ATLANTA – In Pelham, Georgia in early 2011, the Pelham police brutally tortured and murdered 17-year-old African, Fabian Avery III, by forcing him into solitary confinement and ignoring his pleas for medical assistance as his appendicitis symptoms worsened to the point of death.
On February 15, 2011 when the young brother was initially transferred to Pelham County Jail from Atlanta's overcrowded Fulton County Jail, Avery's complaints that he needed medical attention went unheeded. The jailers claimed that Avery didn't ask for medical help until February 24. But instead of medical care he was thrown in “the hole” (solitary confinement).
The institution used as an excuse for throwing Avery in the hole, the fact that he had soiled himself. They claimed that he was pretending illness. However, it was the deteriorating state of his appendix, which had developed to acute appendicitis that was the cause of Avery soiling himself.
The fact is that Avery was never afforded life sustaining medical care by the Pelham County Jail.
From solitary confinement where his painful screams could not be heard, on March 18, 2011, this 17-year-old African finally succumbed to a tortured death due to acute appendicitis.
His body was found on a mattress in the isolated cell, SHRIVELED DOWN FROM 153 POUNDS UPON ARREST TO 108 POUNDS AT DEATH!
Avery had been suffering from nausea, stomach pains, vomiting and lower back pains and was still denied medical care.
There are tens of thousands of Fabian Averys locked down in U.S. prisons and jails without access to medical care.
This is true despite U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama's claims that he has brought into existence a law that provides health care for all. But Obama refuses to say anything on the question of mass incarceration of young Africans, especially young African men.
It is the Wall Street prison industry that has built the thousands of private prisons in this country that the different county jails provide with a steady flow of roomers. And not only are the prisons a multi-billion dollar Wall Street industry, they also provide livelihood and subsidize hundreds of rural white communities throughout the U.S.
County jails like those in Texas even transfer prisoners across state lines to Oklahoma, Arizona, Louisiana, etc., to fill whatever vacancies there are. These were some of the African workers that British Petroleum (BP) used in the sham oil spill cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico in 2011. That is the industry that Fabian Avery was caught up in. He never stood a chance.
On August 9, 2012, Fabian Avery's mother, Sandrini Scott, filed a lawsuit against the City of Pelham and the city's police department in U.S. Federal court claiming wrongful death and civil rights violations, and naming Police Chief Nealie McCormick, city manager Doug Westberry, the jail's nurse and doctor, and four correctional officers as defendants.
This was murder, a clear act of colonial violence by the State against an African youth, not unlike the colonial violence faced by Africans throughout the United States in which over half of the 2.5 million prison population are African people.
The murder of Fabian Avery, found dead on his mattress in an isolated cell, is reminiscent of the murder of Oury Jalloh, an African imprisoned in Germany who was chained to his mattress by German cops and burned to death in 2005.
From Germany to Georgia, the conditions faced by African people are the same. Africans around the world face the same conditions of colonial violence, police terror and murder, mass incarceration, and the denial of basic human rights such as quality healthcare.
The hands that chained Oury Jalloh to his bed and burned him alive were the same hands that locked Fabian Avery into solitary confinement and forced him to shrivel and die. These were the hands of white power at work to choke the life out of African people in order to maintain the system of parasitic capitalism that was born from and is sustained by the oppression and exploitation of African people dispersed throughout the world, and other oppressed and colonized peoples.
But, there is the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) that exists in Europe, in Africa, and the United States and is fighting for Africans everywhere. InPDUM believes that Africans have a right and a duty to resist oppression and tyranny. InPDUM believes that reparations are due the families of Fabian Avery and Oury Jalloh. Join the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement. REPARATIONS NOW!
Contact InPDUM at info@inpdum.org, 484-362-9580!
