Besançon (Doubs): news from Boris
Translation : actforfreedom
A Good Wheelchair for Boris!
April 2020
Two relay antennas illuminate the confined night
While half of the world’s population was confined to their homes, an anarchist from Besançon was riding his bike to Mont Poupet in the Jura Mountains. It was at the top of these steep slopes that Boris lit up two large relay antennas with the flames of subversion on the night of April 10, 2020: those of four cell phone operators, but also of the police and the gendarmerie, causing nearly 100,000 euros worth of damage.
Identified by a trace of DNA found on site, the comrade was be incarcerated in the prison of Nancy and sentenced in April 2021 to four years in prison, two of which with no remission. In a public letter written from inside, he defended his act by his desire to oppose through direct action the increasing digitalization of our lives, with all the control, the environmental and social devastation that it implies. Unfortunately, while waiting for the date of the appeal, the comrade was seriously injured in August in a fire in the cell where he was, and the investigation on the origin and readiness of the screws to let him suffocate is still ongoing. It is thus with the medical power that Boris has been confronted for more than a year and a half.
August 2021-July 2022
The medical power at work
From the burn unit of the hospital in Metz to the intensive care unit and then to the palliative care unit of the hospital in Besançon, Boris was regularly confronted with the hostility of the pundits in white coats, as it was obvious to them that an anarchist and ex-convict, who was now a quadriplegic, could not show the slightest autonomous will as to how he wanted to be treated. It was only by protesting and writing letters that Boris was able to make his fierce will to survive heard and bring about the resumption of a minimum of active care. He also had to fight against the hospital’s long refusal to provide him with his medical records or to allow non-family members to discuss his situation with the doctors.
In reaction, Mrs. Elisabeth Batit, a doctor at the Besançon University Hospital in charge of Boris’ situation in the palliative care unit, decided in June 2022 to take a further step in her endeavor to demolish the comrade as an individual: she filed a report with the Besançon Public Prosecutor’s Office (the same one that had been in charge of the preliminary investigation into the antennas…) to launch a procedure to “put him under legal protection”, allegedly in order to “protect” him from his own decisions! It was a guardianship judge who followed the recommendation by appointing a family association, the UDAF, as a legal representative for the protection of adults (MJPM) in charge of taking control of all the mail, accounts and future resources (such as the disabled adult allowance) of the comrade.
August 2022
Solidarity and ban on visits
Outside the hospital, the diffusion of an call against the relentlessness of the judicial and medical powers on Boris was not delayed, taking shape from August onwards by several dedicated solidarity actions: colorful visits against the walls of UDAF premises in Poitiers and Caen; incendiary attacks on charging stations for electric cars and a Scopelec vehicle in Toulouse; breaking the windows of a bank or the headquarters of the prison contractor Eiffage in the same city; setting fire to a 5G relay antenna in Barcelona and a cop car in Cochabamba (Bolivia)…
On the spot, in Besançon, as angry flyers began to be distributed in the parking lots of visitors and hospital staff, the director of the hospital decided in retaliation to take a drastic measure against the comrade: a ban on all visits to Boris outside the family as of August 19, 2022, for an indefinite period of time, as long as the cops had not identified the authors of the flyer that called for solidarity with the comrade. This quasi-general ban on visits was officially pronounced by virtue of the establishment’s internal police powers, in the name of the fact that “[Boris] was regularly visited by friends possibly linked to the movement behind the leaflet”. The hospital firmly enforced this measure, going so far as to forcibly evict visitors who protested in front of the locked doors of the palliative care unit where the comrade was staying, with the help of guards. In the middle of this hot summer, Boris, in addition to his physical difficulties, was now facing 4 different legal proceedings: appeal of the trial in Nancy for the attack on the two relay antennas (still suspended in view of his state of health), investigation opened in Nancy following the fire in the cell (still in progress), appeal in Besançon against his being placed under “guardianship” by the UDAF… and now an appeal in summary proceedings before the administrative court to overturn the prohibition of visits by all friends!
This last episode will finally be concluded two weeks later to the great displeasure of the CHU of Besançon, which had however tried a last poker trick in front of the court on September 5… by advancing the indecent possibility that the persons forbidden of visit could carry out them remotely by telephone (in spite of the tetraplegia and tracheotomy of the comrade). That day, not only did we learn that the famous Elisabeth Batit – head doctor who had snitched to the prosecutor and obstructed his requests – had put herself on sick leave for a month because she felt “threatened” by the anarchist words, but also that a new leaflet of the same variety had been distributed in front of the hospital even before knowing the decision of the court, a decision which itself turned out to be favourable to the comrade at the end of the evening: “the decision of the director of the CHU of Besançon restricting the visits of the applicant to only members of his family, must be considered, in the circumstances of the case, as carrying a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of the rights, the dignity and the private life of M. X whose isolation due to his pathology is strongly accentuated”…
As for the police case concerning this flyer against which the hospital has filed a complaint for “defamation”, let us specify that Boris’ situation was on the agenda of a Health and Safety Committee of the hospital three days after the return of the visits in order “to consider the departure of this patient”; that two union cops working at the CHU (one from Sud-Santé and one from the CGT/NPA) carried out a parallel investigation in the anarchist circles of Besançon, asking everywhere who could have written and distributed it on the pretext that they were “traumatized” by the criticisms made against their noble institution; that the hospital’s communication service took petty revenge for the court’s sentence by releasing a whining version three weeks later to the journalists of L’Est républicain, which earned a half-page headline “The friends of an ex-convict from Nancy at war with the Besançon University Hospital”, where we learned in passing that “the case is now in the hands of the Doubs prefecture and the Regional Health Agency (ARS)”. And finally, at the beginning of January 2023, two anarchist comrades were summoned to the police station of Besançon for “defamation by flyer” (always the same one): they went there, did not declare anything, and no follow-up to this umpteenth pressure tactic of the authorities was given for the moment.
January 2023
At the rehabilitation center
Following the warm solidarity which did not fail to appear as a result of the agitation on the spot, and especially following the determination of Boris not to give up against the medical power, the situation finally began to be unblocked from the autumn. In October, the comrade finally received (after more than 8 months) his medical file on paper and in his room. In mid-December, he finally obtained his transfer to a new health establishment, far from the palliative service of Besançon where they had tried to bury him and where he should never have been, this time located in another department of Franche-Comté. It is in this rehabilitation center for neurological tetraplegia that he was finally able to have his first shower in a year and a half, that intensive care of respiratory physiotherapy or verticalization is provided, that an occupational therapist is working on adapting a wheelchair to his needs… and that a way out of the hospital setting is taking shape. In addition, in January 2023, during a hearing on the terms of Boris’ “legal protection” which had been pronounced by a guardianship judge, the UDAF which managed all of the comrade’s accounts and mail was disengaged pending a hearing on the matter in March.
Now that Boris can concretely begin to consider a return to the street and the sun, far from the bed and the devices that have kept him for too long under the neon lights of a hospital room, the question of financial support arises. The immediate need, which has been discussed with him and the medical team of the rehabilitation center, is the purchase of a custom-made, vertical electric wheelchair adapted to his condition, which he will be able to steer with a ball placed under his chin, along with other home automation controls integrated into its structure (such as opening doors). In addition to the current rehabilitation care in the new establishment, which hopes to release the comrade within 6 months, in addition to the technical-administrative battles with the state bureaucracy to scrape together funding, it is clear that a substantial amount of money will still be needed. The goal is for Boris to regain his autonomy with as much mobility as possible thanks to such a custom-made electric wheelchair.
A good wheelchair for Boris
In Besançon and in Paris, different initiatives are being considered in order to collect funds and participate in the project “A good wheelchair for Boris”. Any individual or anti-authoritarian collective who would like to organize in a decentralized way a concert, a support meal, a card tournament, a discussion or other joyous events in order to make a contribution to this project is obviously welcome!
The comrade has coordinated with two places to collect the money. It can either be sent by check or bank transfer (write to retourausoleil at riseup.net), or be dropped off at :
Libertad Library – 19 rue Burnouf – 75019 Paris
Librairie Autodidacte – 5 rue Marulaz – 25000 Besançon
During all these ordeals, Boris did not stop fighting with the means at his disposal, while continuing to defend his anarchist ideas. After 11 months of jail, 18 months of heavy hospitalization and still 3 cases on his back (for the antennas-relays, the fire in prison, the placing under “guardianship”), a first end of the tunnel is finally outlined towards the exit: so that he can roar again among us, let’s help the comrade to afford this wheelchair…
Anarchists in solidarity and complicity with Boris
March 2023
