Against the maxi-prison and the world that needs it

The Belgian state want to build a new prison in Haren, north of Brussels. It is supposed to become the largest prison in Belgium, a maxi-prison [a massive prison-complex], a genuine prison town that would include five different prisons on the same terrain. Like other new prisons built in the last two years, this one in Brussels would also be developed by what is called a “private-public partnership”. This means that the construction and management of the prison is entirely in the hands of private companies, and that the State rents out for 25 years to these companies, after which it eventually becomes state property. Therefore you don’t have to look far to understand the huge economic interests that this project represents.

The maxi-prison will also be the first Belgian prison where it will be possible to lock up vast numbers of people at the same time (the complex composes of 1,200 cells), for men as for women and children. A court established within the prison is intended to help limit the detainees movements even more to a minimum.

The construction of this atrocity is the icing on the cake of the “master plan” designed by prior governments, envisaging the construction of approximately nine new prisons, throughout the country. This plan is sold to the public as the ultimate answer to overpopulation, and the advanced breakdown of certain prisons, as a major step towards more humane confinement, with more attention to the integrations of prisoners. Such a manoeuvre became almost inevitable for power, seeing that for years the prison world has been plagued by escapes, hostage-taking of prison guards, refusal to go back to the cells, large and small uprisings. In addition, detention conditions have led to several international authorities slapping the Belgian state on the wrist. They therefore want to do away with the disorder, revolt and international attention. But all this ‘out of a hat’ humanisation discourse in times of supposed crisis, to ensure that the public accepts this enormous influx of money for imprisonment, is obviously absolute bullshit. This is only contemporary packaging for something ancient; the power that sharpens its repressive weapons even more; to shelter itself, to defend its system, to preserve its direction towards more control and oppression.

In different ways we currently inject money into the Justice System of Belgium. There are not only the thousands of new cells, there is also the extension of electronic tagging, house arrest, community service, fines, etc. For the state, it is not to humanise its punishments, but instead to extend them to all those who continue to re-enter DIY structures to stay out of the lap of justice. In greatly increasing the prison capacity and expanding the possibilities for alternative sentencing, they want to give us all the possible means to have more of a grasp in society; in order to punish even more people and lock them up in prison, their accommodation, with a job, or financial debts.

And the powerful understand more than ever that the achievement of this goal is not only by the traditional foundations of the repressive apparatus. If we look at the city of Brussels, we see that the maxi-prison is not the only project with the objective to control people, to determine their behaviour in different ways, to influence and to limit their daily lives. To the far remote corners of the city, the projects that evidently grow like mushrooms: the construction of new police stations to the installation of more CCTV, additionally by the increased presence of police in the street. The extension of the European district to create an extremely well controlled public transport network, that must bring the workforce living outside of the city quickly and efficiently to their workplace. The construction of temples dedicated to ever-growing consumption, the implementation of new expensive accommodation in the poorest neighbourhoods, so as to achieve “social cleansing”. All these brilliant inventions are nothing more than instruments with the sole aim of keeping people in line, or to force them to toe the line, and; to target, humiliate, hunt or lock up those who can not, or who consciously refuse. The new maxi-prison in Haren and the urban renovation in Brussels are two sides of the same coin.

It’s been almost two years since the first leaflets expressing a radical opposition to the construction of the prison were distributed in Haren, connecting the umpteenth repressive project of the state directly with the slow but certain transformations of the city into a large open-air prison. Since then, the struggle was born which has experienced many different initiatives and intensities: leaflets, posters, tags, gatherings, occupations, demonstrations, sabotage and direct action. All these initiatives breath an anti-political attitude, and are an invitation to each and everyone to also go on the attack, into direct conflict with the powerful and their plans. They also claim autonomy of the struggle, encouraging everyone to organise themselves when, how and with whom he/she/they deem best, in direct confrontation against that which oppresses us.

The construction of the maxi-prison in Haren will never be prevented only with words. Imagination, ideas, perseverance, passion and acts of each and everyone of us can fuel a fire that not a single project, of any stronghold of power, is able to resist. Continue to explore the paths, taking action.

Published in Ricochets, n° 1, November 2014

On your marks

At the end of February 2015, the state hired a company to install fences around the terrain of the future site of the maxi-prison in Haren, north Brussels. Workers with an excavator, accompanied by some police, then began to fence off the area so they could “be ready to work away from curious prying eyes.” [1] Another company started demolition work of a former industrial site that is also located on the land of the future construction site.

These are undeniable signs that the project of the maxi-prison is progressing and that the state wants to step up a gear to erect the largest jail in Belgium. And it’s hard to not understand their message when they get started… installing fences to protect themselves and placing surveillance cameras in the village of Haren. The construction of this prison will inevitably bring the militarisation of the area.

Get set

If the Cafasso consortium (which includes the companies Denys, VK Engineering, Buro II & Archi+I…) [2] will have to wait until June for the last necessary permits, while waiting, the state prepares us with a few bad-tasting jokes. Also in March, there will be a “public inquiry” where citizens are asked to give their opinion on the project (who can still believe these kind of things?). In any case, it will then be especially easier to intimidate them to “shut their mouths” and to portray the radical opponents as “extremists” and “terrorists”… The state prepares and wants to be ready to impose by any means necessary their project.

And us, are we ready? Has each and every one of us, those who are fighting against this maxi-prison and the world that it produces, reflected on what will be done to defeat this plan? The possibilities are numerous: actions against constructors to attacks against those responsible, blockages of the daily routine to wild demonstrations, etc.

Go!

It seems likely that the start of construction will not be far away. Will they start before summer? It’s very possible. [3] It’s now and at every moment that we must harass them and put a spoke in the wheel. But when work begins, rather than be discouraged, intimidated and declared defeated, it will be an opportunity to take new steps in this dance that is the fight against this horror.

When the builders and machines arrive on the ground in Haren, let’s propagate chaos in the streets of Brussels, in the neighbourhoods where we live and struggle. To mark this move, and give them a glimpse of what will follow – what we hope and are working on – throughout the construction of this horror. By lighting the fires of revolt in the neighbourhoods, we undermine the pillars on which any plan of the State ultimately rests upon: resignation and passivity of the oppressed. And it’s from there that the assault to destroy this maxi-prison goes away.

PS: Companies that have started to prepare the ground in Haren to build the maxi-prison are: Van Kempen (demolition work, Antwerp), APB (asbestos removal, Brabant) and Verbruggen Groep Mol (fences, Antwerp).. Without all these collaborators, the maxi-prison could never be built. A word to the wise…

Translated from Ricochets n° 4, March 2015

[1] In the last week of February, a group of people brought down nearly half of the 400 Heras fences surrounding the site of the future maxi-prison

[2] The prison contract is a private-public partnership between the federal government and the Cafasso consortium, that will build and manage the infrastructure of the prison and then lease it to the state. The Cafasso consortium is; Denys, FFC Construccion, Buro II & ARCHI+I (Belgium/France), EGM Architectes (Netherlands), AAFM Facility Management (Belgium/Netherlands), M.O.O.CON Advisers (Austria/Germany), G. Derveaux Ingénieurs, Typsa (International), Marcq & Roba, Vialia Sociedad Gestora de Concesiones de Infraestructuras (Madrid), Macquarie Capital Group (International), VK Engineering, Dr. Andrea Seelich (Vienna), and the Building Agency of the Belgian federal state. Targets are located in Belgium unless referenced otherwise. Other companies involved in building new prisons in Belgium: Eiffage, BAM, Cordeel, Interbuild, Willemen, BNP Paribas, KBC Banque, GDF Suez, Sodexo, Cegelec, ABN Amro, Socotec and Eurest.

[3] The building work is intended for 2015, with the completion date set for 2017.

Mid-May we were treated to a small avalanche of shit in the press. Journalists flocked to throw their light on the struggle against the maxi-prison. Scandalized by the fact that this struggle does not take legal paths and advocates direct action and self-organization to prevent the construction of the new prison hell, it does not address institutions and politicians but blazes its trail into the poor neighbourhoods of Brussels (and not only) and has nothing to share with journalists and everything to discuss with other rebels, they have not hesitated to describe it as “urban guerrilla” and the inevitable “terrorism” .
For the two years that this struggle persists, unlike all the political cliques and benevolent citizenists, we have not minced our words: to prevent this maxi-prison we need to conduct a direct offensive combat. Organize ourselves outside any formal structure, speak out in our own areas of struggle and in the streets (and not in front of the microphones of journalist hacks or sitting quietly around a table with our enemies), act through direct action and sabotage against the companies that want to build this maxi-prison and against all that encloses us in this city that looks more like an open air concentration camp each day.
It does not surprise us that this struggle proposal, and the sympathy and enthusiasm that it generates among all those who are sick of everything to do with this rotten system, displeases power greatly. The fact that it displeases reporters, these amplifiers of the voice of power, only makes us smile. That it makes developers and builders of this work of repression nervous is quite logical.
If they thought they could build this prison safely and applauded by everyone to make money on other people’s misery, they made a big mistake. If our response to the press has been to ignore them coldly and continue our struggle far from the cameras and the places the media like to gather like vultures (the hacks well know that they will be welcomed with stones in the neighbourhoods and so they rarely venture into them without the protection of their buddies in uniform), that of others opposing the maxi-prison has been very different.
As for the “symbolic occupation” (their own words) of the terrain of the future maxi-prison, many people have felt the need to declare in front of the cameras that they are opposed to “criminal acts” and are “pacifists.” So pacifist that they prefer to rub shoulders with magistrates (they even belong to the civic platform against the maxi-prison, these same judges who every day condemn people to die in jail), elected officials, journalists, cops rather than be associated with the “scum”, “criminals”, “illegal immigrants”, the “poor” and the “violent”.
“This amalgamating must stop,” said a spokesman of the legalistic opposition (who thinks he can stop the maxi-jail with shots of citizen participation, petitions, interviews, playful actions). Well, oddly, we agree: a deep abyss separates those who struggle autonomously and directly, agitating in the neighbourhoods and acting both by day and in the night, from those who prefer official conferences, a smaller maxi-prison, a few carrots. Day after day, action after action that abyss is widening: either you fight against the power that wants to impose this maxi-prison or you lick the ass of power, its laws and its defenders, regardless of the “good intentions” that you imagine they have.
“We have nothing to do with these actions” stated an “occupier” of the land in Haren, speaking of acts of sabotage against the companies and those responsible for the maxi-prison project. If he was already probably making an amalgam in assuming the right to speak on behalf of all the other occupants, he tried to torpedo a fundamental aspect of our struggle proposal: solidarity between rebels, hostility against the State and its henchmen. If others have claimed, still on invitation of the hacks, that self-organization and direct action “discredit the struggle,” the answer comes almost alone: but what struggle are you talking about? Not ours anyway.
Published in Ricochets, No. 7, June 2015 (Brussels)