IT: Appello urgente alla solidarietà con il compagno Paolo Todde in sciopero della fame
ES: Llamada a la solidaridad con Paolo Todde en huielga de hambre
DE: Dringender Aufruf zur Solidarität mit dem Genossen Paolo Todde im Hungerstreik
FR: Appel urgent à la solidariété avec le camarade Paolo Todde en grève de la faim
The Sardinian comrade Paolo Todde, already struck by repression in the first half of 2000 in the investigation against the old anarchist social centre FRARIA in Cagliari, remanded in custody on a robbery charge since 23 October 2024 and already imprisoned a few years ago on a charge of armed robbery, began a hunger strike on 25 April along with other prisoners to protest against the unlivable conditions in the prison in Uta (Sardinia).
The intervention of the prisoners’ guarantors with their empty useless promises caused the collective strike to end after less than a week. Paolo decided to begin it again on May 8 with the clear intention of carrying it out to the bitter end. We point out that Paolo is over sixty years old and started the hunger strike with a body weight of only 61 kg. Paolo shares a thousand dreams with us: a free Sardinia, hatred against jails and the society that produces them and has never been indifferent to the violence and prevarications of the colonial occupation forces.
For the State, silencing or eliminating him is a warning to all those who fight against the system and to all prisoners who rebel inside the prisons. For that reason he is being subjected to provocations and infamies by the prison guards, such as the arbitrary block on his correspondence and the impossibility to receive any money. They don’t allow him to make video calls with the excuse that there is no line, they bring him to visits late, drop his books, letters and anything that can be ruined into the buckets where he washes his clothes.
All of these abuses add up to the situation that all the prisoners are experiencing and that Paolo has been reporting for months. In fact, in Uta, the water is undrinkable, it can’t even be used for cooking as the administration has mixed it with chlorine to eliminate serious faecal coli pollution that also makes it unsuitable for personal hygiene. The always overcrowded cells (140 prisoners over the maximum capacity of the jail are locked up there) are kept locked 22 hours a day. Access to the library and the playing field is limited.
Summer temperatures in southern Sardinia often reach 43 degrees. There is no healthcare and the prison guards are constantly provoking prisoners and their families, and beating up prisoners. This kind of life is unbearable for any human being, and is even more so for those who in their entire lives have never bowed their heads and have always fought in solidarity with the enemies of the system, starting from the Committee of Solidarity with Deported Sardinian Proletarian Prisoners 30 years ago.
Paolo, who like the revolutionary anarchist Alfredo Cospito, has decided to use his body as a barricade by starting, risking his life, an immense struggle that can only achieve results if we are able to carry out a mobilization of revolutionary and international solidarity with the same determination. We reaffirm our solidarity and our commitment to extend the struggle so that the administration know no peace. We remind the officials, the penitentiary police and the various prisoners’ guarantors that they are co-responsible for the current situation and that oppressed people have a long memory. If something happens to Paolo they will all bear the consequences.
Let’s not leave Paolo alone in his struggle.
Anyone who’d like to write to him can do so at the following address:
Paolo Todde
C.C. “E. Scalas”
09068 Uta (CA), Italy
Some Sardinian Anarchists and other comrades of Paolo
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Actforfree received in English and correct and spreed.