THE VOICE OF FREEDOM FROM DEATH ROW

Thanks to Mumia Abu-Jamal

By Rolf Becker

[This article published in: Junge Welt, 9/16/2006 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.jungewelt.de/2006/09-16/010.php?print=1.]




The 25th year on death row for Mumia began on July 3, 2006. He lives from execution date to execution date, from extension to extension – still unsure about his future…

Mumia successfully maintains himself as a person against these conditions exceeding all imagination and against the many additional restrictions and harassments of his prison routine by “remaining free” “spiritually beyond the cell cage.” His method is writing. “I write to live.” By writing, he makes connections. For years, we can read what he wrote when he was cut off from all living experience of the world. Regardless of additional punishments, he does his utmost with articles and books to give orientation and perspective to resist oppression, exploitation and racist discrimination.

That he is innocent may be clear to us and also to those who judge over Mumia, the “rulers over life and death.” The real reason for his sentence is his advocacy for the voiceless. He became “the voice of the voiceless,” as he was described even before his arrest. “With all its powers, the state wants to prevent your reading what I wrote because I dare to speak the truth.”

A flight from truth occurs in the US and Germany, the truth about the real causes of increasing impoverishment, about the true causes of wars, about the torture workshops from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib and about above and below. The methods of repressing the truth extend from editorials about legal appeals to vocational prohibitions, direct or indirect censorship and the death penalty. Despite everything, the sum total of all death sentences in the US in the past amounts to a fraction of those executed in the name of the German people between 1933 and 1945 by National Socialist judges and executioners.

Peter Handke is among those who support Mumia Abu-Jamal’s release. Handke is also muzzled when he writes about Yugoslavia, NATO’s war, the aftermath of war and the Haag Tribunal established for the self-justification of the victorious powers to which Germany belongs again, truths in opposition to “public opinion,” the so-called mainstream, this self-imposed synchronization that does not need any decree any more.

Mumia asks: “Do you need protection from my voice or protection from your protectors?” We must raise this question. The dispute whether Mumia is a victim of racist- or class policy is unnecessary. The racist- and class questions are inseparably connected.