Hungerstrike NewsOctober 11, 2011 - Day SixteenVol. 2, No. 8 

Inside Analysis:
Views from Behind the Bars

A Brief Discussion on the Reality and Impact of SHU Torture Units in the Wake of the August 23rd Legislative Hearings, From the N.C.T.T. - COR-SHU

on the Cal-SHU Hunger strike, the struggle to abolish torture units or the N.C.T.T.-COR-SHU contact: Zaharibu Dorrough D-83611CSP‑COR‑SHU 4BIL #63P.O.Box 3481Corcoran, CA93212 Heshima Denham
J-38283
CSP‑COR‑SHU 4BIL #46P.O.Box 3481 Corcoran, CA 93212 Kambui Robinson
C-82830
CSP‑COR‑SHU 4BIL #49
P.O.Box 3481 Corcoran, CA 93212  http://bit.ly/nvgVgD“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere...We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” -Letter from Birmingham Jail, 4/16/63 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These sage words by Dr. King are both appropriate to the discussion we’d like to have with you on indefinite SHU confinement, and cautionary as to who we are as a society in these troubled times. This 2nd point is very relevant to this discussion and we hope you’ll stick with us as we explore subject matter that is both broad and disturbing which requires us to share some inconvenient truths. Security Housing Units, SHUs, like those in Pelican Bay, Tehachapi, and this one here in Corcoran are torture units. They are used to indefinitely house human beings in solitary confinement, under constant illumination, based on an administrative determination that they are “gang” members or associates, with an impetus towards breaking their minds in hopes of eliciting information, coercing them into becoming informants or active agents of the state. The torture units are the living tombs of not only alleged “gang” members or associates, but political and politicized prisoners, human rights activists, critics of the prison industry, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the sole determination of Institutional Gang Investigators (I.G.I.) and administrators, are not content to accept and submit passively to their role as commodities in the prison industrial complex. The United States, and many of it’s media outlets such as the ‘New York Times’ and ‘San Diego Union Tribune’, prior to the U.S. “War on Terror” routinely criticized China, Turkey, Burma, Syria, and other nations for holding prisoners in indefinite solitary confinement, under conditions of constant illumination and/or sensory deprivation, etc. for expressing contrary political views. They universally condemned the practice as torture, citing the United Nations Human Rights Commission Treaty. Their hypocrisy was of course revealed soon after the policy of U.S. sponsored torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and numerous secret C.I.A. blacksite prisons was exposed. Yet America’s dirty little secret is, state sponsored torture in the U.S. is neither new or exclusive to it’s “War on Terror”. Years before Abu Ghraib and ‘Gitmo’ they were murdering prisoners in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center, boiling men alive at Pelican Bay-SHU, and holding murderous bloodsport style bouts in Corcoran-SHU all along holding alleged “gang” members and left wing political ideologues for decades in sensory deprivation torture units at Pelican Bay, Corcoran, and Tehachapi SHUs. [to read more click here]