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Last Entrances

Who is António?
Our companion, born in 1940, in an economically poor family, non-conformed with the social inequalities to which he was subject, put in practice his rebellion and was detained for the first time when he was 17 years old. After these events, he was abducted again for three times by the fascist state (until 1974), and by the current democratic state. In total, he has been detained for more than 43 years. He profited his seclusion time for reading, study by himself and gains a bigger understanding of the world around him. António is a libertarian and a self-induced learner.
The reading of several works and the direct contact with the prison reality made António a well informed and socially concerned citizen, becoming the active centre of several fights for justice and for citizenship rights of the prisoners. He is today an ethical and civic reference for those who don't allow themselves to be degraded by the system, which don't drown in the mud of drugs and traffic, for those who don't sell-out.
At the same time that he conquered the admiration of his companions António Ferreira began to be the preferential target of some corrupts who shelter under the protection of the state's prison system. His name is associated to numerous denounces and he's even witness in judicial processes involving suspicious deaths of prisoners and illicit activities by prison workers and directors. Bravely, he denounced violations to the human rights and corruptions. His permanence in prison implies an eminent risk on his life, because there's been a long time since he receives death threats and he suffers terrible punishments.
As a person who never stopped claiming his rights and convictions, who never let himself be gagged and who has always kept a combative attitude inside prison, António has suffered a very discriminatory treatment from behalf of all the “justice” apparatus. In his case, the due juridical cumulus are not being made (they are a accumulation of the times sentenced so that the total never sums the maximum 25 year sentence that the law predicts), no sums of sentences, and “interpreting” the laws in another way, António could have been out on conditional release 4 years ago! Until 2007, three different “middle time” dates have officially been given to him, corresponding to three different “mathematical formulas”, which is irregular. There aren't even reasons anymore to deny him the precarious exits, but they invent them.

What we cannot allow is that, by indirect processes, the system makes him covertly be sentenced to a lifetime prison sentence.
Now, and after having spent these last few years in the prison establishments of Caxias, Vale de Judeus and Paços de Ferreira, António finds himself detained in the P.E. Of Pinheiro da Cruz, subject to the labelling of “dangerous prisoner” by the General Direction of the Prison Services (G.D.P.S.), and subject to permanent surveillance custody (G.I.S.P) in all his dislocations.
The danger, in this case, is the dignity and the critical spirit António has.

António by himself
2007


Libel of a lifetime cinvicted prisoner

Some of the artifices strategically used by guards and other workers in these institutions, with the aim of denigrating the name and image of a bothersome prisoner to the effecters and corrupts who wander the prisons, is the “label”. When the Prison Services start by cataloging a prisoner of dangerous, they don’t do it because the court of the condemnatory act was declared as such. Only in very exceptional situations does this happen, and that was not my case. Arrested in this conviction since 1994, all that respects a “normal” treatment inside abnormality, worked well until the beginning of 1996, year in
 which I got in touch with the extinct “APAR”. From here on, things began to complicate again, as articles of denounce are publicized in the press relative to the irregularities that happen especially in the prison of Vale de Judeus. Soon they realized that I was the author of those articles, as well as of the distribution of informative material coming from that Association for the Defense of Prisoner’s Rights.

Persecutory reactions, converted into punishments without any legitimacy, and cold war give origin to a discrediting campaign of my name and image never seen before!

“Dangerous activist”, “revolutionary”, “communist”, “anarchist”, “agitator” and everything most residual that exists in these perverted minds, like the remains of a fascist and “salazarist” ideology which have dominated the old regime. And also from this campaign, which by influence and in a conspiracy with Vale de Judeus, the general direction of the prison services imposes as mandatory the supervised custody of my dislocations, without this measure ever being ceased until today. In abridgment, a permanent cold war, inclusively with frequent displacements to other prisons in the name of the article nº111 of the prison reform. When I speak of prison reform, I’m talking about the decree 265 of 79, but that became active on the 1st January 1980. It’s a 227 article reform, many of which constitute rights of the prisoners, but that were never complied with or respected. Of this group of articles, only 3 are now evoked in the Service Mandates: art.132, 133 and art.111. These only have one finality: punish and repress the prisoners! Evoking any other article that constitutes prisoners’ rights is a dangerous adventure in these “Gulag Archipelagos”! Even if one of those articles is art.150, which has equivalence to art52 of the Republic’s Constitution. Whoever has the nerve of doing it, is automatically labelled as “revolutionary” and “subversive”, having to deal with the heavy and stigmatizing burden occurring from it until one’s disappearance or release.

I have spent about 13 years in the prisons of the old regime, and I have never been so hatefully labeled and mistreated as I have been since 96. And by the way, believe me, I would not call myself a libertarian, if I complained by mere or sick yearning of such grey past. I could never do it, for only I know how much I have suffered with such regime. For that reason I contended in what was possible, even risking my own life. For that same reason, I had to handle P.I.D.E. (and I wasn’t the only one)!

I can state that in some specific cases, at least the five last years before April 25th 1974, the prisoners were better treated and more respected than they are today. They didn’t have some of the conditions they have right now, like the radio, the television, and some other appliance, but the environment was relatively sane, even in what concerns the behavior of the prison workers. Sure there were abuses, sure there were excesses, I’m not the one who is going to whiten them; but when identified, they were fought without contemplation. Some were my directors and were in jail with me, other preceptors (the current “Educator”) were with me in the same conditions, guards and other workers, all were my prison companions. Then there were no 5-star hotels for the “white collar”. And where forcingly the regime showed that it demanded some ethics to these institutions and to the actual Courts, it was defined by the way in which it condemned these individuals to heavier sentences than, in a general way, the rest of the citizens.

Only who hasn’t been through the prisons in the old regime will eventually have a difficult time making the comparison that the historical accuracy imposes as necessary and evident. Let us then follow its most nude and raw course which is known to me.

There is a phenomenon (known to all) that is now a days common to all the country’s institutions – whether they are public or private. In what concerns the other institutions, they call it corruption; in relation to these, I call it megacorruption. Without denying that it has always existed, it is important to say that, from since 20 years ago until now; this flagellum has taken care of everything, and rotted everything, including the laws of the republic. Here the statements of Albert Libertad in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, were already considered clairvoyant: “Law is the Right of the Strongest”. The discretionary power of the director, of the chief of guards, of some “Educators” and some graduates and guards are today the law inside the prisons. Everything within the miserable corruption!

Constitution of the Republic, Code of the Penal Process, Penal Code, Prison Reform, Organic Law of the Prison Services (dec.268/82), Dec.783/76, European Convention for the Human Rights, all are denied, all are subverted, all is closed upon a drawer. In some prisons, not only the consult of the internal laws is denied, as it is even stated that there are no such laws. And even if this practice constitutes a crime, they do it openly. Not long ago, I was live witness to a witch hunt among the workers, to find out who had given a copy of the prison reform in english to an american prisoner who was committed in the Prison Hospital of Caxias.

António Ferreira de Jesus.