SOLIDARITY TO MARCO CAMENISCH

Marco Camenisch was born in Switzerland in 1952. In the late seventies, Marco, as a militant of the movement against nuclear power plants, was engaged in many struggles to fight the local Swiss nuclear mafia. Direct action was the base of such struggles; cutting down pylons, sabotage against power stations, attacks against the people involved in nuclear mafia.
In January 1980 Marco was arrested and sentenced to 10 years for his assaults against NOK power station, responsible for destroyed the natural environment of the Grigioni area in Switzerland. During the trial, Marco refused to talk to the judge, but read a statement in which he claimed his actions as a protest against the criminal bosses of class dominion, and for the liberation of the earth. In December 1981, Marco escaped from the prison together with another five prisoners. A prison warder was shot and another seriously injured. After 10 years of hiding and clandestine struggle, Marco was arrested again (1991), this time in Tuscany, Italy, and sentenced to 12 years. He was also sentenced for a series of acts of sabotage including the killing of a border policeman which he has always denied. In the Italian prison system Marco went through terrible conditions of detention, aimed at destroying his string personality and breaking the international solidarity network towards him Such solidarity has never stopped, on the contrary it has been increasing more and more both through public demonstrations and direct actions. In April 2002 Marco was extradited to Switzerland, where he was sentenced to another 8 years for his escape from prison in 1981 and the killing of a border policeman. In Switzerland too, Marco has been subjected to a regime of isolation and every kind of abuse and oppression including continuous transfers from one prison to the other, without any regard for his conditions of ill health.

Here are a few of the thousands of actions in solidarity with Marco Camenisch

25 July 1999 – Novarra, Italy – demonstration of solidarity outside the prison
1 August 1999 – Turin, Italy – Explosive device full of red paint is thrown against Swatch shop in via Garibaldi.
13 September 2002 – International day of solidarity with Marco Camenisch who has just been through 3 months of special treatment. Moreover his correspondence is strictly censured and his incoming and outgoing mail often doesn’t arrive, he spends recreation period in handcuffs and chains to his feet, he has closed visits after a few month’s waiting. And finally the torture of having spent 20 minutes inside a scanner machine with his wrists handcuffed behind his back, not mention the humiliation of having walked through the long corridor of the hospital with his feet in chains.
Demonstration in Bergamo, Bologna, Florence, Genova, Naples, Triest, Madrid.
14 September 2002 – Turin – Windows of Credit Suisse broken in via Bertola.
16 September 2002 – Pavia – Fire to a mobile phone antenna in solidarity to Marco and all prisoners in struggle.
December 2002 – Rome – An envelope full of bullets is sent to the Swiss ambassador in Rome with the message: Free Marco Camenisch, death to the Swiss State and its cops.
12 January 2003 – Paris – During the night a few boutqiues of Swiss bosses were damaged and the surrounding walls filled with writings such as ‘Free Marco’ ‘Switzerland is destroying you, We are gonna destroy it’. The locks of Adia and Adecco (Swiss work agencies) and of Lloyd Continental were been blocked with glue.
18 January 2003 – Bueonos Aires – Posters claiming Marco’s freedom are put on the walls of the Swiss embassy and Swiss International air. From today Marco is on hunger strike in protest against his conditions of detention. Demonstration also in Brussels in front of the Swiss embassy.
19 January 2003 – Abetone, Pistoia – The ski lift in this ski resort in Appenines is completely destroyed by fire, sabotaging the tourist industry for the season. The claim ‘Fire to the Exploiters, Free Marco’.
20 January 2003 – Carrara – 3 mobile phone transmitters are destroyed by fire in solidarity with Marco.
29 January 2003 – Bergamo – A RAI (Italian national television) transmitter is set of fire.
1 February 2003 – Barcelone – The locks of Zurich Insurance Company are blocked with glue and on the glass of the windows is written: ‘Destroy all prisons’. ‘Free Camenisch.’ ‘Stop nuclear power.’
11 February 2003 – Imperia – Fire to Omnitel transmitter. The claim ‘Free Marco’.


OPERATION BLACKOUT


Between September and October 2003, following the orders of Genoa Public Prosecutor, a series of raids takes place all over Italy against a great number of comrades who showed their solidarity to Marco.
The measure starts on 17 September when the ROS (carabinieri Special Operations) search Marco’s cell and seize his computer, notes and letters. Soon after even Manuella, Marco’s wife, is searched. Both are accused of ‘terrorist activities’ About one hundred Italian comrades from north to south underwent the same treatment and are still under investigation.

Marco Camenisch,
Flughafengefangnis
KLOTEN
Postfach
8058 ZURICH-KLOTEN
Switzerland








Marco Camenish was born in Campocologno in Switzerland in 1953. At the end of the 70s Marco began a life of rebel ecologism, carrying out acts of sabotage against invasive energy structures in Switzerland. There for an action in 1979 against a pylon and a substation of Northeast Switzerland Power he was sentenced to 10 years prison. Escaped from Ragensdorf prison (Zurich) he lived in clandestinity, in the final period at Massa Carrara. Marco was again kidnapped by the justice of the assassins on November 5 1991 at Cinquale. The shootout with the carabinieri, resulting in Marco being wounded, and a cop was also wounded got him another 12 years. Transferred from one prison to the other (from Massa to Pisa, Livorno, San Vittore in Milan, Novara, Rebibbia Rome, Biella, Como) after years of struggle, humiliation, blackmail, affective and social isolation, Marco was transferred to Switzerland on April 18 2002. It should be noted that Italian justice did not make him lack anything: he was accused of conspiracy (270bis) for crimes committed in Italy and abroad in 1988; while he was in prison there was an attempt to extend the accusation to his family (including his brother, with a difficult psychic condition, the old mother, his companion and her daughter, a young man of the extreme right) .
Some ‘educando del rosmarino’ thought of inventing an anarcho marxist-leninist organisation (a kind of transgenic!) to justify the escape of Marcello Ghiringelli from Novara prison in 1998. The un… proof of its existence was the friendship between Marco and Marcello, who met in Novara prison.
In Switzerland Marco is doing 8 years for escape and will be tried for other crimes which could cost him a life sentence. He is accused of concourse in murder of a guard during the escape from Ragensdorf (in spite of the testimony of the other they aquitted them) and of the murder of a guard at the border at Brusio going back to 1989. The indizzi of guilt for this last ‘crime’ were his presence in the area.
Not recognising any legitimacy in the governative or repressive organs. Until now Marco had avoided leaving declarations to them during questioning. He only allows the possibility of spontaneous declarations during public hearings. His strength is obviously a source of hatred for the sgerri of universal power, given that also in Switzerland the prison treatment reserved for him is inhuman.
Marco has spent his life struggling against the devastating action of the capitalist technological system, has individuated in this aspect of the beast the central nodo of its proliferation, the instrument of innihilation of all diversity.
He posed the anarchist movement with the priority of direct intervention on environmental transformation, understanding that alienation and lobotomisation are processes that are strictly tied to the elimination of natural and spiritual differences. The cultures linked to the earth are not by chance considered ‘primitive’ and ‘in the course of extinction’ (a term that implies the will to extinguish deliberately as happened with the indios). The process of dismembering of individual will and the devastation of natural reality that ci accoglie and surrounds us. The noise produced by the calpestio of the leaves in the wood, the scrosciare of the ruscello are panic forms caspable of taking the mind to that state of freedom of being, in which any hierarchical paradigm si annulla and all human activity si risolve in the insensato and absurd. This unlimited peace and love are joy and nourishment of the rebel spirit.’ (Krasi)

YET AGAIN, although I can never do it enough, I salute you and embrace you, I salute and embrace each one of you. I am really touched and moved by your numerous initiatives of solidarity and by your precious involvement in support of we political and social prisoners, by your clear and courageous schierarvi for a radical resistence, also because your engagement gives strength to we prisoners to resist. These initiatives are important because they represent the segno of strength and vitality of our solidale resistence. Because they take us, prisoners because we resisted, among you who are many equal and particular at the same time, because you take us to you beyond the walls, the chains and the recint that separate us. These important initiatives ci riportano among you to struggle together the even more important battles of resistence that we find ourselves facing daily, against the war, against occupation and conquest, against genocide, against sexism, racism and xenophobia, against exploitation and social smatellamento. Against the destruction of the environment, against the World Economic Forum in Davos (and anywhere else) which assassins with aureola participated in. These battles must be conducted in a radical manner. Otherwise we are no longer resisting, otherwise we end up being helping hands and accomplices of insatiable exploiters, violent, destructors, true extremists fautori of patriarchy, militarism, industrialism and capital., whose only aim is the need for power. I embrace you again, embrace each one of you. We are, and so long as we are united we will be strong. Marco Camenisch. Pfaffikon December 2002.
The latest news (beginning of May) tell of an improvement in his physical and emotional condition. For a few days now he has had access to a laptop given to him by comrades in Zurich. Correspondence seems to be more fluid even though not all the messages sent to Marco have reached him.
www.freecamenisch.net