Italian police. These arrests were based on Zionist accusations regarding the collection of millions of euros in donations for Palestinian institutions, but the state primarily targets the institutions’ support for the families of martyrs and prisoners. On January 19, Adel Ibrahim Salameh Abu Rawwa, Raed Al Salahat, and Khalil Abu Deiah were released, while the other four remain behind bars and face prosecution.25
Mustafa Ayyash, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, has been imprisoned in Austria since November 17, 2025. On September 19, he was arrested by the Dutch police and subsequently placed in detention. At the time, he was in the Netherlands to file a lawsuit against the Austrian government following a raid on his home. After two months in custody, he was extradited to Austria, where he remains incarcerated. In Belgium, several Palestinians from Gaza—Mahmoud Abu Hadayed, Anas Seyam, and Hamouda Albayyouk—were deported to Greece. On October 7, 2025, Mahmoud Farajallah took his own life in a correctional facility while being held in administrative detention. Another young man from Gaza, Ali Abu Taha, remains incarcerated.
This brief overview of a few different cases of repression highlights the inter-imperialist coordination in terms of legal warfare and in repression. The current phase of intensified repression relies heavily on proceedings initiated by the Zionist authorities against Palestinian refugees. It also extends to increased surveillance of money transfers and forms of community aid, which are criminalized under the guise of fighting terrorism. It should also be noted that the “Europeanization” of repression is intensifying in many areas: strengthened police cooperation, cross-border prosecutions—as evidenced by the arrest warrants issued by Hungary in the context of the “Maja T” or “Budapest affair,”26 targeting anti-fascists—but also the tightening of conditions imposed on those in exile and the ongoing militarization of borders.27
Furthermore, the issue of blocking and criminalizing financial and material aid to Palestinian institutions will become a major challenge for solidarity with Palestine. Repressive measures often begin with individual or collective designations issued by the US Treasury, as was the case with Mohammed Hannoun in Italy a few weeks before his arrest. These mechanisms are still largely invisible but are set to become tools for repressing community self-organization and support from working-class immigrant and Muslim communities for Palestine. The community association Humani’Terre in France, which is under investigation for financing “terrorism,” is a telling example. In France, this logic also manifests through the use of administrative measures—and thus, by nature, extrajudicial ones—such as the freezing of assets. Several activists have been affected, including Omar Alsoumi, one of the founders of Urgence Palestine, as well as various associations and collectives.28
Finally, there is a fundamental difference between the level of repression targeting the solidarity movement here and that targeting Palestinian resistance forces on the ground. The legal war waged by the imperialist West sheds light on our own position and that of the states in which we live. The fact that similar tools are used both against us and against political and military organizations rooted in the masses—capable of inflicting tangible losses on the enemy—must not lead us to overestimate ourselves. On the contrary, it must allow us to highlight the coherence of the repressive apparatus and the political role assigned to us within this framework. First, the Zionist entity is the organic extension of Western imperialism in the Middle East: the colonization of Palestine thus serves to defend the strategic interests of this imperialism. In this context, as Georges Abdallah emphasized in an interview with Masar Badil in January 2026:

The Palestinian keffiyeh and flag have become much more than mere national symbols; they are universal symbols of the struggle against Israeli fascism, on the one hand, and of resistance to the rise of fascism in Europe and around the world.

Consequently, the imperialist West upholds these interests by suppressing the solidarity movement with Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora.
On an international scale, our role, from the very heart of the imperialist centers, is to organize collectively against repression and for liberation. We must not let our enemies fragment us through their labels, their repressive mechanisms, and their propaganda, which seek to isolate the struggles from one another. Our strength lies in our unity. It is up to us to intensify our efforts to build an international grassroots foundation for resistance, capable of standing up to the ongoing legal and political offensive. If the legal war is intensifying, it is also because imperialism fears this prospect of unity and grassroots grounding.
The banning and imprisonment of Palestine Action activists must therefore be seen in relation to the effectiveness of their direct actions against the current war machine—actions that have contributed to the closure of arms factories and offices linked to the arms trade involved in genocide.29

International Red Aid (Toulouse): In France, various legal, police, and judicial measures exist to crack down on revolutionary and progressive activists. Since the 1980s, and even more so after the 2015 attacks,30 the anti-terrorism arsenal has been significantly strengthened. In particular, it has expanded to include certain criminal charges, such as “criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist enterprise,” which allows for preemptive police interventions before any act is even committed.
At the same time, several other provisions introduced under the state of emergency (see footnote 5) have been incorporated into common law, facilitating administrative searches, house arrests, and the extension of surveillance measures, including in activist contexts. Added to this are other legal tools, such as the creation of the offense of “unlawful assembly, participation in criminal conspiracy with the intent of committing violence, or public insult.”
These legal mechanisms, which are obviously not limited to combat “Islamic terrorism” alone, are part of a broader strategy to manage challenges to the established order. Several trials of the revolutionary left have been carried out using these measures, such as the so-called Affaire « du 8 décembre 2020 » (“December 8th Case”).31 In particular, they allow for the use of preventive arrests, widespread and exceptionally long police custody periods, restrictive judicial controls (bans on demonstrating, reporting requirements), as well as prison sentences. At the same time, we are witnessing a militarization of law enforcement and the development of new technological tools, ranging from the use of artificial intelligence in video surveillance systems, to the deployment of drones in the management of protests and working-class neighborhoods.
Beyond their individual effects, these measures also have a collective impact, helping to deter participation in political organization and mobilizations. The use of pretrial detention, immediate court appearances, or certain detention conditions—such as solitary confinement or geographical isolation—thus constitute a set of repressive measures with both individual and collective implications.
It is clear that these measures affect the revolutionary movement. However, they are not the primary cause of its weakness and disorganization. Those shortcomings are due to the prevalence of reformism in France—including within the radical left—which represents the decisive factor in this regard. In France, International Red Aid remains a modest organization, present only in Toulouse. Faced with this reality, we seek to re-politicize the issue of the struggle against repression by linking it to a revolutionary perspective.

Material: When faced with the imprisonment of activists and/or guerrillas, how has your movement responded? Have you been successful in organizing solidarity with prisoners and their families beyond humanitarian support? How have you managed the continuity of political work and organization despite the capture of key comrades—and potentially entire politico-military fronts? In what ways has repression forced you to innovate organizationally or strategically? At what point does repression force the acceptance of strategic retreat?

Samidoun (Paris-Banlieue): Let’s return here to the Palestinian context itself.
It is extremely difficult for families to visit prisoners because the detention centers are located within the 1948 borders, forcing many Palestinians to pass through numerous checkpoints and thus endure humiliation at the hands of the Zionist army. Furthermore, only the children and female members of the immediate family—mothers, sisters, or daughters—are allowed to visit the prisoner, thereby excluding any adolescent or adult male family members.
As we mentioned earlier, prisoners initially had no rights: no books, no pencils, no paper, no kitchen, and no library.
Scattered across numerous prisons and very few in number per detention center, the incarcerated resistance fighters also had to cope with meals that were practically inedible. At that time, prison life was truly inhumane; extremely destructive for those held there.
Thus, the first generation began demanding the right to receive books, to gather among Palestinian prisoners, to have their own food, as well as pens and paper for writing. Their tools of struggle included hunger strikes, sometimes organized on a massive scale, at the cost of several martyrs. It was not uncommon for the Zionists to use force-feeding—a form of torture that often led to death—when the prisoners went on strike. Subsequently, conditions improved, hard-won through struggle. But it was only after the first Intifada—the “Intifada of the Stones”32 that took place from 1987 to 1993—when tens of thousands of young Palestinians were locked up in colonial prisons, that they transformed the prison into a true school of the revolution, making sure that incarceration would not be a break from the Palestinian revolution as a whole.
To build this school of the revolution, the necessary material conditions had to be put in place. During the first Intifada, the number of prisoners rose from several thousand in the 1960s and 1970s to over 10,000—many of them very young, including numerous women—who had not received much political or theoretical training. For the most part, they had joined the struggle at a very early age to take part in the ongoing uprising. They were therefore trained in prison, and it was from among their ranks that leaders such as Yahya Sinwar, Nael Barghouti, Ahmed Saadat, Marwan Barghouti, and others emerged.33
A well-known example of a prisoner’s trajectory is that of Walid Daqqah. He was imprisoned in 1986 after being accused of participating in a military operation. Initially sentenced to life in prison, he was ultimately given a 37-year term. Daqqah was a simple gas station attendant who, due to his conviction and his involvement in the armed struggle, came into contact with the leadership of the resistance and, through hard work, became one of the greatest theoreticians of the resistance, as well as a playwright and poet whose reputation became widely known. He fell as a martyr on April 7, 2024, a victim of medical negligence that lets sick prisoners die or fails to treat illnesses contracted in their cells.
There have always been theoretical work or other writings coming out of prison. Samidoun strives to make this prisoner literature available, especially since, as mentioned, they represent the most advanced segment of the revolution, always ready for confrontation and unwilling to accept liquidationist agreements. The hunger strike is one form of this refusal, though it is the most costly. It is not the only one: there is also the exfiltration of documents and the tactic of “cell blockades.” One famous case comes to mind from 1993, at the time of the Oslo Accords: while the prisoners in a women’s unit were scheduled for release, three of them remained locked up. This led to a cell blockade lasting several months by the detainees so that all could be released together. In doing so, they rejected the arguments of certain members within the movement who sought to sweep the matter under the rug or pressure them into accepting a deal with the prison authorities.
So why is the prisoners’ struggle so important to Samidoun? The answer is quite simple: If prisoners are a priority for the Palestinian resistance in general, they must also be a priority for those who support the revolution. Let us not forget that the Al-Aqsa Flood of October 7 also aimed to break the Zionist prisons; in fact, today we see that many prisoners initially sentenced to life imprisonment—sometimes for terms of several hundred years—are now being released and are joining the resistance as free men. Despite this, the Zionists’ savagery has since focused its efforts on prisons themselves, extending the genocide behind bars. This is because the Palestinians’ struggle within colonial prisons poses a constant challenge to the occupier and the balance of power depends on the strength of the movement, both inside and outside. Since October 7, we have witnessed a return to conditions that are at times harsher than those faced by the first generation of prisoners: hard-won rights have been swept away by the Zionist authorities; the possibility of collective and political organization has vanished; and old forms of torture are reappearing, creating unprecedented difficulties. Therefore, it can be said that genocide is also taking place inside prisons, and the primary challenge for the prisoners’ movement is to survive this unprecedented offensive.
Furthermore, Samidoun also addresses the issue of pro-Palestinian prisoners in imperialist detention centers, such as the case of the Palestine Action and “Filton 24” activists,34 imprisoned in the United Kingdom. In their regard, our work is carried out in the same way as for prisoners in Palestine: spreading prisoners’ writings, providing translations, and distributing propaganda—all without resorting to humanitarianism.35 This sometimes involves letter-writing workshops, which create an emotional and human connection with the prisoners, often making the authors of these letters more committed and engaged in their support for the Resistance.
It is important to note that in 2026, Samidoun is an organization that can no longer operate on social media due to Meta’s censorship. Despite efforts to ban us, our work continues, and we persist in giving voice to the Resistance and carrying out political work to honor the prisoners, the martyrs, and the Palestinian Resistance in general—even in places where Samidoun has been banned.

International Red Aid (Toulouse): Our organization played a significant role in the campaign in Europe to support Georges Abdallah for over twenty years. We organized direct and concrete support in France—including monthly prison visits and regular exchange of letters—and built mobilization campaigns centered on defending the prisoner’s revolutionary identity.
It is this mobilization—based on the coordination of resistance both inside and outside prisons, and driven by the determination of the imprisoned revolutionary protagonist, Georges Abdallah—that made it possible to secure his release. This approach also guides the development of other campaigns, notably in support of the Red Brigades/Communist Combatant Party prisoners36 in Italy, Nikos Maziotis37 in Greece, and many others.

 

 

The use of political imprisonment and lawfare in the Philippines is intrinsically linked to the history of colonialism, neocolonialism, and political resistance of movements for national and social liberation.
During precolonial times, the informal prison system was community-based, whereby penalties were meted out by local chieftains in accordance to local laws and incarceration was within the communities.
The formal prison system in the Philippines started during the Spanish colonial rule, marked by the establishment of the Old Bilibid Prison in 1847,38 within a period when early organized peasant movements and underground dissent were growing against the colonial regime’s abuses and exploitation. The prison, the main penitentiary in Oroquieta Street in Manila and known as Carcel y Presidio Correccional, was built for common prisoners (“Carcel”) and for political convicts (“Presidio”).
Later, in 1869, the San Ramon Prison and Penal Farm was also established as a penal colony for Muslim rebels and political prisoners,39 as deportation or exile to remote areas became a common punishment for so-called political offenders to remove them from the centers of rebellion.
Much later, especially when the political reform and revolutionary movements against the Spanish occupation were established, the dungeons of Fort Santiago in Intramuros,40 Manila, were used to imprison political dissidents, who were subjected to physical torture and severe mistreatment.
The construction of prisons by the Spanish colonizers had been a deliberate tactic to suppress resistance to colonial rule and instill a social order in accordance to the interests of Spain. Pacification campaigns, including arrests, were carried out by the Spanish Army, Navy, and the Guardia Civil.41 Among the notable cases of those imprisoned due to their roles in political resistance include the leaders and participants in the Magalat Revolt of 1596 against abusive Spanish tribute collectors and forced labor; the three Filipino priests collectively known as Gomburza (Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora), who were detained following the 1872 Cavite mutiny42 and publicly executed via garrote; writer Jose Rizal,43 who was detained at Fort Santiago before his execution; and worker revolutionary Andres Bonifacio,44 who was tried, detained, and executed in Cavite.
As the American colonial rule came, the US used the legal architecture of legislation to suppress resistance and criminalize advocacy for independence, reclassifying anti-colonial fighters as common criminals. Five laws passed by the US colonial government had been crucial tools to suppress nationalist movements and quell armed resistance. The first of these laws authorized the organization of a national police force, the Philippine Constabulary, in July 1901. The other four laws were the Sedition Law (November 1901), the Brigandage Law (November 1902), the Reconcentration Law (June 1903), and the Flag Law (September 1907), which had been intended to suppress Filipino nationalism and ensure the colonial government’s control over society. Upon the enactment of the National Defense Law in 1935, the Armed Forces of the Philippines was officially established, and in 1938, the Constabulary Division (precursor of the Philippine Constabulary) was reorganized into a national police force which undertook roles on “peace and order” in the islands and conducted the arrests.
The Philippine prison system was reorganized through the creation of the Bureau of Prisons (now the Bureau of Corrections) under the Reorganization Act of 1905. Prisons became tools of “benevolent assimilation” and surveillance to contain anti-colonial resistance.
The Old Bilibid Prison had been renamed as the Manila City Jail in 1940, when inmates were transferred to the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa45 due to extreme overcrowding. The following facilities were also established mainly to imprison ladrones, tulisanes, and bandoleros (bandits, outlaws, or brigands), as the recent laws have regarded revolucionarios (revolutionaries) or insurrectos (insurgents): the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in 1904, the Davao Penal Colony in 1932, and the Correctional Institution for Women in 1929. Revolutionaries Crisanto Evangelista, Jacinto G. Manahan, and Dominador J. Ambrosio of the old Communist Party of the Philippines,46 Luis Taruc of the Socialist Party of the Philippines,47 Macario Sakay and brothers Quintin and Adoy Tabal were among those imprisoned in said facilities. During the Japanese colonial period, the same facilities, and more, were used in the torture and detention of leaders and members of the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon (People’s Army Against Japanese Colonization).48
As nominal independence was declared by the United States in 1946, laws of the neocolonial government defined laws on rebellion, insurrection, sedition, or disloyalty and used them against dissidents who opposed the continuing US dominance on Philippine politics and the puppet elite rule. The AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), trained by the US government, and the Philippine Constabulary undertook the arrests of political prisoners.
Most notable among the political prisoners at that time were poet, writer, and trade union organizer Amado V. Hernandez49 and more than 500 other trade unionists. Hernandez faced charges of rebellion with murder, arson, and robbery. Five years after his arrest, and imprisoned at the New Bilibid Prison, Hernandez filed a petition for bail with the court where his case was pending, but was denied on the basis of the nature of the offense (if the crime was complexed, the penalty for the most serious crime shall be imposed). Thus, he filed a petition at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that rebellion cannot be complexed with other crimes, such as murder and arson; granted Hernandez’s bail, and eventually issued an acquittal in 1964. The landmark decision, known as the Hernandez doctrine, has since been cited in in jurisprudence regarding criminalization of political offenses.
The regime of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. paved the way for the imposition of martial law and the use of US-driven counterinsurgency programs, which resulted in thousands of killings, torture, disappearances, and illegal or arbitrary arrests. At this time, the Communist Party of the Philippines had been reestablished in 1968,50 and a resurgence of the protest movements, mass organizing, and armed resistance was seen.
From 1972 to 1986, it is estimated that at least 70,000 individuals including revolutionaries, activists, peasants, workers, urban poor, students, journalists, academics, church workers, and members of the political opposition have been incarcerated. Most of the political prisoners were arrested without warrant and detained without charges, and suffered various forms of torture in various military camps and military safehouses and in at least 80 detention centers. In cases where there were charges, they faced charges of rebellion, subversion, inciting sedition, or illegal possession of firearms and explosives.
In response, the political prisoners organized themselves within prisons and detention centers to resist their maltreatment, advocate for their rights, and maintain solidarity. They conducted various forms of protest, including hunger strikes, to highlight their situation, demand better jail conditions, and press for immediate and just trials or release. In some instances, they organized prison escapes. They established links with organizations and individuals outside prison to amplify their demands. These forms of mass struggles inside prisons was considered part of the Filipino people’s struggle against the Marcos dictatorship.51
Political prisoners also used art as their form of expression and resistance. Volunteers from groups brought art materials into prisons and helped market the finished products outside to provide some financial support to the prisoners and their families. These organizations also helped in providing legal aid, scholarship funds for children of political prisoners, and livelihood support for released political prisoners.
Organizations supporting political prisoners were established including an organization of their families in 1979, and an organization of former political prisoners called the Samahan ng Ex-detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Para sa Amnestiya (SELDA; Association of Former Detainees Against Detention and for Amnesty).
In February 1986, after years of the dictatorship and upon Marcos’s ouster from office,52 the new President Corazon Aquino53 issued orders to release political prisoners, and by February 1987, issued Proclamation No. 80 on the full and unconditional amnesty for political prisoners. Victims of the Marcos dictatorship, including former political prisoners, filed a class suit in Hawaii to seek recognition and reparations.
However, the legal and political infrastructure that enabled illegal or arbitrary arrests, including warrantless arrests, and political imprisonment had been maintained, despite the ouster of the dictator Marcos and the 1987 Constitution which contains a Bill of Rights. The US government’s low intensity conflict had been adapted as a counterinsurgency and military strategy by the Aquino government, and such arrests, detention, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearance continued. In 1991, the Supreme Court ruled in a case that warrantless arrests are permissible, emphasizing requirements of probable cause, good faith, and the circumstances of the arrests. In the same year, the Philippine National Police was created.
From 1986 to 1992, human rights groups documented 20,523 victims of illegal arrests and detention, 816 desaparecidos,54 135 cases of massacres, 1,064 victims of extrajudicial killings, and 1.2 million civilian victims of forcible evacuations due to military operations. From 1988 onward, an average of 200 persons were arrested daily, with 94% of the arrests conducted illegally. From January 1989 to September 1990, 4,408 political detentions were reported, 535 of which showed signs of torture. 109 disappeared following their arrests, and 218 people died from massacres. From January 1987 to September 1991, there were 18,281 arbitrary arrests, 701 involuntary disappearances, and nearly 2,000 extrajudicial killings.
The 1992 national elections brought President Fidel Ramos,55 a major implementer of martial law and the total war policy, into power. In 1992, Ramos was compelled to repeal the Anti-Subversion Law, and with much work done by human rights groups, releases of political prisoners were facilitated. However, Ramos maintained many repressive decrees promulgated under martial law, militarized the civilian government by appointing at least 92 former military and police officers in key positions and resorted to the practice of criminalizing political offenses instead of addressing head-on the roots of political dissent. Human rights groups conducted activities for the repeal of repressive laws, for the release of political prisoners, and to seek justice for human rights violations.
As Joseph Estrada assumed the presidency, he signed in August 1998 the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), the first point in the substantive agenda of the peace negotiations between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)56 and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). Articles in the CARHRIHL contain affirmation of the Hernandez doctrine and review of cases of all political prisoners and their release, as well as the GRP’s work for the immediate repeal of repressive laws including Marcosian decrees.
But soon after, the regime terminated the peace negotiations and eventually discarded all agreements between the NDFP and the GRP forged in almost 10 years of talks between the two panels. Illegal arrests and detention, killings and massacres, enforced disappearances, and violent dispersals of rallies continued. Before he was ousted from power, in December 2000, Estrada announced that he would release some 200 political prisoners convicted of or being prosecuted for offenses allegedly committed within the context of armed insurgency. This, however, did not materialize as Estrada was removed from the presidency the next month.
Estrada also scuttled the government’s peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, resulting in forcible evacuations of Moro communities during bombings and indiscriminate firing operations of the Philippine military.
The regimes of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Benigno Aquino III, Rodrigo Duterte,57 and current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr.58 saw the increased criminalization of political offenses, as counterinsurgency programs were framed in the US “war on terror” campaign and the subsequent adoption of the “whole of government,” “whole of society,” and “whole of nation”59 approaches to counterinsurgency.
Red-baiting, red-labeling, or red- or terrorist-tagging by government officials and agencies have been on an uptick, seemingly to mark their targets of “neutralization.” Civilian agencies of government have been oriented for counterinsurgency purposes but with a predominantly militarist approach. Such has resulted in more than 2,000 extrajudicial killings of civilians, nearly 300 victims of enforced disappearances, hundreds of victims of torture and more than 1,300 political prisoners. The climate of impunity worsened, especially during the Duterte administration’s “war on drugs” which normalized staged crime scenes, planting of evidence, and other various forms of violations of the right to due process, as well as Duterte’s scuttling of the talks of the NDFP and GRP, all of which is continued by Marcos Jr. up to present.
The use of laws and the Philippine justice system for political repression has been deeply institutionalized, with the enactment of laws such as the Human Security Act, the Anti-Terrorism Law and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Law, and the massive use of criminal charges against activists and revolutionaries. Government bodies were created to either systematize the filing of trumped-up charges against activists and revolutionaries and put them in jail, or to justify their killings, disappearances, arrests, and torture. To date, more than 200 had been charged using the terror laws, with more 80 arrested and detained based on these charges.
Almost all 700 political prisoners at present face criminal, not political, charges ranging from murder, attempted or frustrated murder, arson, robbery, kidnapping, and illegal possession of firearms and explosives, coupled with facing rebellion or terrorism charges. More than half face the trumped-up charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives, probably due to the ease by which these charges are concocted through planting of evidence and the presumption of regularity protocol in the military or police operations during arrests and the non-bailable provisions regarding these charges.
While in jail, the extremely slow-paced justice system enables prolonged detention even of those who are still in the process of being tried in court. There is no regularity of court hearings, prosecution witnesses are given wide latitude in being remiss or postponements in giving their testimonies in court, and perjured testimonies as well as planted evidence are admitted as evidence. It is estimated that a political prisoner is kept in prison for an average of 5 to 6 years, before most of the charges against them are dismissed or they are acquitted of these charges.
In the meantime, they are subjected to prison conditions in one of the most overly congested jails in the world, with an average of more than 500% over-congestion prison rate in the last five to ten years. Political prisoners are mixed with common offenders in cramped detention cells, where many sleep on bare floors or would have to pay a hefty fee for a decent bed. Food is rationed, with government allotting Php 75.00 (or USD 1.20) per day as a budget and few more pesos minus that are lost in the web of jail corruption. Thus, prisoners, including political prisoners, are left with food that is unhealthy, at times rotten, and barely digestible, while access to drinking water and water for hygiene and sanitation is very minimal.
Prison conditions likewise aggravate the medical conditions of the elderly and those with illnesses, including especially debilitating ones. With a very measly Php 15 (USD 0.25) per day medicine budget, without regular doctors and nurses in jails, without health care including reproductive and mental health facilities and services in jail, many political prisoners have considered these prisons as the “cemetery for the living.”
Administrative policies in relation to accreditation and registration of non-profit or non-governmental organizations have been hewed in accordance to the laws on terrorism, which meant a more restrictive environment for and increased state intrusion on the operations of NPOs (non-profit organizations) and NGOs (non-governmental organizations), as well as more stringent processes on funding. International solidarity allies, some of them based in the Philippines for years, have faced deportation proceedings and blacklisting of the immigration office.
In all these and more, the intent of the reactionary regimes is clear – to destroy the revolutionary movement and to quell political dissent of the citizens. Political imprisonment and lawfare are but among the tools of repression that are deployed, though other tools such as the use of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and other grave violations have not wavered.
Through the years, the legal and democratic movement in the Philippines has utilized legal and campaign tactics and forms to counter such machinations. Court battles are being waged in the lower courts up to the Supreme Court to question the legal bases of the arbitrary or illegal arrests and detention. Legislative proposals of progressives in parliament are coupled with mass campaigns to frustrate or blunt attempts to impose more draconian legislations, pursue bills which uphold rights to due process, and defend against arbitrary and illegal arrests.
Engagement in these arenas is combined with campaign tactics, which range from effective documentation of human rights violations; mobilization of legal, campaign, and public advocacy, logistical and financial support at the local and national levels; organizing of political prisoners, families of political prisoners, and support groups; and utilization of international mechanisms of support and solidarity.
Innovations through development of newer forms in both legal and campaign tactics are likewise inevitable. Legal remedies and strategies are tried out in judicial and quasi-judicial bodies. Social or digital technologies have enabled broader campaign platforms. Alliance and organizing tactics inside and outside prisons are shared and developed, as international solidarity support and mobilization of the international community are likewise works in progress.
One must note, however, that as the objective conditions remain unresolved—i.e., the root causes of the armed conflict including the predominance of US imperialism in the country’s affairs, the feudal exploitation of the majority of peasants, the rot of bureaucrat capitalism, and the fascist machinations of the State—the struggle continues. Through these, and the greater work of organizing, education, and mobilization in the rural and urban communities in the country, there is continuity of the political work and organizations.

 

 

When we first conceived of this issue’s theme, we did not expect that, by the time we were in the final stage of editing, the US would kidnap Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores from Venezuela and then launch its war upon the people of Iran. These events were, of course, foreseeable since the current fascistic Trump regime began this term with a belligerence towards the hypocritical “rules-based” international order, a game that previous iterations of imperialism liked to play with the world it has dominated. The Trump-style “mask off” imperialism is such that all forms of violent intervention and unilateralism are foreseeable. But since all such forms are foreseeable, it is hard to know which ones to expect––who will be bombed next, who will be kidnapped, what populations will be rounded up––months before they manifest. Hence, just as we did not expect an open genocide to be launched on October 2023 by an equally belligerent settler-capitalist power when we were putting together our first issue of Material, events again got ahead of our planned content.
Even still, the theme of this issue––the political prisoner––is relevant to the current conjuncture and will remain relevant for as long as capitalism dominates the globe. A particular dialectic of political prisoners and the politics of imprisonment is essential to the reproduction of capitalism. To paraphrase Lenin: “One class in power and another in prison.” As long as there are political classes and struggle between classes there will be prisons, and the class in command will determine the rules of imprisonment.
Resistance to capitalism and imperialism will always generate political prisoners—too many to count still languish behind bars. Moreover, the particular nature of the capitalist state will dictate the nature of incarceration: what populations will be targeted with criminalization, the very laws that decide what counts as crime in the first place. Imprisonment is always political, as the violent expansion of ICE raids and arrests the Trump administration unleashed upon its own population have demonstrated—as does the kangaroo court proceedings within which Maduro is caught.
Moreover, when we look at the current actions of the US and Israel in Western Asia, it is tempting to condemn them as criminals guilty of war crimes. While this condemnation may be descriptively true based on vague notions of international law,1 it is also true that this law has largely existed as a balancing between imperialist siblings, a veneer of liberal moralizing no less violent than Kipling’s rapturous poetics about the “white man’s burden” of British Empire.2 Even when this supposed moral order was venerated, the imperialist powers always found ways to exempt themselves and their allies whenever their morality was called into question. They definitely did so when Israel launched its latest instance of open genocide in Gaza, often in the language of international law (“Israel has a right to exist!”). So who will charge and imprison those guilty of war crimes––of obliterating humans and their history, of genocide, of demanding that the entire world bend to an apocalyptic vision––when the guilty are those who determine what counts as a crime in the first place? That is, the desire to condemn the US or Israel as “criminal” for their actions in Western Asia is shattered by the reality that what is “criminal” is a matter of law, and what is law is a matter of politics. The point, here, is that we are on the side of a particular kind of criminality because our politics and the subject of our politics––the exploited, the oppressed––are criminalized. One class in power, another in prison.
This issue of Material begins with an interview with Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, “We have no choice but to navigate against all odds.” As many of our readers are aware, Abdallah is a former Lebanese political prisoner held in France from 1984 to 2025 for his revolutionary activity with the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction (LARF). After many years of solidarity activism on his behalf, Abdallah was finally released from prison in July 2025 and immediately deported to Lebanon. We are honored that he agreed to be interviewed for this issue.
Next, we have the article “Ibon man may layang luminad: Political imprisonment and lawfare in the Philippines”3 by Karapatan, a collective interview with International Red Aid and Samidoun Île-de-France, and a contribution from the Secretariat of the International Red Aid. These pieces provide an important window on the international situation of political prisoners and the ways in which law is wielded to incarcerate and criminalize enemies of the state.
Following the above pieces, “Political Prisoners, Lawfare, and the Revolutionary Response in the US” by Comrade B, the General Secretary of Lal Morich, outlines the structure of carceral logic in the US––the deep institutional roots of racial and carceral capitalism––of which the current ICE raids are a recent symptom. The US possesses the largest prison population in the history of humanity; this is not a bug, but a feature of its status as the current leader of world capitalism.
N. Ravi’s “Conditions and Rights in Jails: My Experiences” is about India’s carceral system, particularly in Jharkhand, that exposes the political elements of imprisonment. Ravi is a revolutionary activist who has been in and out of this carceral system and thus possesses personal experience with the prison conditions.
In our “From the Archives” section, a space where we provide material from our revolutionary past, we have some selections from Rosa Luxemburg’s “Letters from Prison.” The incarceration of the anti-capitalist militant has been an intrinsic part of capitalism since its inception; many of the “great names” of the historical revolutionary movement have spent time imprisoned and writing from the space of incarceration. We had a lot of options to choose from but felt that it was important to give our respect to Luxemburg, who also wrote her famous Junius Pamphlet from prison, which argued for a rupture from social democracy and the practice of supporting national imperialist interests, relevant to today’s conjuncture where some “leftists” are again suggesting that we support an imperialist intervention in Iran.
Finally, we have two texts concerning film criticism in the Philippines. The first, “Cinema Against Confinement: The Political Prisoner in Selected Filipino Film Productions (1984–1995)” is a review by the militant and acclaimed film scholar Epoy Deyto that examines the depiction and analysis of the figure of the political prisoner in regional cinema. The second text, “Regulated Filmmakers, Deregulated Film Industry: Some Problems in the Philippine Film Industry and their Solution” by A. Hunt examines the role of film and the film industry in the region, the notion of “independent” film, and the possibility of revolutionary film, using and expanding on work by Deyto.
Our art in this issue is by the Palestinian artist Rehab Nazzal from her Dead Sea Series (2012) and her We the Wild Plants and Fruit Trees (2022). Nazzal is a long-time political activist whose work deals with the settler-colonial violence on the bodies, landscape, and culture of her people. The work from the former series concerns the fact that the Dead Sea is invisible from the Palestinian side due to the colonial imprisonment of the people by the Zionist Entity. The work from the latter concerns the erasure of the Palestinian Indigenous relationship to the land.

Thanks again to our readers and supporters. Solidarity with all incarcerated militants who challenged capitalism in the hope of a better and more humane world; solidarity with all of the oppressed and exploited victimized by criminalization and incarceration.

D. Jin
J. Moufawad-Paul
M. Van Herzeele

The studies and documents that make up this collection cannot make any claim to being exhaustive. Perhaps there was no need to throw oneself into a kind of asceticism. . . . That was indeed our opinion. The fact of the matter is that we still had to agree, at the end of the day, to this narrow limitation. If North Africa is relatively privileged here, the immense Black continent was assigned an already smaller place, while Madagascar must be content with a few allusions, and nothing is said about the Caribbean. As for Vietnam, in any case, this country could not be examined by our inquiry: the state of war and the intervention of French troops to impose the government of Bảo Đại cancel out a priori any interrogation on the type of implementation of our “western” democracy there.
It is true that there is already an abundant documentation of the various territories referred to as the French Union. Our task, since we could not cover everything, was rather to avoid geographical dispersion in favor of an attempt—more partial but without a doubt more productive—to grasp and illuminate various aspects that seemed essential. As such, the selected contributions might already be quite sufficiently instructive; at least they open certain paths for reflection rarely taken by those who dabble in anticolonialism. There will surely be objections to the strict economic reductionism that Marxists impose upon the phenomenon of colonial oppression; it would be correct to add that opposition to this reduction easily falls into the inverse error, which puts the economy between parentheses. The problems of industrialization, with the proletarianization that they imply, constitute a decisive test for the colonies. These still quite limited phenomena, of the type that Guérif raised in the constitution of a Moroccan proletariat, already unequivocally show the total lack of preparation of the settler elite and the administrations that it controls; their radical ineptitude in their leading role in countries where the masses begin to influence public life and can no longer be treated as a merely passive instrument in the service of exploiters by divine right. Before they may even become conscious of their political importance, the masses, by their mere existence, already pose problems for which there is no possible solution within the context of the colonial system. The astounding power—which allows a handful of settlers to use the structures, specific to each territory, to their profit, to oppose themselves successfully to the decisions of the metropole and, in Tunisia, for example, to prohibit all real change, as trifling as its scope may be—this astounding power is already diminished when we recall that Tunisia is practically owned by half a dozen financial groups, in terms of its agriculture, mineral resources, industry, transport. But it appears absolutely comprehensible once one dismantles, as Claude Bourdet does here, the mechanism according to which the decisive influence of such groups is exercised simultaneously on local administration, Parliament, and the French ministers. And it is yet again the same predominance of the considerations of high finance that Claude Gérard denounces when, in regards to Black Africa, he evokes the existence and weight of institutions such as the “États Généraux de la Colonisation.”
Except for the very beginning of each colonial enterprise, colonization has established social structures characterized both by a system of capitalist exploitation and by racist contempt everywhere. We can question the relationship between capitalism and racism, endeavor to explain one by the other or to grasp an original dialectic between them—in any case, it would be absurd to believe that we get closer to colonial realities when we gloss over one or the other; whatever their genesis may be, today they appear inextricably linked. There is no lack of evidence [concerning this point], starting with the complete failure of communist parties, which, in North Africa for example, seem barely consistent throughout their own propaganda. . . or the intentionally confusing maneuvers relentlessly employed by the settler elite, official circles, and the press that they control. From this perspective, the confrontation between the reproach of collusion with communism (which is regularly invoked to compromise native [bourgeois] parties) and the consistency with which North African communism itself admits to underestimating these national movements and to failing to efficiently penetrate the masses that they represent—is quite rich. But it is more concerning to note that this self-critique is not directed at the one aspect on which it could have a useful effect: by denouncing tactical errors, it obscures a fundamental error in the very analysis of the situation. The nationalism of these peoples is not a brute force, a type of natural energy, an energetic potential that can be used at will, if only certain tactless approaches could be avoided. It is a movement that has its own orientation, which no doubt constitutes the only real response to the reality they endure.
Once we accept that this movement is not reducible to class struggle and that it does not entirely lend itself to being accounted for within the schemas of current Marxist orthodoxy, we still must extract the essential aspects to consider them one by one. However, it would be useless to try to reduce its complexity to some synthesis between the aspects “capitalism” and “racism.” Moreover, national movements in the colonies define themselves, today, in relation to the international context. The pressures and the temptations to which these movements are exposed, towards America or towards Russia, are a part of the realities of the problem—but so is their repugnance toward any decisive option in favor of either of the two “blocs.” As already in the case of the peoples of Asia, the accession of the peoples of Africa to their majority—their entry into the world—is bound to be accomplished in ways that are as perplexing for official Stalinism as for the paternalism into which the far left of our governments is hesitantly venturing, quivering. By all appearances, popular democracy when it is in the Chinese style poses more difficult problems for Moscow than in its European forms; Africa, as well, may undoubtedly hold surprises for the prospective fools who would believe it is easy to process.
The fact remains that the present situation is characterized by the growing influence of anticommunist strategy on the classical colonial phenomena that result from the capitalism-racism complex. The intervention of this powerful factor, which has only become substantial over the last few years, should not be considered as simply adding to the effect of ordinary factors: on some points it seems to reinforce this effect, on others it would tend to endanger it, and, in any case, it profoundly modifies its characteristics, appearance, and purpose.
Capitalist exploitation and racist contempt, more and more overdetermined by the fine tuning of an anticommunist strategy on a global scale—such appear to be the dominant traits of the field of forces to which, explicitly or not, any partial analysis of the conflict between the colonial system and democratic principles refers. We will only attempt, in the few pages that follow, to assemble the most significant aspects of colonial situations and their rapid development today, in relation to these axes. Colonialism, which believed itself to be eternal and aimed to be static, is suddenly entering a period of molting—as if it had only had a prolonged adolescence until now, such that we must wait to see it finally enter adulthood. 1

***

“Faced with Russian, American, and British imperialisms that no longer bother to conceal themselves, it is time for a French imperialism to arise. Its substance exists, rich and varied. It only lacks spirit.” The last words of this remarkable text should not be understood, obviously, in a pejorative sense. The editorial team of France Outremer did not mean to stigmatize any lack of inspiration or absence of humor in the conduct of our grand colonial strategy. It was simply, in the month of the Nativity, awaiting a joyful advent: that of a doctrine which would finally proclaim, to the world, the existence of a system that is already inscribed in reality. Giving it form would allow French imperialism, already so “substantial,” to manifest its true power. The time is past for these almost self-shaming policies, paralyzed by some absurd concern for discretion and seemingly afflicted by a modesty complex; it will be important from now on for imperialism to have the courage of its convictions.
In the face of this, our undertaking has a great chance of appearing pointless. However, it is doubtlessly just as logical, in the context of an inquiry into the function of democratic institutions, to find out what becomes of this function in colonized countries—and it is doubtlessly more honest to truly face the problem than to declare it immediately resolved, even based on the most obvious evidence.
It is appropriate then to render oneself systematically incredulous against one’s strongest convictions. Never mind that colonization and democracy have so far appeared to you incompatible, mutually exclusive. Act as if this were not the case and take up the very moderately audacious working hypothesis that the implementation of the principles of democracy must involve a significantly greater gap in the outre-mer than what we see in the Metropole, at different levels of public life. From there, plunge into the documents, absorb the official declarations without wavering, scrupulously assemble all the facts however noteworthy, question everyone no matter their opinion, force yourself day after day to read every opinion piece—and when you are finally at the end of your efforts and at the point of concluding, you will need to admit that the very meaning of your research collapsed along the way. The famous “gap” was only a myth, the distance between the two planes becoming altogether impossible to determine if it turns out that one of the planes doesn’t exist.
But perhaps this absurd research was not entirely pointless and perhaps it only lost its original meaning to take on another. At least it already seems that it constitutes, precisely, the most striking reductio ad absurdum. We meant to judge the various conditions of public life in the outre-mer countries, and we certainly expected to find them “lacking” in relation to democratic principles. But it turns out that just as we would want to point out such conditions, we are not able to find any condition that appears to be justifiably comparable to these principles, any condition which we could be convinced represents, even at any stage of deterioration, democracy at work.
Thus we shall need to invert our perspective. The colonial phenomenon does not necessitate the perversion of democracy—its rotting out—but its pure and simple negation, its total refusal, under whatever disguise it sometimes uses (and less and less necessarily so) to conceal itself. Colonization not only appears in its essence as antidemocratic, but we notice that after having been openly and deliberately so during its belle epoque, it went through a kind of infantile disorder—a crisis of bad conscience, an itch for a verbal democratization—a disorder from which it is just barely recovered in the present period. Thank heavens, it is now in recovery and at the point of returning to its full energy. If you still see it perform some gesture lacking in assurance here and there—a hesitant gait, a look of concern on its face—do not be worried: colonization itself is surprised to feel so powerful again, so free to act and speak according to its heart. Hence some vertigo and some visual disturbances; it is a simple matter of getting used to the return to broad daylight.
***
Can we, however, ignore the movement of democratization begun by the outre-mer French policies during the years immediately following the liberation of Metropole soil? The freedom of the press has been proclaimed nearly everywhere; the natives have become voters and even French citizens—or at least “citizens of the French Union”; local assemblies have been instituted, certain territories have even been promoted to French “departments.” Along these lines, we could mention other provisions that express a clearly democratic inspiration.
Let us take an example. The case of Algeria, which is bound to comprise the best possible outcome for this general tendency, will consequently provide us with its most decisive illustration. The history of Franco-Algerian relations, after more than a century of official camouflage and persistent illusions, is, of course, beginning to be somewhat known: there was the conquest, with its deplorable reasons; then “pacification” with its raids, its destruction of villages by the dozens, its enfumades of entire tribes; then the period of peaceful exploitation, with its more hidden, nearly normalized violence, and its recourse at all times and to every degree to arbitrariness. Finally, there was World War II, the Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt’s declarations and the great thoughts born of the Resistance. And doubtlessly, it hardly matters that the structures of Algeria had been, up to that point, entirely antidemocratic; the only question is if real modifications have been brought about since then and if this colony is today truly the equivalent of a French province. Let us refer then to the very text that was conceived expressly to establish this sort of peaceful and legal revolution: the Statute of Algeria, passed by the French Parliament in September 1947.
“Article 1. Algeria constitutes a group of departments endowed with civil personhood, financial autonomy, and a particular organization.” In other words, these “departments” are not true departments.
“Article 2. Real equality is proclaimed for all French citizens. All French nationals of the departments of Algeria enjoy, without distinction of origin, race, language, or religion, the rights related to French citizenship and are subject to the same obligations.” Hence this consequence: the Algerian Assembly—which is “charged with administering, in accord with the Governor General, the interests proper to Algeria” (Article 6)—“is composed of one-hundred and twenty members: sixty representing the citizens of the first college and sixty representing the citizens of the second college.” (Article 30). These French citizens between whom “real equality” has been proclaimed are nevertheless divided into two electoral colleges, so that a million and a half Europeans have the same number of representatives as eight million natives. This precaution could be judged sufficient; just in case, another is taken: “at the request of either the Governor General, the Commission of Finances, or one quarter of the members of the Assembly, the vote can only be passed [acquis] after a delay of twenty-four hours and by a two-thirds majority of members unless a majority can be found in each of the colleges” (Article 39).
An analysis of the other articles would be no less instructive. But it is not necessary to go any further to observe that the negation of democracy is included here in the law that claimed to institute it. Indeed, Metropole institutions are never considered to be directly applicable in the case of colonial territories; it is necessary to subject them to a “transposition,” which aims to adapt their content to colonialist demands, while maintaining the democratic phraseology. From its very first lines, the Statute of Algeria displays its true project, which is to fully safeguard the structures of colonial oppression. It does even better: it goes as far as giving them a foundation in law, under the most decisive relationship, since the settler elite finds in it its traditional conception of Algeria as its “preserve”—legalized and passed under a “democratic” veneer. It is a “preserve” completely independent from the Metropole at the financial level and only recognizes the latter’s authority when it obtains some favorable commercial measure or the support of its armed forces during times of trouble. This separatism can sometimes resort to the most violent measures, from the resignation of the mayors of Algeria—as happened when the settlers set out in 1936 to defeat the project of Blum-Violette—to the massacre of some twenty thousand natives in May 1945, which had the precise goal of rendering any realization of the hopes conceived by the Algerian people in the euphoria of the victory over fascism impossible. And it is indeed in working under the atmosphere created by these “riots,” that two years later the Algerian settlers, using the methods of influence analyzed here by Claude Bourdet, maneuvered the government and French Parliament into the adoption of the current Statute when (then Council president) Ramadier’s intervention prevented the report on a bill approved by the Commission of the Interior. A similar maneuver made it possible to avoid casting light on the events of May ’45—by obtaining the recall of the commission of inquiry appointed by the second Constituent Assembly before any actual work was done.
Facing vague Metropole desires for democratization and as a counterattack to the growing consciousness of subjugated peoples, “revolts” of the same order in some territories have been provoked, or at least favored, and then submitted to the most monstrous forms of “repression”: we have not forgotten, among other things, the sinister Malagasy affair of 1947. In each case, the objective was to slow down the rising action of native political movements provisionally and to “prove” that these rebellious barbarians were not ready for democracy. Hence the adoption of these rigged laws, which apparently were meant as a decisive step toward democracy in various French colonies, but which in each case entailed exactly the provisions most likely to prohibit any real democratization. The “gap” was of the sort instituted at the very level of legality, and the play of democratic institutions did not risk being distorted by the actual context, because there were indeed institutions—but they were not democratic.
The fact remains that their function was nonetheless hastily paralyzed. Rightfully considered by the natives as a colonially “imposed charter” that went against all official promises and the most solemn assertions given over the previous few years—the Statute of Algeria has been ceaselessly treated with derision for nearly five years by the very people who have been charged to enforce it. It is true that—up to a certain point and in a very crude fashion—appearances have been kept up. For example, elections have been held and the Algerian Assembly has been created. But these elections have been so completely fraudulent that it has become customary, even within the colonialist milieus, to consider them as mere formalities for which the results are known in advance; in fact, they are actually nominations. We know the means: classical forms of corruption, the authoritarian preparation of the list of candidates, pressures exercised locally by chiefs and administrators of mixed communes, the deployment of forces and the atmosphere of repression around polling stations, an obligation on the voter to vote without a secret ballot, the provocation of incidents that serve as a pretext to expel the delegates of opposition parties or even the total evacuation of the polling station, the stuffing of ballot boxes and, finally, the pure and simple falsification of results. As for the Algerian Assembly, we understand that most of its members are no longer very sensitive to the many breaches it imposes upon its own rules. Its commissions are constituted exclusively according to political affiliation. Venality, even if illiterate, is preferred to competency, which does not offer the same guarantees of “loyalty” to the Administration.
Let us recall again that the administration of the Algerian Assembly is fairly constantly carried out by Government-General appointed civil servants. . . . We can point to many scandals—no enumeration can render the feeling one gets from this Assembly’s meetings; it is necessary to have followed a few to truly measure the abject derision of this “democracy” that France has accorded to Algerians. And it is within this atmosphere, both farcical and sinister, that we must hear the resounding bitter protest of a “nationalist” delegate: “When one has a majority, one acts more elegantly!”
It is true that the settler elite is not tranquil. No supremacy appears sufficient anymore, ever since the democratic terms were officially introduced in its domain. Since his arrival in Algeria, Governor-General Naegelen had been carefully indoctrinated; if one meant to democratize the Muslim masses, it was advisable above all to take them in hand as firmly as possible—hence the “elections” we witnessed and the atmosphere of repression that soon set in. But when Naegelen intended to take hold of a little of the authority he had largely conceded to the administration, when he wanted to draw the benefits that he had expected for himself from the operation and proclaim finally that thanks to him Algeria was restored to order, ready for a democratization “that respects French sovereignty”—this great servant of Algeria was made to see that he was becoming burdensome and that wise masters do not bear bad servants. And so there was much haste to organize the famous “conspiracy” of April and May 1950—which descended into farce, but which could just as well have precipitated a new May 8 in Algeria. . .
At the present time, the commitments, even the most precise, which the Statute has created, are still waiting to be respected. By way of example, Article 53 calls for the suppression of “mixed communes,” domains of the most complete arbitrariness—the application of this measure being subject to “decisions of the Algerian Assembly.” But as the Union démocratique du Manifeste algérien (Ferhat Abbas) had submitted a proposal in 1949, the Administration opposed it three months later with a counter-project. Finally, the question was buried, the majority having decided, in complete contradiction to not only Article 53 but the formal provisions of Article 52, that it lacked the qualification to make a decision. There is an analogous situation regarding the separation of Church and State, similarly planned for in the Statute: the proposal that the UDMA submitted a year ago has not yet been discussed—a delay that is quite understandable when one knows what an extraordinary means of pressure on the Muslim masses is created by the Administration’s hold on the tangible forms of religious life. In the same manner, the plan for complete education directed by the decree of November 27, 1944 (the execution of which Article 47 of the Statute conferred on the Governor-General, thus placing it outside the control of the services of National Education) has been the target for the last five years, of systematic torpedoing under the cover of an equally wretched rigging: very few new classrooms are built, but all the old rooms are split. In other words, they are utilized by twice as many students and the classes that previously were held over the course of a whole day are today held over a half-day. This allows for the production of fully satisfying statistics—and for reducing the education budget, as was done during 1951–1952 by five percent. Correlatively, the budget of General Security has increased to one sixth of the regular budget (10 billion of 60).
In April, Les Temps Modernes spoke of the Metropole press: the outre-mer press would merit an equally important study but would definitely be sharper. To stay with the case of Algeria, let us recall that of the five daily newspapers—Alger-Républicain (communist), L’Echo d’Alger (reactionary and Petainist), Dernière Heure (evening edition dependent on the Echo), Le Journal d’Alger (pseudo-moderate), and La Dépêche quotidienne (organ of Henri Borgeaud)—four are colonialist and all are below mediocrity. However, the latter is noticeably the worst; each month its owner sacrifices a respectable number of millions for a circulation that has become absurd. As for the other three colonialist papers, they now belong to Blachette, who was already owner of the Journal d’Alger and who last October purchased a fifty-two percent share of the Echo. Blachette, to whom gubernatorial services had granted the rights to exploit the immense alfa grass fields in the South free of charge, is one of the two or three men who have the means to make it rain or shine in Algeria. His present projects consist of keeping the Echo on its usual line, the suppression of Dernière Heure, and the assignment of the Journal to a seemingly pro-Muslim policy. . .
In the background, the police carry on their work and justice continues to renounce itself. The recent trial—mostly in closed proceedings where approximately sixty militants of the MTLD accused of participating in the famous “conspiracy” of 1950 were tried—has given Claude Bourdet the occasion to say all that could be said, in particular, on the methods of obtaining “confessions” and the compiling of “dossiers.” We will only recall that Bourdet suggested at the end of his article that the Administration attack L’Observateur. But it would seem that the Administration did not take issue with this description of its actions.
Such is democracy in the most “democratized” of our colonial territories.
It is not necessary to evoke worse examples. We can however conclude that the so-called “exceptional” measures have become so normal in the “outre-mer” that the officials responsible for French policy no longer even seem bothered to have to take up or to cover up the most monstrous of them: the Tunisian affair is sufficiently eloquent in this respect. It is even striking that on this point some of its aspects, which are not even the most minor, seem to have been thrown into the shadows by the light cast on the others. Has attention truly been paid, in particular, to measures taken by the Administration against the civil servants guilty of having participated in the strike on April 1st? It is possible that certain penalties have been thereafter lifted or at least reduced. But the mere fact that this recourse has been allowed, speaks volumes about the real implications of the “democratic” arguments in the name of which the method of direct administration against certain peoples is obstinately practiced, despite the worst warnings. For it is obviously in order to force Tunisians into democracy that their representatives are arrested and taught the beauty of the state of siege, civilian mobilization, and collective responsibility; it is to save Moroccans from feudalism that the Residence of Rabat, which has learned nothing since Lyautey, refuses them basic liberties while relying more than ever on the most corrupt among the greatest feudal lords. After all this, the lack of political maturity is calmly invoked to justify maintaining authoritarian structures, the only guarantee of an authentic step forward on the path of progress. Hence, it is necessary to conclude that the democratization of a country essentially requires its strict dependency on another. It matters little that democracies are colonialist; they can only be so, and this is clear, democratically.
***
It is racism—the deeply-rooted conviction of their racial superiority—which ordinarily allows the great majority of settlers and colonial administrators to maintain a relatively “good conscience,” even as they foster the most abject forms of oppression or as they become its accomplices by neglecting to protest. Today, of course, racism gets bad press and nobody readily defines themselves as racist. But the very people who for the past few years have denied being racist are doing so in terms that show rather the full survival of the phenomenon.
In any case, they can easily protest; they now have another justification at their disposal. Franco’s theses, from an uneasy formulation in the atmosphere of 1944–1945, have become the fundamental theses of an Atlanticized Europe, the catechism of its circles of leadership. It is henceforth understood that a healthy policy is an anticommunist policy and that evil has its seat in Moscow. Pétain was a sage (the settlers of North Africa, at least, never doubted it), Hitler had it right, and American power, if ill-advisedly directed against him during the last war, is today the only one that can keep communist undertakings in check. Every adversary of French sovereignty, every opponent, is communist. Colonial oppression is no longer oppressive—it is defensive. It aims to keep entire populations sheltered from evil. Repression is no longer repressive; it heals these populations by killing the germ of evil within them, whenever there is reason to fear that they have been subjected to its harm.
Supported by racism, camouflaging racism, and replacing racism when it comes to supplying justifications, anticommunism henceforth authorizes the most arrogant attitudes and the most criminal behaviors. Not only are the lords of colonization in charge of souls locally, within their fiefdom, but each one of them can consider himself invested in a kind of higher mandate: a supreme mission has been entrusted to him; he holds one of the outposts in the grand strategy that assures the definitive triumph of the forces of Good across the world. For this reason, as a soldier for a cause, he is accountable, a demanding discipline informs all his acts; but the superior authority to which he is accountable is not clearly defined, and he feels a harsh imperative weighing on him which, in the final reckoning, only comes from within. By virtue of Stalin’s name alone, colonialism becomes its own god and forges for itself—beyond the long-standing jests of the civilizing mission—a terrible morality of humanity’s salvation through a crusade against the Soviet Union.
For once, however, colonialism, at the very time it recovers an exceptional power, seems to be the first dupe of its new attempt at mystification. In its traditional form, it was not, after all, absolutely inconceivable that colonialism might come to recognize the necessity of certain arrangements: I mean that it is difficult to provide fanatics of reformism proof that it would never come to recognize it. Now, there is no longer any proof to supply. French colonialism, turning to imperialism to draw on new forces, has chosen suicide. The American strategy, to which it has naively rallied, involves the negation of its privileges in the short term, the liquidation of its sovereignty. Nothing inclines these outdated despots toward competition with private American capital; with their present political options, everything tends to prohibit once and for all the recourse to reasonable solutions, which perhaps might have permitted them to survive for some time. By believing that they are rearming themselves, they are only handing over power and rendering a situation more contradictory and more untenable than it already was.
We knew, for example, that the Algerian economy had long constituted a challenge to common sense. And the inexpiable buffoonery of accredited commentators (the most recent being probably Pierre Frédérix) would change nothing of the fact that in Algeria, production has not been driven by the real needs of the country but by the immediate interests of its effective owners. The result is that the cultivation of vineyards has been prioritized over wheat, even though the diet of the native population is based on grains, and that the amount available per individual has dropped over the last fifty years from four hundred kilograms to less than one hundred and fifty. But wine, quite simply, sold better. We knew, also, that capital invested in the colonies was not intended for their development but only to start and maintain a circuit of exploitation; that this exploitation itself was almost never rational, operating, above all, according to the calculation of the greatest profit in the least amount of time; and, finally, that Metropole capitalism, by transposing its already weakening dynamism to the colonies, degraded it into a nearly total statism—by its concern to not give space for any massive proletarianization, but also by choosing the easiest option. After all, this exploitation, which creates nothing, was certainly profitable for the time being. Nevertheless, it took on the risks of catastrophe, since it limited itself, in avoiding the true problems, to making their peaceful solution more difficult and more improbable every year.
Between 1944 and 1947, colonialism fought triumphantly against democratic principles and the idea of freedom. But soon the violent realization in different parts of the world of certain “popular democracies,” coinciding, in Asia, with a powerful desire for emancipation from western imperialism, the sudden emergence of a Vietnam capable of holding French troops in check—in sum, the constitution of a powerful bloc, determined to struggle by all means against traditional capitalism and successful in standing up to it, was going to lead colonial capitalists to choose suicide for fear of death. Against this bloc, which was Evil itself, another bloc—at least as powerful, and without a doubt probably more so—stood up. This could only be the Good. They rallied to it without delay.
But Europe had also just rallied to it—a Europe which no longer had the least confidence in itself and whose dreams were divided between African exoticism and salvation by America.
What the Planning Commission could not secure in a national capacity—the beginning of a rational process of industrialization—was thus accomplished in the private sphere, by the influx of capital, indeed even industrial plants, which no longer felt secure on the European continent. Economic liberalism, from which came easy colonial domination, was going to turn against colonialism, now exposing it to the disadvantages of competition—and, more distantly, to the horrors of class struggle. Eurafrica—a conception “made in Germany,” and which already seduced the White House in the interwar period—was once again on the agenda. But by all appearances Africa will not be the field of expansion for Europe, and “Eurafrica” is already but a euphemism, under which Europeans are called to discover each day the true reality a little better—some kind of “Amerafrica”. . . The transfer of Indochinese capital is nearly completed, while that of European capital is in progress. Moreover, do the current colonial owners think they can resist the wave of private investment rushing in from America in aid to underdeveloped countries?
They chose to have American power on their side. But without a doubt they ignore what nourishes this power and that, when one calls upon the Armies of the Good, it is necessary to expect also that they do not come without baggage. They have bet on the Atlantic system, but they have not seen that the system’s own strategy, in progressively displacing its center of gravity from Europe to Africa, sounds the death knell for their Africa. In the same issue of the luxurious review France Outremer in which we noted the awaiting of a true French imperialism, the Air Force general Piollet, inspector general of the Outre-mer Air Force and member of the Superior Air Council, was asked to show “how western Europe can have a chance of success in playing the role of outpost for the Atlantic Pact, in the imperious condition of shoring up by the whole African continent, closely joined together on the political level and meticulously equipped on the technical level.” Subject to this reservation, the general assured that “Africa allows for all maneuvers, both to Europe and to Asia,” and that its essential characteristics dispose it to a crusade, as least as much as to defense: “its size alone defends it from surprises from adversaries and allows offensive operations directed against these adversaries to prepare in the greatest secrecy.” We will have moreover guessed that Africa can, obviously, play this role “only on the express condition that it is wholly linked to the policy—and to the political choice—of the West.” But we should not be concerned by that, because the matter just happens to be in our hands: “Fortunately, almost all of Africa, by virtue of treaties of alliance, is under the jurisdiction of protectorates or colonial pacts of three already closely-knit powers within Europe: Great Britain, France, and Belgium.”
Hence we must doubtlessly conclude that colonialism, crossing into adulthood, has become doddering and works toward its own ruin. But we see that its suicide does not benefit its victims and that it is not accompanied by any repentance; it is marked by the same anti-democratism and the same negation of the human which already characterized its entire existence. Similarly, but on a more modest scale, a defeated Hitler dreamed of annihilating all of Germany before disappearing under the ruins of Berlin.

 

Francis Jeanson (1922–2009) is not a well-known figure in the English-speaking world. He was a French philosopher who entered the public eye with the publication of Sartre and the Problem of Morality in 1947.2 He soon joined the editorial teams of Les Temps Modernes (the existentialist journal founded by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others) and the publishing house Editions du Seuil (known for its association with the left-Catholic journal Esprit). From 1947 to 1955, he published numerous books and articles on existentialism, as well as several texts on Algeria and French colonialism, which culminated—during that period—with a book co-authored with Colette Jeanson, L’Algérie hors la loi. In 1956, Jeanson took up the cause of Algerian liberation, working for the Fédération de France of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN). The “Jeanson network” of “porteurs de valise” (suitcase carriers) was founded in October 1957. Members of the network smuggled funds collected in France to the FLN and published an underground journal, Vérités Pour. . . . Incidentally, the network was responsible for securing Fanon’s passage from France to Tunisia in 1957.3 Jeanson spent several years underground, evading arrest even after the Jeanson network was broken up by French police in February 1960. In October 1960, he was sentenced in absentia to “ten years in prison, a 70,000 franc fine, five years of exile, and a loss of. . . civil rights.”4 He remained underground until he was granted amnesty in 1966.
In 1952, Jeanson published three essays, in quick succession, that deserve wider recognition. In the spring, he published a preface to the first edition of Black Skin, White Masks, by the then little-known author Frantz Fanon.5 In May, his scathing review of Albert Camus’s The Rebel, which precipitated a public break between Sartre and Camus, appeared in Les Temps Modernes.6 Then, in June, again in Les Temps Modernes, he published the text that appears here in English translation, “Logic of Colonialism.” While they address three seemingly different concerns, in my view, they are theoretically intertwined.
Let us begin by sketching one of the intellectual horizons for Jeanson’s work. During this period, which lasted until 1956, the existentialists associated with Les Temps Modernes (LTM) cast themselves as fellow travelers with the communist movement. Their line—more or less shifting over time and not always clearly articulated—is characterized by: first, opposition to capitalism and American imperialism (as evidenced in Jeanson’s essay); second, a working assumption that the French Communist Party was the legitimate representative of the French proletariat due to its mass base; but also, third, a refusal to cede intellectual independence to party orthodoxy.7
Along these lines, in April 1952, Sartre led off a special issue of Les Temps Modernes dedicated to a critique of French media with the essay “Sommes-nous en démocratie?” [“Is This Democracy?”]8 There, Sartre announced that Les Temps Modernes would produce a thoroughgoing investigation into the workings of French democracy, concerning the gap that exists “in the essential domains (the press, colonial administration, the justice system, the police, parliamentarian assemblies, etc.),” between principles and actual fact.9 There are many ways this discrepancy could be interpreted: as the result of the gap between republican ideals and the imperfections of human nature or as the inevitable historical decline of any government. Given that he criticizes the myth of historical progress—a myth that is tied to the historical rise of the bourgeoisie—at the beginning of the essay, it is worthwhile emphasizing that Sartre rejects the reformist position that the gap between principle and fact, namely, the gap between democratic ideals and imperfect institutions, is the result of external factors interfering in democratic mechanisms that ultimately could be identified and fixed within the parameters of liberal-bourgeois social relations. Instead, Sartre holds that the gap between principle and fact is an irreparable, internal contradiction of bourgeois society produced by its class character; “we will see that the ceaselessly increasing gap in certain domains, between facts and principles, manifests on the contrary the resistance of the real,” that is, the emergence of “an organized and self-conscious working class.”10
Jeanson’s “Logic of Colonialism” introduces a special thematic section of the June 1952 issue of Les Temps Modernes—which bears the same title as Sartre’s aforementioned essay—dedicated to criticizing so-called democracy in the French colonies (although it largely focuses on North Africa). Jeanson, too, observes the “gap” in the French colonies. He argues—against the reformist position—that the colony cannot be compared to the metropole; instead, colonial administration is the negation of democracy, not merely the insufficient application of metropolitan institutions and principles to the colony. The so-called “gap” arises, instead, because French colonial institutions are structured to prevent a challenge from the “popular democracy” of the colonized. Just as Sartre concludes that the “gap” between principle and fact can only be surpassed by the destruction of bourgeois democracy, Jeanson contends that “before they may even become conscious of their political importance, the masses, by their mere existence, already pose problems for which there is no possible solution within the framework of the colonial system.”
But Jeanson is no mere acolyte of Sartre. A contemporaneous critic notes that Sartre and the Problem of Morality established Jeanson’s reputation as the first comprehensive “interpreter. . . of Sartrean thought: still the work of a disciple, but of a disciple who uses the instrument to continue his meditations, even to precede the master.”11 In this case, “Logic of Colonialism” precedes Sartre’s first systematic statement on colonialism by nearly four years.12 Several of his observations are noteworthy, but I will only mention two here. First, Jeanson argues that western anticommunist strategy has come to “overdetermine” the “capitalism-racism complex” of colonialism in ways that reinforce, endanger, and modify its characteristics, appearance, and purpose, while lending a new “higher” justification to the masters of these western colonial outposts. Here, he borrows the concept of overdetermination from Sartre’s analysis (in Antisemite and Jew) of how Jewish people may come to internalize antisemitic stereotypes, and how this internalization may lead them to alter their beliefs and actions. (Sartre’s discussion also influenced Fanon’s analysis of antiblack racism.) In “Logic of Colonialism,” though, Jeanson uses the term in a less precise sense to mean that the characteristics of “classical” colonialism (capitalist exploitation and racism) have been modified by, and can no longer be interpreted without reference to, western anticommunist strategy. Second, he contends that nationalist movements in the colonies cannot merely be harnessed by communist blocs; indeed, these movements have a unique orientation which constitutes “the only real response” to the reality of the colonized. He even notes, in passing, that “popular democracy when it is in the Chinese style” (embodied, he suggests later, in the struggle in Vietnam) “poses more difficult problems for Moscow than in its European forms.”
These observations, in my view, contribute to understanding his other works from his period. For example, his scathing condemnation of Camus’s anticommunism concludes by hinting at his concern, expressed in “Logic of Colonialism,” that anticommunist strategy is being deployed to shore up colonialism.13 And Jeanson’s approach to nationalist movements has striking parallels to what he describes, in his preface to Black Skin, White Masks, as the “revolutionary attitude” of Fanon, “whose relationship to current [Marxist] orthodoxy seems to imply not a state of rupture and hostility but the most fruitful of tensions.”14 As evidence, he cites the following passage from Fanon:

We would not be so naïve as to believe that appeals to reason or to respect for human dignity can change reality. For the Negro who works on a sugar plantation in Le Robert, there is only one solution: to fight. He will embark on this struggle, and he will pursue it, not as the result of a Marxist or idealistic analysis but quite simply because he cannot conceive of life otherwise than in the form of a battle against exploitation, misery, and hunger.15

Is it not striking that only a few years later both Fanon and Jeanson ended up fighting, in their own respective ways, for Algerian liberation? Jeanson’s writing is sometimes uneven, as he lacks the mastery of literary and philosophical style possessed by Sartre, Beauvoir, and Fanon. Nevertheless, “Logic of Colonialism” remains a document of remarkable clarity, and sometimes prescience, concerning the struggle against colonialism.

 

Ministers,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear comrades,

The fighting Congolese people are proud and happy to receive their brothers-in-arms in their country today.
For my government, for us Congolese, your presence here at such a moment is the most striking proof of the African reality whose existence our enemies have always denied and are still attempting to deny. But you, of course, know that that reality is even more stubborn than they, and that Africa lives on and fights. She refuses to die to justify the arguments about the backwardness of our history, a history we have made with our hands, our skins, and our blood.
It is at conferences such as this that we first became conscious of our character, of our growing solidarity. When at our first conferences, which were held in various cities in Africa, we brought up the problem of decolonization, the imperialists never expected we would be successful. However, since the first Conference of the Peoples of Africa in Accra16 in December 1958 we have traversed the entire road of the liberation of our continent together.
You will recall the upsurge of the liberation struggle of the peoples of Angola, Algeria, the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Nyasaland and Rhodesia18 after the Conference in Accra, and of Ruanda-Urundi19 today. You will remember that a decisive step forward was taken after that historic Conference. Nothing, neither bullets, nor repressions, could stop this popular movement.
The work of this Conference is aimed at accelerating the movement for the independence of the African continent.
Ministers, dear fighters for the freedom of Africa, it is your duty to show the world and those who sneer at us that nothing can deter us from liberating Africa, which is our common aim. We can achieve this aim only in solidarity and unity. Our solidarity will have meaning only when it is boundless and when we are convinced that Africa’s destiny is indivisible.
Such are the deep-going principles of the work you will have to do. This meeting will prepare the ground for a Summit Conference at which our countries will have to speak on:

The unqualified support of all the African states in the general struggle for a Pan-African bloc;A policy of neutralism with the purpose of achieving genuine independence;The breaking down of colonial barriers through cultural exchanges;Trade agreements between the African states;Africa’s position with regard to the European Common Market;Military cooperation;The building of a powerful radio station in Leopoldville with the aid of all the African states;The creation of a research center in Leopoldville.

Ministers, you have come into contact with the reality of the Congo here, in the very heart of the crisis that we shall have to resolve.
Your confidence in the future of our continent will unquestionably help you to complete your work successfully. Your principal purpose is to prepare a meeting of our heads of state, who will indeed establish African unity, for whose sake you have responded to our appeal.
You know the origin of what is today called the Congolese crisis,21 which is actually only a continuation of the struggle between the forces of pressure and the forces of liberation. At the very outset of the Belgian aggression, my government, the guarantor and representative of the sovereignty of the Congolese nation, decided to appeal to the United Nations. The UN has responded. And so has the free world. Belgium has been condemned. I went to New York to show world public opinion the moving forces of the Congolese drama.
Upon our return from the United States, we replied to the invitation of the heads of the free African states, who publicly adopted an explicit position and unanimously extended to us their fraternal support. From this rostrum I express my gratitude to President Bourguiba,22 His Majesty Mohammed V,23 President Sékou Touré,24 President Tubman,25 President Nkrumah,26 and President Olympio,27 whom I had the honor to meet at this decisive moment. I regret that material difficulties prevented me from replying to the invitation of President Nasser28 and His Majesty Haile Selassie.29
All of them, fighting for African unity, have said “No” to the strangulation of Africa. All of them immediately realized that the attempts of the imperialists to restore their rule threaten not only the independence of the Congo but also the existence of all the independent states of Africa. They all realized that if the Congo perishes, the whole of Africa will be plunged into the gloom of defeat and bondage.
That is further striking proof of African unity. It is concrete testimony of the unity that we need in the face of imperialism’s monstrous appetite.
All statesmen are agreed that this reality is not debated but fought for, so that it may be defended.
We have gathered here in order that together we may defend Africa, our patrimony. In reply to the actions of the imperialist states, for whom Belgium is only an instrument, we must unite the resistance front of the free and fighting nations of Africa. We must oppose the enemies of freedom with a coalition of free men. Our common destiny is now being decided here in the Congo.
It is, in effect, here, that the last act of Africa’s emancipation and rehabilitation is being played. In extending the struggle, whose primary object was to save the dignity of the African, the Congolese people have chosen independence. In doing so, they were aware that a single blow would not free them from colonial fetters, that juridical independence was only the first step, that a further long and trying effort would be required. The road we have chosen is not an easy one, but it is the road of pride and freedom of man.
We were aware that as long as the country was dependent, as long as she did not take her destiny into her own hands, the main aspect would be lacking. This concerns the other colonies, no matter what their standard of life is or what positive aspects of the colonial system they have.
We have declared our desire for speedy independence without a transition period and without compromises with such emphasis because we have suffered more mockery, insults, and humiliation than anybody else.
What purpose could delays serve when we already knew that sooner or later we would have to revise and reexamine everything? We had to create a new system adapted to the requirements of purely African evolution, change the methods forced on us and, in particular, find ourselves and free ourselves from the mental attitudes and various complexes in which colonization kept us for centuries.
We were offered a choice between liberation and the continuation of bondage. There can be no compromise between freedom and slavery. We chose to pay the price of freedom.
The classical methods of the colonialists, which we all knew or still partially know, are particularly vital here: surviving presences of military occupation, tribal disunity, sustained and encouraged over a long period, and destructive political opposition, planned, directed, and paid.
You know how difficult it has been for a newly independent state to get rid of the military bases installed by the former occupying powers. We must declare here and now that henceforth Africa refuses to maintain the armed forces of the imperialists in its territory. There must be no more Bizertes,30 Kitonas,31 Kaminas,32 and Sidi Slimanes.33 We have our own armies to defend our countries.
Our armed forces, which are victims of machinations, are likewise freeing themselves from the colonial organization in order to have all the qualities of a national army under Congolese leadership.
Our internal difficulties, tribal war, and the nuclei of political opposition seemed to have been accidentally concentrated in the regions with our richest mineral and power resources. We know how all this was organized and, in particular, who supports it today in our house.
Our Katanga34 because of its uranium, copper, and gold, and our Bakwanga35 in Kasai, because of its diamonds, have become hotbeds of imperialist intrigues. The object of these intrigues is to recapture economic control of our country.
But one thing is certain—I solemnly declare that the Congolese people will never again let themselves be exploited, that all leaders who will strive to direct them to that road will be thrown out of the community.
The resonance that has now been caused by the Congolese problem shows the weight that Africa has in the world today. Our countries, which only yesterday they wanted to ignore as colonial countries, are today causing the old world concern here in Africa. Let them worry about what belongs to them. That is not our affair. Our future, our destiny, a free Africa, is our affair.
This is our year, which you have witnessed and shared in. It is the year of our undisputed victory. It is the year of heroic, blood-drenched Algeria, of Algeria the martyr and example of struggle. It is the year of tortured Angola, of enslaved South Africa, of imprisoned Ruanda-Urundi, of humiliated Kenya.
We all know, and the whole world knows, that Algeria is not French, that Angola is not Portuguese, that Kenya is not English, that Ruanda-Urundi is not Belgian. We know that Africa is neither French, nor British, nor American, nor Russian—that it is African.
We know the objectives of the West. Yesterday they divided us on the level of a tribe, clan, and village. Today, with Africa liberating herself, they seek to divide us on the level of states. They want to create antagonistic blocs, satellites, and, having begun from that stage of the cold war, deepen the division in order to perpetuate their rule.
I think I shall not be making a mistake if I say that the united Africa of today rejects these intrigues. That is why we have chosen the policy of positive neutralism, which is the only acceptable policy allowing us to preserve our dignity.
For us, there is neither a Western nor a communist bloc, but separate countries whose attitude towards Africa dictates our policy towards them. Let each country declare its position and act unequivocally with regard to Africa.
We refuse to be an arena of international intrigues, a hotbed, and stake in the Cold War. We affirm our human dignity of free men, who are steadily taking the destiny of their nations and their continent into their own hands.
We are acutely in need of peace and concord, and our foreign policy is directed towards cooperation, loyalty, and friendship among nations. We want to be a force of peaceful progress, a force of conciliation. An independent and united Africa will make a large and positive contribution to world peace. But torn into zones of hostile influence, she will only intensify world antagonism and increase tension.
We are not undertaking any discriminating measures. But the Congo is discriminated against in her external relations. Yet in spite of that, she is open for all and we are prepared to go anywhere. Our only demand is that our sovereignty be recognized and respected.
We shall open our doors to specialists from all countries motivated by friendship, loyalty, and cooperation, from countries bent not on ruling Africans but on helping Africa. They will be welcomed with open arms.
I am sure that I shall be expressing the sentiments of all my African brothers when I say that Africa is not opposed to any nation taken separately, but that she is vigilant against any attempt at new domination and exploitation both in the economic and spiritual fields. Our goal is to revive Africa’s cultural, philosophical, social, and moral values, and to preserve our resources. But our vigilance does not signify isolation. From the beginning of her independence, the Congo has shown her desire to play her part in the life of free nations, and this desire was made concrete in her request for admission to the United Nations.
Ministers and dear comrades, I am happy to express the joy and pride of the government and people of the Congo at your presence here, at the presence here of the whole of Africa. The time of projects has passed. Today Africa must take action. This action is being impatiently awaited by the peoples of Africa. African unity and solidarity are no longer dreams. They must be expressed in decisions.
United by a single spirit, a single aspiration, and a single heart, we shall turn Africa into a genuinely free and independent continent in the immediate future.

Long live African unity and solidarity!

Forward, Africans, to complete liberation!

(August 25, 1960)