We are so grateful to the CLDC for representing Malik. They do so much vital work for so many activists and organizers and we cannot encourage folks enough to support their work
They just posted this critical update that we want to share:
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Demand Justice for Malik Muhammed!
The “defense” in Civil Liberties Defense Center does not end when a political activist’s sentence is handed down by a judge. We stand with political prisoners to ensure not only humane treatment while incarcerated, but as a long-term strategy of abolition. As we have sadly seen time after time, racism, abuse, and violence tend to thrive in places hidden behind twenty-foot walls and razor wire. In addition to the unsanctioned injustice an inmate receives behind prison walls, people subjected to solitary confinement face awaking nightmare. UN experts, mental health professionals, and human rights groups have concluded that prolonged solitary confinement amounts to psychological torture. Oregon purports to have a 90-day limit on solitary (already significantly longer than California’s limit of 10 days). Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) is clearly violating their own rules regarding our new client, Malik Muhammed, a political prisoner serving a ten-year sentence at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. He has spent over 240 days in solitary confinement, isolated from other humans.
In May of 2022, Malik, an Army Veteran, father, and poet who is classified as 100% disabled, with extreme PTSD resulting from military combat, took a non-cooperation plea deal regarding his participation in the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that unfolded in Portland, Oregon, as across the U.S. Malik continues to be a writer and organizer about injustice on the inside as he was on the outside.
Recently, after speaking out against a new Dept. of Corrections corporal who Malik believed was arbitrarily changing recreation protocols based on racial bias, he was violently and repeatedly tased and then physically beaten while DOC employees continued to cycle electroshocks through his immobilized body. (Repeated use of a taser after the person is restrained has been deemed to be unconstitutionally excessive force.) Malik has compellingly stated that during this assault he did not resist or strike any officer.
Immediately following this incident, Malik was forcibly moved from his cell to a punitive “Tier 2” unit of housing at OSP — referred to as the “torture tier.” This tier is infamous among the prisoners for the punitive psychological torture and inability to sleep caused by the constant screaming from severely mentally ill people normally housed on this tier. Malik is in a cell with no bed or personal property, and has not showered in 6 days, so far. The cell is outside the view of any of the cameras meant to capture prison employee conduct. The DOC’s punitive housing of a person they know already has severe PTSD, under these circumstances, amounts to torture and cruel and unusual punishment.
In response to the original violence and then his re-location to the torture tier, Malik Muhammed is now on day 6 of a hunger strike; he is currently refusing any food. Despite the fact that Malik has not taken a tray of food in 6 days, to our knowledge the prison has yet to fulfill their lawful requirement to provide him with a baseline medical evaluation as a result of learning that he is engaged in a hunger strike.
Please help save Malik’s life by amplifying his simple demands:
1. Move him off the torture tier. As a person with underlying PTSD, housing him under those circumstances is extreme indifference to his serious medical needs and amounts to torture.
2. Restore his basic human rights, including the right to shower, the right to a bed (not a mat on the floor), and the right to his basic possessions such as books and photos of his son.
3. Provide him with the medical evaluation required for people on hunger strikes in order to monitor his health.
If these modest demands are not addressed by OSP immediately, we fear Malik will continue to deteriorate and his safety will be at greater risk.