A-Infos (en) Italy, Umanita Nova: FAKIR (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A month has passed since Abderrahim Fakir, 42, was killed on July 19th 
in Bologna, crushed to the ground and suffocated by police during an 
arrest. --- Fakir had lived in Italy since he was seven years old and 
owned a transport and porterage company. In recent months, he had 
expressed fears to his lawyer regarding the entry into force of the new 
European Migration Pact. He feared being deported from Italy despite 
having all his papers in order. --- His terrible story has disappeared 
from the newspapers. It's already gone unreported.

It seems there's nothing left to do but wait for the autopsy results. 
Even though we don't need them to know how he died.

Since Riccardo Magherini died crushed to the ground in Florence on March 
3, 2014, restrained and suffocated by the Carabinieri, we haven't made a 
single step forward. We've remained there, still.

Riccardo was crying out for help. Like Fakir.

It now seems like a routine, normal, and acceptable practice to respond 
to anxiety, confusion, obvious suffering, and inner turmoil with 
repressive and violent means, including being pinned to the ground, 
kneeled on the back, handcuffed, restrained, or suffocated.

The news is full of stories similar to that of Fakir or Riccardo 
Magherini. Anyone who wants (we as a Collective have undertaken this 
task) should take the trouble to seek them out, study them, and share 
them... Countless people have died following police custody with 
associated compulsory medical treatment (TSO), the combined action of 
uniforms and white coats, police patrol cars, and ambulances from 118 or 
the Red Cross.

Riccardo and Fakir died like so many others. Luigi Marinelli, crushed by 
a knee in the back during a police intervention at his home in Rome on 
September 5, 2011. Giacomo Zotti, died in Urago d'Oglio in the province 
of Brescia during a compulsory medical treatment (TSO), due to two 
sedative injections while being held by the Carabinieri on October 26, 
2011. Vincenzo Sapia, suffocated on the ground by a Carabinieri officer 
in Mirto Crosio in the province of Cosenza on May 24, 2014. Andrea 
Soldi, immobilized in a chokehold, handcuffed, and suffocated during a 
compulsory medical treatment (he refused to go to the CSM to be 
administered a dose of psychotropic drugs) by three traffic police 
officers and a psychiatrist on August 5, 2015 in Turin. Arafet Arfaoui, 
died in Empoli on January 17, 2019, after being given a sedative 
injection while handcuffed and pressed to the ground by the Carabinieri, 
with his feet tied with a plastic cord. Igor Squeo, who died at age 33 
under still unclear circumstances on the night between June 11 and 12, 
2022, in Milan, following a police and paramedic intervention in his 
apartment. He was handcuffed, pressed prone to the floor, and forcefully 
sedated. M.M., suffocated at age 39 inside a church in Vigevano after 
being handcuffed, restrained, and held face down by two traffic police 
officers on November 3, 2023.

And who knows how many others.

Many, too many, have lost their lives during a law enforcement 
intervention during the execution of Mandatory Medical Treatment. 
Mandatory medical treatment (MTS) to this day remains the only practice 
considered "medical," imposing an unwanted and involuntary "treatment" 
through the intervention of law enforcement. Thousands of them are 
performed every year in Italy, dozens every day. And too often, they end 
this way, with the "accidental" death of those who undergo them.

As a society and as individuals, we struggle to empathize with those 
expressing latent suffering; we avoid considering their internal, hidden 
pain. We are only capable of perceiving the threat. The only response to 
those in distress, who cry out for help and demand care, a listening 
ear, closeness, and acceptance, is the police and massive doses of 
neuroleptics and sedatives. A close encounter with a person in serious 
crisis almost automatically leads to an appeal to those who have a 
monopoly on force. Taking charge and personally caring for a person 
expressing distress seems to belong to distant spaces, times, and 
dimensions. In our time, in our space, in our dimension, this is no 
longer possible. All human relationships are completely undermined. 
Those who scream in the street are potentially dangerous to themselves 
and others, and the citizen who doesn't want trouble has only one 
solution: call the police or an ambulance for forced admission to a 
psychiatric ward. Often when uniforms work alongside white coats, words 
become weapons, relationships are surrogates of psychotropic drugs, 
restraints, and segregation in psychiatric wards. Fakir died because 
good citizens, eager for peace and quiet, cell phones in hand, turned 
him over to men in uniform. Far from protecting people's safety, they 
have carried out their primary task: to control, contain, and repress.

People in distress are often surrounded by stigma: a collective way, 
constructed over centuries, of observing the reality around us and 
relating to others, which transforms vulnerability into shame or danger. 
People who are mad are laughed at or kept away. Psychiatric stigma goes 
even further: it prevents and nullifies any personal responsibility, 
even when violent treatments and prolonged restraints are implemented. 
People considered mad, crazy, or delusional are difficult to believe, 
even when they report harm or abuse. This is how stigma works. People 
feel freer to act with impunity. Those in crisis are not credible and 
cannot be trusted as witnesses.

Fakir was also affected by this stigma. After his death, the media and 
the low-level political debate to which we are accustomed orchestrated a 
press campaign aimed at discrediting him as a person. It was said that 
he may have had pre-existing medical conditions and was taking drugs. 
His home was searched, and medical records were found from a hospital 
stay a month before his death. He had gone to the emergency room at 
Bologna's Maggiore Hospital for a cut on his wrist, during which he had 
sought psychological help. The goal was clear: to prove that he himself 
was responsible for his own murder.

Fakir's family is demanding truth and justice. The Bologna prosecutor's 
office has already shown where the state stands: the file on the two 
police officers and four emergency workers who intervened at Pilastro 
was not opened in the ordinary register of suspects, but in the 
so-called Model 45 bis, the "shield" register introduced by Article 12 
of the Security Decree, reserved for cases in which there is a presumed 
justifiable cause for those wearing a uniform in the performance of 
their duty. Those registered there are not formally under investigation, 
and investigations proceed on a separate and more expedited track than 
the ordinary one. In the death of an unarmed person, pinned to the 
ground and handcuffed, the starting point of the investigation is the 
presumption that police officers and Red Cross volunteers acted 
lawfully. This is the first-ever application of this rule in Italy.

We stand with the families of those who suffer this type of abuse, often 
destined to experience a double loss: forever torn from the presence of 
their loved ones, deprived of the consolation of a plausible and 
acceptable trial truth. Very few trials reach a genuine conclusion. This 
adds a further disturbing element to the violence that families, 
relatives, and friends of the person who died as a result of abuse are 
forced to endure: the deprivation of even an explanation, of a plausible 
sequence of events and causes that led to the death of those closest to 
them.

What happened to Fakir and all the others is the result of the loss of 
all human contact. It is the consequence of delegating actions, 
thoughts, and supportive relationships to institutions that, by their 
very nature, lack the capacity for interpersonal relationships, a 
genuine interest in the feelings of others, and feelings that don't meet 
a standard.

True change can only come from widespread awareness of the need for a 
return to openness to care-the kind of care that involves listening, the 
ability to relate, and closeness. These are all characteristics that we 
are inexorably, perhaps forever, losing in these infamous years.

We refuse to believe that this decline represents our new normal.

Antonin Artaud Antipsychiatric Collective

Antonin Artaud Antipsychiatric Collective

Via San Lorenzo 38, 56100 Pisa

antipsichiatriapisa@inventati.org

www.artaudpisa.noblogs.org

https://umanitanova.org/fakir/
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