translated from
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=720753#720754
In regard to the situation in the (greek) police's holding cells, as
read by information coming from the country's Ministry of Public Order:
More than 1,000,000 people have spent one night or longer in police stations since 2002, while deaths in custody are on a constant rise, reaching 57 in the last decade only.
Statistics of those deaths are only available from 1997 onward. Since
that year 28 detainees committed suicide (out of these, 26 hanged
themselves and two jumped off the buildings they were held in).
Another eleven people ostensibly died due to pathological causes.
Three suffered heart failure, while two had "lethal accidents in their
attempt to escape". Six drug addicts died from pulmonary edema. In the
last two years alone there have been 18 deaths, twice as many as in
2003-2004.
Prisons and detention cells are the places where authority shows its
true face; when writing even for a fraction of all that take place in
there, where people's ? rule and depressing metal bars rise all around
you, words seem too poor to describe what happens to the soul and the
body of the detained human when s/he has fallen to the hands of
authority.
With respect to the memory of the people mentioned in this note, we
will remember and remind of their deaths by denouncing the inhumane
holding conditions and treatment of our fellow humans in so-called
houses of correction and detention cells. We hold the firm belief that
the time will come for the crimes of authority against humans to be
punished.
Atrocious, horrific incidents in prisons and detention cells are
innumerable. Many of these remain unknown and will never be heard,
buried under the darkest prison cells. |