“Are you the guy?” he said.
“I’m the guy,” I answered. “Do you have the names?”
“I have the names.”
It was like a scene from a bad detective movie. The camp had burned down a week earlier and six kids, all teenagers, had been blamed for it and arrested. We were trying to find out who they were. I never knew the name of the man on the other end of the line. He was a contact inside the Mytilene police station, a detainee to whom we’d slipped a phone card and instructions to call us with the six names.
In that small town, all social problems were blamed on migrants. They routinely suffered miscarriages of justice. In court, defendants found themselves answering not only for the specific charges against them, but for the hardships of the locals as a whole. And so we built networks through which we could reach the people targeted and accompany through their nightmarish encounter with the criminal justice system.
Getting the kids’ names was the first crucial step. Without those, we stood no chance of legal intervention. They would disappear into the prison system, not to be seen again until their day in court. By then, it would be too late to mount a defence. This was only the beginning. Finding witnesses, getting press attention, updating their worried families and supporting them too; the task ahead was huge. It took countless people working together, with the experience and drive to navigate the system’s evasions and obstructions, to accompany the six accused in their bid for freedom.
It was an example of Unarmed Civilian Accompaniment. And it’s more needed now than ever.
Authoritarianism is on the rise everywhere. The actions of border guards, cops and judges live up to the wildest far-right dreams. Targeted communities have fewer places left to turn, and many are steeling themselves for the worst.
This week we are sharing a mini-guide on how to prepare an Unarmed Civilian Accompaniment team. Not only is it a form of community defence; it’s also an act of resistance that calls on the community for safety instead of relying on a criminal justice system that threatens so many of us.
Get in touch with CPT if you’d like to learn more about setting up an Unarmed Civilian Accompaniment team in your community. Together, we can say loudly: if you come for one of us, you come for all of us!
