Skip to content

Prisoner rights

International Campaign Demands Resumption Of ICRC Visits To Political Detainees In Israel

A press conference was held in front of the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Al-Bireh city, in the central occupied West Bank on Tuesday, February 10. The event was organized as part of an international campaign to gather one million signatures demanding that the ICRC resume its visits to Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. A number of press conferences were held in parallel in nine other cities across the world, including Beirut, Gaza, Cairo, Rabat, Tunis, Brussels and Paris in coincidence with the one held in Al-Bireh.

Prisoners Who Appeared in HBO Documentary Are Being Punished

I don’t normally write about higher profile prisoners, opting instead to interview those prisoners who no one has heard of and have never accessed journalists before, for whatever reason. I don’t feel I’m contributing much unless I’m finding people I feel are really successfully hidden. Recently, however, and especially in the last week, on the heels of the major HBO documentary about the horrendous conditions in Alabama’s prisons and the struggle for freedom and human rights inside of them, and with a statewide prisoner work stoppage looming in February, the Alabama Department of Corrections is working hard to keep the most prominent, often the most accessible and well known voices inside the prisons inaccessible and suppressed.

Why I Am On Hunger Strike In Solidarity With Pal Action Detainees

I know this road. I have its map etched into my bones. I carry scars that won’t heal without justice, without accountability. I learned it in Guantanamo, when the only thing I could control was my own body. We were disappeared. Isolated. Forced into silence. Our words were redacted. Our letters were stamped secret. Lawyers were blocked. Time stretched and rotted. No court dates were given. No real charges were made. I was reduced to a number in an orange uniform, locked in a metal cage. The US government had already named me. “The worst of the worst.” “Terrorist.” “Enemy combatant.” Labels designed to make torture sound necessary.

Lawyer Who Represented Julian Assange Defends President Maduro

Renowned criminal lawyer Barry Pollack, who defended journalist Julian Assange, has taken on the defense of Venezuela’s constitutional president, Nicolás Maduro, in New York. Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were kidnapped and taken there following the US attack in the early hours of Jan. 3, when military forces under orders from the White House carried out bombings against Caracas and several states, killing dozens of civilians and military personnel. Amid their illegitimate detention, President Maduro and Cilia Flores were taken this Monday to the Southern District Court of New York to begin a trial for alleged links to drug trafficking.

Supporters Of President Maduro Protest Outside Metropolitan Detention Center

Brooklyn, NY – In the early morning of January 4, over 200 people gathered across the street from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where the kidnapped President Maduro of Venezuela and his wife, Cilia Flores, were being held. The picket spanned over half a block as bundled-up protesters marched for hours in support of President Maduro and Venezuela. Chants rang through the crowd, such as, “Not another penny, not another dollar! We won’t pay for your death and slaughter!’ Several organizations spoke against the Trump administration’s illegal kidnapping of the Venezuelan president.

Hunger Striker Loses Ability To Stand As Strike Hits Day 55

Prisoners for Palestine have announced that hunger striker T Hoxha has lost the ability to stand. Hunger striker Heba Muraisi, meanwhile, is losing the ability to speak. The hunger strikers have endured 18 months in prison without trial. As a consequence of this and other instances of alleged mistreatment, they recently launched legal action against justice secretary David Lammy. Notably, these activists were imprisoned before the government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

US Prison Horror Show Plays On

Hopes for a major restructuring of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) a year into President Donald Trump’s second term in office have come to naught.  Trump in June named former federal prisoner Josh Smith as the BOP’s deputy director. It was a bold and, in my view, progressive move. While greeted with hostility from the union representing federal corrections officers, it inspired hope among the tens of thousands of prisoners in federal custody.  Many of us thought that the next step would be something equally bold — perhaps to turn away from private prisons, which have cost the government millions of dollars in lawsuits because of wrongful deaths in custody, or perhaps to institute programming that would better prepare prisoners for release and for reintegration into society. 

Is The Labour Government Willing To Let Hunger Strikers Die?

In Britain, pressure is mounting on the Labour government to respond to demands put forward by dozens of activists imprisoned for direct action in support of Palestine, many of whom have been on hunger strike since early November. “The hunger strike, which involves eight prisoners for Palestine, is now on day 40,” the campaign Prisoners for Palestine wrote on Friday. “They are in the danger zone, where irreparable harm is likely, and their health becomes critical.” Even before launching the strike, the prisoners had pressed for a set of demands, including fair trial, deproscription of direct action group Palestine Action, and an end of Elbit Systems operations in the country.

Historic 12-Day March For Mumia Ends At SCI Mahanoy

Around 150 participants filled both sides of the entrance road to State Correctional Institution (SCI) Mahanoy for a rally on Dec. 9 – the final day of the historic March for Mumia. The march demanded “Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, End Medical Neglect [in Pennsylvania prisons] and End Elder Abuse.” The 12-day, 103-mile march started in Philadelphia on Nov. 28 and ended in Frackville, Pennsylvania, with over 65 people walking the last three miles. A long-time supporter of Mumia, Pam Africa, with International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, reminded people that Mumia was a journalist, a teacher, and a family man, who was railroaded and never had a fair trial. She urged people to keep on fighting for justice for Mumia.

Attica: When Prisoners Revolted

Each August marks the annual commemoration of a month honoring the legacy of Black prisoners kept behind bars for political activism. Black August is a month to honor the history of struggles for Black liberation, in defiance of racial, colonial, and imperialist oppression, both inside and outside prison walls. The 1971 Attica prison revolt, in which incarcerated people rose up in a struggle against oppression and inhumane conditions, and were subsequently repressed by state forces with horrifying brutality, is honored each year during Black August. On September 9, 1971, Attica prisoners took over a part of the prison in an event especially notable for its mass participation. Out of roughly 2,200 men imprisoned at Attica, 1,281 seized control of the facility.

Protecting Incarcerated People From ‘Prison-To-Ice Deportation Pipeline’

About 70% of the people who are currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody were transferred from the carceral system, often the same day that they completed their sentence and were formally released from prison or jail. According to California-based advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants, in California alone, this “prison-to-ICE detention pipeline” funnels some 1,500 incarcerated people per year into immigration detention centers the moment they have finally secured their release from prison.

Supporters Rally Behind Political Prisoners Who Stopped White Supremacist Attack

An upcoming clemency hearing will determine the near-term fate of Christopher “Naeem” Trotter, a political prisoner who has been held captive for over 40 years as punishment for a spontaneous act of community self-defense inside prison walls. On February 1, 1985, Trotter and another incarcerated man — John “Balagoon” Cole — led a rebellion within the prison now known as Pendleton Correctional Facility to protect a fellow prisoner, Lincoln “Lokmar” Love, who was being attacked with nightsticks by Indiana Department of Corrections prison guards. Trotter and Cole are now known as the “Pendleton 2,” and people nationwide have rallied in their defense.

Another Inmate Death At Federally Operated Detention Center

Red Lake Indian Reservation - A death at a federally regulated jail on the Red Lake Indian Reservation is one of several inmate deaths in recent years, and the family is speaking up. Robin Hanson, 52, a Red Lake Band of Chippewa citizen, died while in custody at the Red Lake Detention Center on April 2, said his wife Betty Hanson in an interview with LRI Media. The jail is on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota and is regulated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), unlike other detention facilities in the state. “What they did to him and how they treated him feels like, to me, third world war—where they don’t care about anyone,” said Betty Hanson.

Incarcerated Transgender Women Challenge Trump’s Order

Among the most horrific executive orders signed by Donald Trump on Jan. 20, were those withdrawing protection for transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons and terminating all their necessary gender-affirming medical care. The orders, which explicitly prohibit women’s prisons and detention centers from housing transgender female inmates, placed 22 trans women in imminent risk of transfer to a men’s facility where they would be subjected to strip searches and showering in front of men, violating the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

This Black-Owned Bank Is Disrupting Recidivism

For 21 years, Halim Flowers was incarcerated in prisons across the country, often spending his time reading books about economics, banking and finance. It wasn’t until 2018, during his last few months in the D.C. Department of Corrections, that 44-year-old Flowers was able to validate what he was learning, meet bankers from D.C. based-Industrial Bank, and open a savings account from prison with one of the only banks in the country offering services to incarcerated people. “They were good teachers. They humanized us as incarcerated people,” says Flowers, who is now an artist, author and runs his own fashion brand.
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.