I want to talk about political imprisonment as opposed to the so called social imprisonment. I want to communicate that this opposition is less obvious than it might appear. I would address this topic from two sides — from more theoretical perspective and from the point of simple human compassion.

I have a correspondence — a guy — imprisoned because of unsupported accusations of [religious extremism]. 

Once I had a conversation with my liberal mother about this. I wanted to convey that this can happen so easily 

--  essentially — 

because the society is islamophobic and sees plausible that

a-Random-muslim-person 

is plotting some |terror|. 

I got a very sad (reply …)

— “well, how do you know he is innocent”.

 And that moment I wasn’t pissed off by this bigoted answer

 I simply though 

“well, even if he is, does he Deserve this?”…

------

As a big fan of Simone Weil I believe that

Compassion and Justice

are crucial political categories,

however the only Justice according to Weil

is not to harm the other living being.

Whereas the common notion of justice is simply a qasi-economics of violence.

This type of Justice,

as was put by Pёtr Kropotkin,

is basically an 

Organised Vengeance.

Organised by the State

and serving the State.

That is if a person kills someone, they are answerable to the state, not the family, not the friends of the victim. They are guilty not because they did something immoral, but rather because they destroyed a unit that pays taxes or can be exploited by the Capital, as well as because it undermines the state’s monopoly on violence.

I am from Russia, which is an openly oppressive state. This implies in particular that most means of resistance are dangerous for the actor. One of the few legal means to do at least something is to support the political prisoners — who had fought against the regime despite all the risks. For me and many of my comrades in immigration it is also one of the very little ways to support the victims of the regime directly.

It was hard for me to start writing those letters

-- [I guess compassion is hard itself] --

when you write a letter to the prison — you inevitable think about the dire condition of the inmate — and

this is very shattering

to imagine even for a moment, what the person is feeling there. 

For me

it was shattering enough

to see

that it doesn’t matter if the person is political or not political, if they’re not guilty or if they ARE guilty. These conditions are so

 deliberately atrocious 

and so well designed. 

Prison is a perfect machine of violence so one can question whether it serves to reduce anti-social or unethical behaviour…

Of course it doesn’t. 

Being ‘political’ as a prisoner is often construed as a form of martyrdom — something tragic but heroic, which somewhat implies that the person had had a choice, which is true sometimes. Otherwise though, and we all know such cases, 

one’s mere identity is potitical

(political enough to be seen as a threat). 

So when I am talking about political cases in “Russian Federation” and its occupied territories, not only am I talking about Navalnyi or Yashin, not only about smaller antifa groups, but also about people in Ukraine, who had refused to become russians, about decolonial activists from various regions of the so called "Russian Federation" who were merely trying to preserve they languages and culture from being erased by Russian Imperialism. 

Thus, the main and maybe the only role of Prison is simply to compel a minority to agree with a majority decision, where the decision can be practically everything — it might be good and ethical and might be bigoted and bad — prison walls do not care.

Thus, I am trying to communicate that Political Imprisonment is not abuse of the system,

it is the system--

 — in a way every prisoner is a political prisoner,

when crime against a human being

is a crime against State.

I don’t want to put everything together though.

intersectionality is not about putting and equating everything

it is about looking into the very core of any oppression and every affliction

it is about creating new connections

it is about extending compassion

Felix from URvG,

21.6.25, Graz, JA Karlau, Gefangen im System