Nation States are destroying our lives - Visiting Ahmed, February 2019

Those barbed wires… Even seeing them from a distance makes you feel shaking cold. The prison’s parking lot is full of cars, there are no other visitors just employees, what gives you the feeling that half of that small town works in the prison.  During the conversation with the guards, they are correcting us to not use the term “prison”, because it is a closed type of “reception center”,  as if there would be any difference between these two damn institutions.

We came here to visit Ahmed, who was released from the prison on the 19th of January after 3 1/2 years. 

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But instead of being  transferred  to the airport and back to Cyprus where his family is waiting  for him since September 2015, he was put in detention again. As he said, the worst part of it is that they don’t let you understand what is going on, there is a constant state of continuous
uncertainty and what remains is waiting. It means assaults on the soul second by second and day by day. But Ahmed welcomes us with a kind smile, asking how we are. He talks very clearly with dignity.

During our visit we are able to catch some glimpses about the daily life behind the walls. Even  the sunshine is not reaching the corridor where people could be able to get some warmth from the sun . At the same time prisoners cannot  turn off or on the light in their cells, they can’t get hot water for a tea or take shower when they need to, the prises in the prison shop are not fixed or known,  so they are  raising to extrem amounts. And these are just the  small  things making  the everyday life inside humiliating and unberable.

We are quoting here a sentence by one of the prisoners addressing a prison guard after he to give some hot water for cay to the prisoners: “You were 9 months in the belly of your mother  and i was 9 months in the belly of my mother. Why you think there is a difference between you and me? You are not above me.“

Everyone who studied a bit the history of the prison system knows what purpose it serves for the  state: It traumatizes people to subordinate themselves to the roles the state is prescribing. In this particular case the Hungarian government (like all other government’s on the periphery of the EU) keeps people  imprisoned to show  the  donator  EU, father of the racist master plan -  “look we have some migrants here,  we work hard to  keep things under control so be thankful and give us the money” .  And beside the  racism and fascism that connects them, this migrant prison system is all about the profit of course.  So  because there are almost no migrants in Hungary, people are  being locked up in these detention centers for one year before they are kicked out from  the country.

The near future of Ahmed remains unclear until now. He is forced to wait in isolation and uncertainty more and more.
When Ahmed was released from the official prison, finally he received a big pile of letters that were written in the last years by people in solidarity from all over the world. At the end of our visit Ahmed said several times that he is sending many many greetings to everyone out there who supports him and his family.