Virginia prisoners self-immolate to escape racist torture

Atlanta, GA – Since August 2024, a dozen Black men at Virginia’s Red Onion supermax prison have set themselves on fire in a desperate attempt to escape conditions that amount to prolonged torture.

Red Onion is infamous for the abuses it has carried out against prisoners since its opening in 1998. Most of its prisoners spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, some of them for as long as 14 years. Red Onion has been known to use attack dogs on prisoners who speak out and organize against the guards’ abuses.

This recent series of self-immolations has been brought to light through Prison Radio communiques by a veteran of the Black liberation movement, longtime political prisoner Kevin Rashid Johnson, who is currently held in Red Onion.

Johnson describes a prisoner known as Econ and his cellmate Trayvon Brown setting themselves on fire in the most recent acts of self-immolation. Econ informed Johnson that the self-immolation was an attempt to get transferred out of Red Onion, even if just temporarily to a hospital, as the conditions have become so intolerable. These acts of desperation come on the heel of Johnson’s 71-day hunger strike that was launched in protest of Red Onion’s inhumane conditions. Guards have been serving food with maggots, carrying out religious persecution, using racial slurs, and denying medical treatment.

In an interview with Prison Radio, Ekong Eshiet gave his reason for self-immolation, “I would rather die before I stay up here, because every day I’m dealing with discrimination, whether it’s about my race, my last name, or my religion.” Eshiet is a Muslim from Africa and has been subjected to frequent beatings that included rubbing pepper spray in his burn wounds. Guards often deface their Quran during these attacks. Eshiet has also launched a hunger strike, “I’m doing my best, like I’m going about this the right way, I guess, like with the hunger strike way. But if I have to, I don’t mind setting myself on fire again. This time, I would set my whole body on fire before I have to stay up here and do the rest of my time.”

27-year-old Demetrius Wallace was one of the first to set fire to his leg in August. Upon being taken to the medical wing of the prison he was denied any treatment. The guards waited three days to transfer him to the VCU Health burn unit. Wallace told The Virginia Defender, “As soon as the doctor sees me, he said, ‘When did this happen?’ I said, ‘Friday.’ He said, ‘Why haven’t you been here?’ I said, ‘I’m not trying to be funny, but I can’t drive myself from the prison.’” Because of this delay, doctors were forced to cure an infection that had developed before they could even begin treating the burn itself.

The trend of medical negligence in American prisons is used as a form of extrajudicial punishment and retaliation. By fostering the conditions for prisoners to develop medical issues, and then denying treatment for said issues, jailers have created a means to murder inmates. This tactic is part and parcel with the systematic inequality imposed on Blacks, Chicanos and other oppressed nationalities by the monopoly capitalist class.

This practice is not limited to prisons either. In the Black Belt south, overcrowded jails such as the Fulton County jail are just as dreadful as prisons. In 2024 alone there were ten inmate deaths in Fulton County. In Dekalb county outside of Atlanta, which is 53% Black.

Earlier this year, Fight Back! reported on the death of 27-year-old Christon Collins at Dekalb County jail, the result of blatant medical negligence after Christon fell and hit his head. According to Christon’s mother Jonia Milburn, “My son laid on the floor for three hours with no care. Nobody noticed. No guards, no supervisors, no one but the inmates.”

Fight Back! will continue to monitor the ongoing resistance and hunger strikes at Red Onion prison.

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