Abolitionist Demands: Toward the End of Prisons in Aotearoa
Over the coming days and weeks, we will be publishing a set of 50 abolitionist demands that have been formulated by No Pride in Prisons over the past 6 months.
We will be publishing them, one by one, on our website so that they’re shareable (so please share them widely). However, we wrote these demands as a book so if you’d like to see a pdf of the book, click here.
If you would like to buy a physical copy of the book email us at info@noprideprisons.org.nz
“Information released under the Official Information Act has revealed an increase of inmate on inmate assaults in Manawatu and Whanganui prisons between 2014 and 2015.
Manawatu Prison serious assaults increased from two to three in that period, while Whanganui Prison saw its first serious assault occur in the past two financial years.
In the same timeframe Manawatu Prison had 16 non-serious injuries, up on the 14 in the previous period, while Whanganui had 20 - an increase of six.
Seventeen no-injury assaults took place in Manawatu Prison in 2014-2015, up from 11 in the previous period, while Whanganui Prison had eight no-injury assaults, a drop of eight…
In October 2015 a Whanganui Prison inmate was taken to Wellington Hospital after an assault in prison.
At the time police said Corrections staff found the inmate injured in his cell.
The man had been taken to Whanganui Hospital for treatment, but was transferred to Wellington Hospital for specialist care after receiving serious head injuries.
In March 2016 three men were arrested and faced charges of wounding with intent to injure.
A serious assault is categorised as an act of physical violence involving sexual assault of any form or bodily harm requiring medical intervention by medical staff followed by hospitalisation or on-going medical intervention.
Non-serious injuries were an act of physical violence that resulted in injuries that may or may not require medical attention.
An assault with no injury was an assault that did not result in physical violence or require medical treatment. This could include behaviour such as spitting and pushing.”
“The amount of complaints being made by inmates at Manawatu Prison increased in the past year, but the partner of one prisoner has challenged the way Corrections deals with these interactions.
Information released under the Official Information Act showed there were 207 complaints or enquiries made by inmates at Manawatu Prison in 2014-15, compared to 156 in 2013-14.
Due to their record management system, Corrections said it was �unable to distinguish between enquiries and complaints, without viewing each file individually.
Complaints and enquiries were categorised into a range of areas, including prisoner health, prisoner property and recreation, exercise and sport.
They included a wide range of subjects, such as requests for personal information under the Privacy Act, inquiries about lost property and requests to review decisions.
The partner of one Manawatu Prison inmate, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution against her partner, said whenever he made a complaint he was given a hard time by staff.
She said while had made a few complaints: "Nothing was ever done about it”.“
It is high time that private prisons came to an end as a step on the path to the abolition of prisons (http://ift.tt/2baJLMm):
“The Corrections Association says it is not surprised the US has chosen to phase out private prisons, but doubts the New Zealand government will follow suit.
Spokesperson Bevan Hanlon told ONE News the move was so surprising that he had initially thought it was a hoax, saying the amount of corporate money and political lobbying involved made him think it would never happen.
US Deputy Attorney Sally Yates this morning New Zealand time instructed Justice Department officials to begin phasing out private management in the country’s 13 privately-run facilities.
This would happen gradually through the non-renewal or substantial reduction of their contracts over time, the Washington Post reported.
The move comes on the back of scathing report into privately-run prisons in the country, which showed contraband, assaults, deaths and other incidents were all higher at privately-run jails, and the standard of food and medical care was lower than federal institutions.
"They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” Ms Yates said.
Mr Hanlon says it is great news, but he will be surprised if the New Zealand government takes any notice.
“It is a great thing,” he said.
“I just wish we weren’t 20 years behind everyone else - that’s our government thinking.
"I just think they’ll hope nothing happens.”
The Green Party has urged the Government to follow the example of the US, with justice spokesman David Clendon saying Corrections Minister Judith Collins “needs to show leadership”.
“Private prisons are morally wrong and financially pointless, so it looks a lot like National are holding on to Serco for ideological reasons, not good sense,” he said in a statement.
“The US has been a huge proponent of private prisons for a long time, so it’s really significant that they are taking this step and acknowledging that for-profit jails lead to more violence and more human rights violations.”
‘Fight club’ videos
Private operator Serco lost the multi-million dollar contract to run Mount Eden Corrections Facility last year after videos of prisoner-run fight clubs were revealed by ONE News.
Serco still runs the 960-bed South Auckland Corrections Facility, and has a 25-year contract, which was awarded by the government in 2010.
The Corrections Association has always fought against privatisation in New Zealand, Mr Hanlon said, and he was unsurprised when the videos emerged of what was happening inside MECF.
“We’ve said from the start that privatisation in New Zealand is a failed experiment - we said it at the Select Committee when the National government were rushing to change legislation to allow it,” he said.
“We predicted it at that stage - before they had even privatised Mount Eden - that Mount Eden was going to do what it did. It’s in our Select Committee submissions.
"We then said, for the first three or four years, that those things were happening in Mount Eden and that all the stats that were coming out were false, and it finally took the prisoners to publish videos of what was going on.
"Ironically it was the prisoners that fixed it - let’s just hope it doesn’t need to be fixed in South Auckland.”
A Corrections Department spokesperson said it was not a matter them to comment on, as the Department is “directed by the legislation set by the government of the day”.
Minister of Corrections Judith Collins has been contacted for comment.“
This new pepper spray, which Greg O'Connor claims is necessary to incapacitate suspected criminals, will absolutely be used to torture and inflict unbelievable pain on anyone targeted by police, or even people in their vicinity. New Zealand Police have pepper sprayed children numerous times. Pepper spray is an indiscriminate weapon and we must resist its expanded use.
‘Police nationwide are about to be armed with a new pepper spray up to six times stronger than the current version.
Sabre Red Crossfire, claimed to be “67 times hotter than hot sauce,” has been trialled in the Bay of Plenty and Eastern police districts for more than two years, and will finally be issued to all officers nationwide later this year.
The powerful new spray can present some risks to police officers, including cross-contamination - especially if sprayed in confined spaces.’
A very kind person transcribed Emmy from NPIP’s interview with 95bFM about strip searches as a form of sexual assault in NZ’s prisons. Check it out below or listen to the podcast:
“A transgender woman has accused prison guards of groping her during pat-down searches in prisons. During Jade Follett’s 10 months in prison she estimates that she had 100 pat-down searches and around 20 strip-searches. Activist group No Pride in Prisons is calling for an end to strip-searches. bFM reporter Amanda Robinson spoke to No Pride in Prisons spokesperson Emmy Rākete, and she began by asking about the position No Pride in Prisons holds towards strip-searches.
Emmy: No Pride in Prisons have worked with Jade for a little while just to make sure that her conditions are bearable, basically, while she was incarcerated. And recently she’s spoken to media about a couple of instances, while she was in prison, where she was groped during rub-down searches. Our position has always been that strip searches and rub-down searches are sexual assault, because they’re a kind of sexualised interaction that you’re forced to have with someone, where you have no right to refuse that kind of interaction. And if you try to you’ll be responded to with violence. So this kind of event is far from an exception to what normally happens in prison as far as we’re concerned. There are a hundred thousand instances of sexual assault occurring in prisons every year.
Amanda: How are you going about changing that?
Emmy: Yeah, I mean there’s kind of a split level here - obviously immediately all trans prisoners should be able to choose the sex of the officers who are searching them in prison, and that’s so that we don’t have trans women being stripped naked and searched by men. Obviously that’s a short-term demand because in the long term that’s giving people the option of who sexually assaults them, and that’s better, but it’s still the worst form of, you know, the best form of the worst possible thing. So in the long term all strip searches need to be completely ended.
Amanda: What is No Pride in Prisons - what would replace them?
Emmy: Yeah so there’s this argument which comes forth which is that it that would be impossible to run a prison without strip-searching people. And in our opinion that’s not an argument in favour of strip-searches, that’s an argument in favour of the abolition of prisons. And that’s always been our position. If you can’t - if the environment that you’re putting people in is so awful that you need to strip those people naked and inspect their genitals to make sure that they’re not hiding a weapon, maybe it’s the environment which needs to be changed and not those people’s’ behaviour. So our position has always been that the prisons, all prisons, need to be abolished and replaced with economic justice; with proactive investment by the government in community-based programmes that hold people accountable for social harm that they perpetrate; with counselling and therapy; with drug treatment programmes; with, you know, a range of positive social behaviours that help to address wrongdoing without locking people in boxes for years.
Amanda: For sure. And with the strip-searches, does it disproportionately affect women and trans women especially? Or is No Pride in Prisons’ position on that to abolish it for everybody?
Emmy: Oh yeah, no, without qualifications, nobody should be being strip-searched. Ever. As far as we know, everyone in prison is strip-searched as soon as they go in, as soon as they’re moved anywhere, after they’ve had visitors - so it’s really a universal issue. But the really important thing to know about strip-searches is that, according to Official Information Act data that we got from Corrections, less than a percent of strip-searches actually find anything that the Department qualifies/calls contraband, and of that contraband, about a third of it will actually be a weapon. Two thirds is harmless stuff like coffee, tattooing equipment, cigarettes. So in almost cases are these strip-searches actually preventing violence? They’re purely being conducted to dominate and control prisoners.
Amanda: Right. And what can we do to address this issue?
Emmy: Well pressure needs to be brought on the Department to end this practice immediately. No Pride in Prisons has a Facebook group where we talk about actions that we have coming up, so if you look on Facebook you can find us there and keep up to date with news. When we’re having events, that’s stuff that you can come to, to contribute to make sure that the Department of Corrections know that people see what they’re doing and know that it’s wrong. There’s also a project called the Prisoner Correspondence Network - PCN which is a queer for queer pen pal network for queer and trans prisoners. So that’s a really important way of getting involved, you know, in your personal life, just by being a pen pal with someone who is incarcerated. It really means a lot for people who are inside to know that people on the outside still know about them and still care about them.”
No Pride in Prisons is calling for the New Zealand Police to be disarmed following a surge in police violence.
“We were shocked to hear about the brutal murder of a Hamilton man by police this week,” says No Pride in Prisons spokesperson Kiran Foster.
The group says that public safety from police violence is a major concern. “The police have shown that they cannot be trusted with firearms. The shooting of a man in Rotorua so soon after the murder in Hamilton makes it clear that minimising violence is not their priority.”
“New Zealand Police are often too eager to use force against people. 2015 data shows that police use force against people almost once an hour.”
“To make matters worse, police are much more likely to use force against Māori than non-Māori. An independent researcher has reported that between 1995 and 2015, 56% of the situations where the New Zealand Police used lethal force were towards Māori.”
No Pride in Prisons is concerned that the growing use of guns by the New Zealand police is starting to mirror American police violence.
Data released to the group by University of Canterbury criminologist, Professor Greg Newbold, shows that there has been a substantial increase in the number of people being killed by police.
“Comparing the years 2006-2016 to the previous decade, there has been a 160% increase in the number of police killings. In fact, this decade has seen the most police killings on record.”
“Officers are too quick to assign blame, get angry, aggravate the situation and eventually use force.”
The group is calling for the immediate suspension of the use of firearms by police. “We have to keep our communities safe from police violence.”
“This is not the first time the New Zealand Police have used unnecessary lethal force. We demand that it be the last.”
Learning the Political Lessons of Homosexual Law Reform
In 1858, the English Laws Act was enacted by the occupying, British colonial forces in Aotearoa. This made male homosexuality illegal in Aotearoa by way of the imposition of English law as it stood in 1840. Sex between men, regardless of consent, was made punishable by death. The severity of the punishment changed over time, ranging from flogging to imprisonment, as social attitudes to both punishment and homosexuality shifted. By the time the movement for Homosexual Law Reform (HLR) emerged, the punishment was 5 years imprisonment for anyone who “committed an indecent act on another male, or allowed another male to do an indecent act on him”.
The campaign for the decriminalisation of gay sexualities attracted people from various walks of life, bringing with them often conflicting interests. One of the few points of political unity among the gay community was the decriminalisation of what a white, heteropatriarchal, and colonial society deemed “indecent acts.” Gay conservatives through to socialists pushed for reform. This often led to bitter divisions over what kind of action to take. Regardless, the campaign was successful.
We owe a lot to this huge step in the decriminalisation of queer sexualities. We owe it to every activist who was arrested, to every gay person who lost their life or some of it to the prison, and ultimately to every person who campaigned against the law. We are in their debt, not just for this key step in queer and trans liberation, but also for the strength and lessons it provides us now. The success of the push for HLR shows us, 30 years on, that even though the demand that queer and trans people should live free from oppression is consistently resisted, it is not a demand that we should be afraid to make.
In its early days, the central tendency of the movement and campaign was working in secrecy, out of a desire “not to upset… parliamentarians”. However, as soon as homophobic forces became aware of the increasingly organised movement for decriminalisation, a counter-campaign of petitions was mobilised, along with meetings telling gay people to “get back in the sewers”. Visibility then became a necessary precondition of reform, and so visibility was thrust upon the movement. It seemed the only options were to be harassed in silence or, as the slogan goes, to stand up and fight back. Marches, paste-ups, stalls and leafleting by gay and lesbian organisations were a common feature of politics in 1985 – the year before the passing of the Bill.
There are some people who live on the periphery of what is acceptable in society. That is to say, these people are marginalised, and their very claim to humanity is made suspect through things like the comparison of homosexuality to a disease. When this marginalisation is the case, any move, legislative or otherwise, to improve the conditions of their lives will be contested. The very act of gay people daring to speak out about the violence done to them under the English Laws Act and Crimes Act invited hatred and bigotry. So they spoke louder. Our task must always be to uplift those whose uplifting seems impossible under our current circumstances – to break boundaries.
HLR and the campaign that achieved it teaches us something important. It offers us a lesson about the current state of queer and trans politics. The lesson is this: we need to continue to shout from the margins and we need to continue to shout when people are being silenced. Responding to the state’s violence, enacted in large part through the criminal injustice system, should be an aspect of our community’s legacy that we choose to continue.We should feel compelled, in fact, to respond to state power because it is against our community. We have to choose a response and this response can be one of two things: leaving our most vulnerable to suffer in silence, or to fight with and for our most vulnerable.
If the fight for HLR teaches us anything, it is that silence is not peace. Silence is the condition for violence going unnoticed, unopposed, and therefore unstopped.
No Pride in Prisons was formed following the 2015 Auckland Pride Parade to boycott the inclusion of violent and racist institutions – namely the police marching in uniform, and the corporatisation of Pride. This short documentary by Accompany collective discusses the formation, kaupapa, and actions held by NPIP.
Most of the documentary centres around the Fuck Pride Rally, organised in response to the Pride Board’s decision to include uniformed police and corrections officers in Auckland’s 2016 Parade, despite months of negotiation with NPIP.
The Overcrowding Crisis and the Rape of Trans Women in New Zealand Prisons
On the 14th of April, RNZ reported that New Zealand has, once again, surpassed its record for the number of people it incarcerates. The prison muster hit an astonishing 9405 people and is expected to reach above 10,000 people in the near future. According to Institute for Criminal Policy Research, New Zealand now locks up 202 of every 100,000 people in this country. This means that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. As No Pride in Prisons has argued in the past, New Zealand’s prisons are currently experiencing an overcrowding crisis. The state is now locking up so many people that “plans are afoot to house men in a jail’s gym”.
The government’s primary response to the overcrowding crisis is to increase the number of people it places in double-bunked cells. Double-bunking is where two or more people are held in a single cell. Contrary to advice from human rights groups and prison advocates–including No Pride in Prisons–to abandon the policy, Corrections has announced, on twoseparate occasions in the past two months, its intention to expand the use of double-bunking. This should be seen as nothing less than a desperate attempt to respond to successive waves of increasing prison numbers, which are a result of the National government’s criminal law reforms.
Through information revealed to No Pride in Prisons through Official Information Act requests, we can see that the overcrowding crisis is even worse than is immediately apparent. The Department of Corrections reports that 2773 people are currently being held in double-bunked cells, or approximately 30% of the total prison population (using data from March 2016). Nearly all New Zealand prisons (14 of the 19) use double-bunking. Let me be clear: every single double-bunked cell is a cell that is holding more people than it was built to hold. Every double-bunked cell is an overcrowded cell. That means Corrections can say it is not operating at above capacity, as it can endlessly increase the number of double-bunked cells. However, Corrections is really just masking the fact that it is currently incarcerating thousands more people than it has the capacity to house.
Of the 20 transgender women that Corrections can account for in its custody, 3 of them are currently in double-bunked cells. The reason this is important is because overcrowding leads to a more dangerous prison environment for all incarcerated people, especially those incarcerated people who are already vulnerable. We know from international studies that trans women, in particular, are far more likely to experience abuse of all kinds than the general prison population. A 2007 study found that trans women are thirteen times more likely to be sexually assaulted in a men’s prison than other prisoners. Double-bunking only increases the risk of this kind of violence occurring. Countless studies have demonstrated that overcrowding generally, and double-bunking specifically, leads to increased rates of suicide, violent assaults, murder, as well as physical and psychological illnesses. With every double-bunked, overcrowded cell, the Department of Corrections shows that it has no regard whatsoever for the health and well being of incarcerated people.
In October last year, No Pride in Prisons’ worst fears about double-bunking were realised. The New Zealand Herald reported that a trans woman being held in Wiri prison, a men’s prison, had been raped by another prisoner. When she made contact with us and gave us details about what allegedly occurred, we were furious. This woman was being held in protective segregation, which is supposedly the safest space in the prison for vulnerable people. She says that she was, against her will, moved into the general population of the prison and then violently assaulted by other inmates. Instead of then moving her back into protective segregation, officers chose to place her in a double-bunked cell overnight with a man. That man then allegedly raped her.
To make matters even worse, according to Corrections’ policy on the housing of transgender prisoners, trans prisoners can be bunked with “Transgender Prisoners or Single Accommodation Cell only (unless the prisoner chooses to cell with another non transgender).” In other words, Corrections’ policy says that trans people should be either in single cells or housed with other trans people. They can only be placed in a cell with a cisgender person if they choose to be. This woman did not choose to be moved into the general population of the prison. She did not choose to be violently assaulted. She did not choose to be placed in a cell with a man who allegedly raped her. In other words, even when Corrections lays out policies to supposedly keep trans prisoners safe, it doesn’t follow them. The larger overcrowding crisis and Corrections’ general disregard for the well-being of incarcerated people means that these people are treated like human livestock to be managed.
However, this problem is bigger than just Corrections. This government has a thirst for mass incarceration. With soaring rates of imprisonment, double-bunking was its solution to the overcrowding crisis. This decision directly resulted in the violence that this woman endured. If the policy of double-bunking did not exist, this woman would not have been raped by that man. This government is complicit in and institutionally facilitates the rape of incarcerated people. Until the government addresses the underlying overcrowding crisis in New Zealand’s prisons, the blood of incarcerated people will be on its hands. To be clear, there is only one solution to this crisis: decarceration. It is only when we stop locking people away in cages and deal with the issues at hand that justice can be found.
In Solidarity With Aiden Katri, a Transgender Woman Currently Being Incarcerated by the Israeli Defense Force
PINKWASHING (NOUN):
the promotion of mainstream ‘gay rights’ by corporate or political entities as a veil to excuse or hide unethical practices, particularly where those practices ignore basic human and workers’ rights.
On Tuesday 29th of March 2016, Aiden Katri, a 19 year old Mizrahi trans woman was sent to an IDF men’s prison for refusing to serve in the occupational military.
My name is Aaliyah Zionov. I am a 19 year old Mizrahi trans woman and a member of No Pride In Prisons. Were it not for my family’s migration from Israel to Aotearoa, this could have been me.
The Israeli Defense Force is often cited as a clear example of an organisation which utilises pinkwashing – being increasingly accommodating of LGBT soldiers and needs not for the cause of queer liberation, but for strengthening and obscuring the true purpose of a violent occupational force. Presenting itself as a supposed bastion of queer rights, the IDF diffuses legitimate criticism and gains positive international attention as a progressive organisation whose genocidal practices are to be admired.
However, pinkwashing does not result in material improvement in queer conditions. In fact, it is often actively harmful. For example, in 2013, the IDF began to allow transgender women to openly serve on the front lines. Usually, transgender women are permitted to opt out or seek alternative forms of civil service; this change did not exist to advance transgender rights but rather served only to expand the pool from which people could be conscripted.
Katri’s current situation highlights some of the largest contradictions of pinkwashing. The fact that we as Israeli trans women now have the ‘privilege’ of serving in the IDF means that we now also have the accompanying ‘privilege’ of being imprisoned in men’s prisons if we conscientiously object. The IDF took care to emphasise that, as she did not disclose her status as a trans woman while objecting, Katri’s imprisonment was “nothing to do with her being transgender”; this is impossible.
Firstly, the fact that the IDF requires one to disclose one’s status as a member of a vulnerable or “deviant” class to the state in order to be treated with dignity, effectively “outs” them and puts them potentially in danger. This means that the “trans-friendly” status of the IDF is nothing more than a farce.
Secondly, in Katri’s words: “I struggle against my oppression – my gender oppression as a trans women and my ethnic oppression as a Mizrahi Jew, and if I turn a blind eye to an oppression of another people, this would be hypocrisy.” In other words: since her decision to conscientiously object was made as a trans woman, her imprisonment for said decision cannot be separated from her identity.
Thirdly, she was incarcerated in a men’s prison: there were immediate material consequences to her resistance as a trans woman.
Aiden Katri recognises the importance of resisting colonisation and incarceration for queer and trans liberation; for her, the hypermasculinity of Israel’s military culture is an imperial force that is also directly violent against gender non-conforming persons. Allowing trans women to participate in this culture does not liberate them, rather pressuring them to conform to toxic constructions of gender. No group can achieve true liberation through the oppression of another group.
Decolonisation is integral to the achievement of queer and trans liberation. The modern gender binary was imposed by Western colonisation upon peoples and cultures across the world; in the Israeli state, we see not only a colonised understanding of gender that neglects traditional Jewish genders but an extension of this colonisation to Palestinian queers, through the occupation of their land. The ‘right’ of Israeli trans women to participate in the IDF directly erases the right of Palestinian trans women to self-determination and indeed to survival.
Similarly, the ‘right’ of New Zealand LGBT people to work at prisons or in the New Zealand Police directly erases the rights of whakawāhine and takatāpui Māori to self-determination and sovereignty. No carceral and military system in the world can be separated from its creation and purpose as a tool of state oppression and colonial settler occupation. Queer and trans liberation can only be realised through global prison abolition, for which international solidarity is absolutely vital.
Incarcerated transgender people are often put in solitary confinement “for their safety”, which the United Nations considers torture. In Aotearoa, incarcerated transgender people are generally offered the choice to enter protective segregation, which sometimes results in complete isolation for up to 23 hours each day. In Israel, they are subject to solitary confinement by default. Statutory provisions for “choice” and for “case by case” consideration are meaningless in the context of a system which is necessarily coercive and designed to disregard the needs of queer and trans people. Many trans women of color in Aotearoa “choose” to be placed in protective segregation to minimize exposure to sexual and physical violence, and are assaulted in segregation nevertheless.
The Israeli Defense Force decides how to treat trans soldiers with regard to gender on a “case by case” basis: it retains full power to disregard any person’s gender identity or needs. The admission that they do not “really know what to do” with transgender people does not bode well for any material improvement in conditions. The modern military, as Katri recognizes, is built on patriarchal and white supremacist conceptions of gender and gender roles, and can never be safe for trans people, be they soldiers, civil servants, inmates or victims of its violence.
Aiden Katri’s objection to serving in the IDF and her subsequent imprisonment contradicts Israel’s pinkwashing narrative where it attempts to present itself as an LGBT friendly face to colonial settler occupation and apartheid. Israel’s Pinkwashing is an attempt to distract you from the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the stark inequality between Israeli settlers and Palestinians, ongoing illegal settlements, and mass incarceration of Palestinians, including children under the age of 16 years old. In Katri’s statement, she described witnessing some of the daily violence in the lives of Palestinians:
6,072 Palestinian security detainees and prisoners were held in Israeli prisons, 342 of them from the Gaza Strip. An additional 873 Palestinians were held in Israeli Prison Service facilities for being in Israel illegally, 27 of them from Gaza
In the Auckland Pride Parade 2014, the Israeli Embassy was given a platform to pinkwash Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. But we see with their treatment of trans conscientious objectors, this narrative quickly falls apart. As queer and trans people committed to the liberation of all people, we need to stand with those who are most marginalised and support the resistance against military occupation, genocide, colonisation and apartheid. We can do this by standing with Aiden Katri and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Aotearoa and internationally until there is justice for Palestine.
No Pride in Prisons stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine and in full support with Aiden Katri’s decision to conscientiously object to participation in the IDF. There are no statistics on the sexual assault of trans women in the IDF. However, given that 1 in 8 women and 1 in 5 gay men have reported being sexually assaulted and given that, where data exists, transgender women are assaulted at a far higher rate than cis women and gay men, it is not unreasonable to assume that Katri would have been placed in an unsafe situation even if she had not conscientiously objected.
Katri was put in a position where she had two choices: to be at risk of sexual assault and participate in a violent imperialist occupation, or to be at risk of sexual assault in a men’s prison because she refused to participate. No Pride in Prisons recognises that many trans women are placed in similarly impossible situations in Israel, Aotearoa and around the world, and maintains that the advancement of transgender rights therefore cannot happen without the global abolition of prisons and of military forces.
Written by A. Zionov, with assistance from K. Foster and MZ for No Pride in Prisons
A personal account of one woman’s experience of incarceration in Aotearoa.
I was arrested on the
15th of October, 2007 in the so-called “anti-terror raids.” By 6pm
that evening, I was incarcerated in Arohata Prison just north of Wellington. At
the time, our situation was somewhat unusual: generally, even for serious
crimes, people would be bailed (often with quite strict conditions) until trial.
The state said we were terrorists and the court agreed it was too dangerous to
let us out.
Today, however,
changes to bail laws mean that it is much harder for people who have been
arrested for a crime to get bail pending their hearing. The implications for
this are significant, because people who are in jail have much less access to
justice: it’s hard to talk to a lawyer, to talk with witnesses, to get
documents together or simply organise your life for a long court proceeding. Once
in prison, it is much harder to get out.
Earlier on that day,
my friend Emily and I had been stripped of our own clothing and given blue
boilersuits. We were placed in the general holding cells downstairs in the
Wellington District Court, a quite old fashioned set up with steel barred cells
adjacent to each other, and with a toilet in each nominally covered by a waist-high
wall.
We were taken to the
prison and subjected to a full body strip search. A screw (corrections officer)
watched me undress, then made me squat to my ankles to ensure that anything
concealed in my anus or vagina fell out. This was just the beginning of day-to-day
searches, day-to-day degradations.
We were initially
placed in segregation (solitary confinement) “for our own good” where we had no
contact and were only allowed out of our cells for 1 hour per day. On October
16th, I got to make my first phone call. I was in shock and despair
and could hardly form words. Also done for my “own good” was a 15-minute check-up
throughout the night: a screw would come shine a light in my face to wake me up.
We demanded to be moved
to general population and, when we arrived, we were searched. Then, we were warmly
greeted by the other prisoners who had all heard about the case on TV. At the
time, all of the women in the Tizard Wing (Remand) were Māori save for one other
Pākehā.
The routine was mind
numbing, isolating and degrading: we were searched whenever we went anywhere.
We were taken to the gym for a sad game of volleyball every morning and
required to play with a flat ball. We were searched before we left the wing; we
were searched when we returned.
We were searched when
we went to get clothes from the prison repository. We were searched when we got
back.
Our rooms were
searched. We were let out into the yard for an hour in the afternoon; we were
searched.
By the end of the
second week, we finally got some visitors. We were searched leaving our wing.
When we arrived at the visitor area, we were searched and put into orange
jumpsuits (so they know who the prisoners were) with zip ties on the wrists and
ankles (so we couldn’t stuff anything up them). I thought those jumpsuits only
existed at Guantanamo Bay; how little did I know that they are standard prison
gear in New Zealand. We were searched again when our visitors left. We would be
searched again when we returned to our wing from the visiting area.
When we went to court,
we were searched. Our legal documents would be read by screws before we were
locked into tiny transport cages.
One day, a guard came
to my cell and said, “Pack your stuff.” Everyone else had just gone to
volleyball. I had no idea where I was going, but I was expecting some visitors
that day so I guessed that I was being transferred to another wing. I was
worried I would be separated from Emily.
We were driven to the
airport and put into shackles: we were locked into a cell at Wellington
Airport. We were subsequently dragged around the airport by a chain.
Eventually, we arrived
at the Auckland Women’s prison at Wiri. Of course, we were searched again. The
new prison has cameras in every cell so the guards can watch you all of the
time. Ostensibly the camera doesn’t film the shower or toilet area but I felt exposed
and vulnerable, watched in bed or at the desk all day, every day. The person in
the cell next to me had an amazing voice; she was 17. They didn’t know what
else to do with her so they put her in an adult prison.
Each day, we went
outside for an hour. We all got searched. When we returned to the wing we got
searched.
We had regular
visitors by the time we got to Auckland. The bureaucratic process for getting
visitors takes ages, and I was thrilled to see my mum and friends.
Within a few days of
arrival, my lawyer told me that the police were trying to bring charges against
13 of us under the Terrorism Suppression Act. If they succeeded in bringing the
charge (which required the consent of the solicitor-general), he said we would
never get out.
After that, I remember
sitting in the common area of our wing, looking out the window and starting to
cry. When the other women saw me, they immediately said, “Don’t cry.” They said
that it would be worse for me if I cried. The screws would send me back to
segregation to “help” me.
It was horror. I
thought I would be there for 14 years.
The thing about prison
that most people don’t understand is that it is an institution that teaches
violence. The powerful in our society say, “we want to create a safe, secure
community” so people should obey some guidelines about how to behave. But the
reality is that the state operates by violence and coercion. Most of that
violence and coercion is the small, day-to-day degradations of strip searches
or night time patrols, with guards waking you up to “make sure you’re alive”,
or having to beg to use the phone or get medical treatment or just get a tiny
bit more food. One day I counted I was searched seven times.
There are far more
violent activities, of course, such as sexual assaults and rapes. There were
stories of a prisoner who was pregnant to a guard when I was there. Prison
teaches the lesson that the powerful have the right to use violence and force
to get what they want, and to get you to do what they want.
I was really lucky. I got out after a month. There was a whole lot of
community support and solidarity that mobilised around the case. But I will
never forget what the dread of that locked door felt like, and the utter sense
of powerlessness I felt at the hands of people who clearly took pleasure in making
supplicant beggars of us all.
Why Does a Pride Parade Need Public Relations Advice?
Following this year’s corporate Pride Parade and the protests against it, we noted a change in tone from the Auckland Pride Board. It seemed the Board had shifted its public-facing attitude to protest. Whereas after the Pride Parade protests of 2015, the organiser said he was “disappointed” that No Pride in Prisons “chose to use the Auckland Pride Parade as an opportunity to broadcast their message”, this year the Director almost praised us for our actions. Perhaps realising that the tide of public opinion was turning against them, and the Department of Corrections, the Directors decided not to completely disparage the protesters.
[U]nderstands No Pride in Prisons [sic] aim to “give a voice to a very small minority, who would likely otherwise fall between the cracks” however, he says he is not sure the protest helped their cause.
“We prepare for many scenarios and work closely with the city, the Police and our stewards on measures to keep people safe and allow everyone to enjoy the event,” says Davion. “A group chose disruption rather than co-operation as their means of communication, I’m not sure it helps their cause.”
This is a marked shift in the Pride Board’s approach to protesters. Whereas in 2015, the Board and its allies were willing to hark on about how “rude and reckless” the protesters were, the 2016 Board’s response is more complex. First, Davion backhandedly praises us for our actions. He recognises that if it weren’t for our actions, the issues of incarcerated trans and queer people may never have come up for discussion. However, in the same breath, he chooses to criticise the protesters’ tactics, and minimise the legitimate concerns of marginalised queer and trans people by referring to them as a “very small minority.”
He then goes on to say that he isn’t sure that No Pride in Prisons’ protest “helped their cause.” This is where we get to the heart of the Pride Board’s spin tactics. The Board assumes, because No Pride in Prisons interrupted the corporate pinkwashing event that tries to pass itself off as a pride parade, that we lost support or that our tactics didn’t work. This is part of the beauty of spin: you can make a lie sound like the truth.
The truth of the matter, however, is that No Pride in Prisons has never garnered more support from the queer and trans community across Aotearoa and abroad. We have received countless positive messages, comments, likes and shares and started a discussion about the precarious situation of trans and queer incarcerated people, as well as the necessity of prison abolition. The Pride Board and the pinkwashers more generally may want to believe that our action was a failure, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Davion also insisted that the protesters had chosen “disruption rather than co-operation.” We are calling bullshit. There have been multiple hui between No Pride in Prisons and the Pride Board over the past year. Surely Davion was aware of these meetings, as Parade Director. No Pride in Prisons was patient. We went to the meetings. We had discussions and we tried to convince them that Police and Corrections should never be in the parade. However, their minds were already made up. If anything, it was the Pride Board who refused to co-operate. The disruption of the corporate Pride event was necessary because the Board refused to listen.
So as you can see, while Davion is sprinkling glitter in front of our eyes, telling us he respects our protest, he is simultaneously stabbing us with lies and slander. This is a much more thought out approach to public relations than what we saw in 2015. It is clear that this newfound sophistication in the Pride Board’s ability to spin a story comes as the result of public relations advice.
We know that the Pride Board has hired at least one public relations company, because No Pride in Prisons received an email from that company. Prior to the 2016 Pride Parade, groups and organisations who made a submission to participate in the parade were contacted by Elephant Publicity. “We’re the publicists for the 2016 Auckland Pride Parade and I’m touching base ahead of the parade about possible PR opportunities,” the email read.
With offers from Elephant Publicity for media to “film the creation of your float,” covering “background on involvement (story angle),” “background on your company/organisation or reasons for wanting to be involved,” and “what you want your organisation/group or float to communicate to Aucklanders (story angle),” it became clear that the parade organisers were keen to formulaically present this year’s parade as a cheerful and diverse festival of community participants.
The fact that all potential participants received this email from Elephant Publicity speaks directly to the nature of Auckland Pride. Why is it that the Pride Board is now so intent on having a complex public relations campaign around its parade? The answer is quite simple: this is exactly what the Auckland Pride Parade, and corporate pride events everywhere, have become. Pride parades are no longer for struggling queers to display righteous pride and righteous anger in the face of marginalisation. Pride parades are for public relations. They are for the public promotion of banks, universities, hardware stores, oppressive governments, and their security forces.
This means that most of the groups contacted by Elephant Publicity were corporations and institutions, being offered a no-strings-attached opportunity to advertise their diversity and open-mindedness. So why does Pride need a PR company? It doesn’t. As we argued elsewhere, there was only one Auckland Pride 2016 and it started on Karangahape Road. The parade put on by the Pride Board was not Pride. That event was a walking billboard for capitalist exploitation and queer assimilation. It is for this reason that the 2016 Auckland Pride Parade needed a public relations company and spin doctors on the job. The Pride organisers cared more about public image and advertising potential than the marginalised members of our community. That’s nothing to be proud of.
