Holger Meins, a 33 year-old political prisoner on hunger strike in a West German prison, died last week.
This sparked off demonstrations in all the major German cities: 5000 militants marched in Berlin alone. Meins was a member of the Red Army Fraction (RAF - known also as the Haader-Meinhof group) and his death brought instant repercuss Jons. West Herlin's chief judge, Guenter von Drenkmann, was shot dead by sis masked commandos, and more reprisals were threatened.
The hunger strike was begun by the 42 imprisoned members of RAF Last September in protest against Special Treatment and Destructive Imprisonment'. While the tortures Inflicted on the prisoners may not appear to be as brutal as those carr led out by the Greek torturers or by the Chilean military, the effects of the sophisticated tortures used in America's 120,000 miners closed down the coal fields at midnight on Monday 11 November.
The miners are calling for a substantial wage Increase and big improvements in safety. Last November the miners got a seven per cent incrGerman prisons could nonetheless cause permanent damage.
ARRAIGNED Psychologists who have been studying the effects of similar torture used in Ireland in the internment camps have already produced some devastating evidence and as a result the British Government is at the moment being arraigned before the Human Rights Commission. In West Germany, the RAF have become the victims of new forms of psychological torture, which include: - systematic segregation from other pris oners; exclusion from all communal activities and a ban on all conversation with other prisoners. - special screens fixed outside the cell window which distort any perceptions of the outside. - solitary exercise with no opportunity to see or speak to other prisoners and handcuffing during exercise - censorship and confiscation of books round to collecting the fines. The big companies simply ignore the finea and carry on in the old way. The Pittson Company has paid up only 57,300 of its $2,1 million fines It was Pittson who tried to blame God when its dam broke and shownew scheme of isolation has been devised known as the "Tole Trak!' where the prisoner is cut off from any normal human sounds. He does Rohald Augustin was held in the May to October of this year. The their families.
by Tony" Boyle who inherited the corrupt Lewis regime and used it been forcibly led.
In the case of special prisoners a not hear anything, not even footsteps.
'Tote Trakt' of Hanover prison from inside of his cell was insulated by an Appalachian mountains, These hospitals were built with union money for the free treatment of miners and In 1963 the UMW was taken over human body as continued clectne shocks. It was against these methods that the RAF decided to launch a hunger strike and since last September more than 30 prisoners have When Ronald Augustin was removed from the "Tote Trakt" they stopped forcibly feeding him, but also stopped supplying him with water, hoping thereby that he would be forced to drink milk or beer. For 3% days he went without water. The washing water was poisoned with chemicals! It was only solidarity from the other prisoners that forced the authorities to restime supplying Augustin with drinking water, Meins died after being forc ibly fed, Ike Michael Gaughan, the Irish political prisoner who died last summer in similar circumstances The political prisoners of the Fourth Reich, governed today by German social-democracy, find themselves isolated from the Gerdefence.
The RAF prisoners have been held since 1972 without trial. The manufacturine of evidence and witnesses takes slightly longer these days. Bur the tortures are he pinning to arouse discontent. Even the West German branch of Amnesty International has been compelled to ask its London head quarters to set up an independent commission of inquiry.
The Cerman social democrats and the CP are extremely short sighted in tolerating chese tortures. It is not inconceivable that in the years to come their own members might also be subjecred to them.
Further information can be obtained from: Komites Gegen Folter An Politis chen Gefangenen In Der Brd - Comm ittee Against Torture of Political Pris oners in the FRG, 2 Hamburg 60Alsterdorfer B5 Str, Germany:
Joan Stott