Fofana is 23 years old and he has lost the last year of his life in Dutch prisons. As a boy he left Bamako and his family behind and went to his uncle in New York, Brooklyn. Later he lived in Montreal.
Almost a year ago he wanted to visit Italy, with a ticket via Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Apparently something was wrong with the ticket so he got stuck. Then somebody advised him to ask for asylum and quickly he was brought to the detention complex for unwanted migrant at  Schiphol East.
Is this the sanction for a wrong ticket, or for asking asylum, for adhering to the wrong advice?  Fofana has been asking this question for a year now. He asked the cops, his lawyer, the IND, the refugee council, his ambassy. Is asking for asylum a crime in this country?
Fofana looks good, like a sportsman. He plays football and basket ball. In prison he does running. And he likes music: hiphop and reggae.
Last week we visted him twice in the new detention complex Alphen aan den Rijn. This is his forth or fifth prison now. On the 26th of June it will be one year. And that’s more than long enough.

Fofana has lost confidence in humanity. For him all people in Holland are the same: lawyers, police, IND, pastors, refugee council, Humanitas are all part of a system that destroys his life and that of his brothers and sisters. He suffers and sees how others suffer with him. He fights and feels the repression.
He tells us on the phone about the everyday resistance. Like the guy from Pakistan who one day refused to clean the unit for only 10 Euro per week. He only asked the chief to let others help him. But the brothers equally refused to do this work for
nothing. Then the unit was not cleaned at all and they had to cook and wash themselves.
When I visited him last Saturday I brought him a T-shirt of the cleaners of Schiphol that are campaigning for respect and better working conditions. They now receive a minimum 10 Euro per hour. I showed him the shirt saying “Power to the cleaners”. He liked it a lot, but we can only give it to him on the 15th of June,  when it is his turn to receive some goodies from outside.
It so happened that the guy from another unit who now does the cleaning was sitting right behind me in the visitors space. He’s Moroccan and is doing time for not having the proper papers. He looks like a pirate with a scarf around his head. And he wants a T-shirt too. In fact everybody wants a T-shirt,  so we ask FNV-Bondgenoten to deliver 20 of them.
As a gesture of support and solidarity.

Fofana sees the other units from a distance. He sees how people fight.  He knows how often people are put in isolation. He sees how a Chinese man in his own unit is fading away, sick, not eating, drinking or sleeping. He knows that 2 inmates died in the last two weeks in Alphen.

Fofana is of course also one of the leaders of the hungerstrike that started on the 18th of February in Block L of Schiphol East.
After this collective uprising Fofana and 5 others were transferred to Kamp Zeist where he spent 6 days in isolation.

Fofana wants to be free. He is tired and desparate.
Let’s send him a big cake filled with gun powder.

and break the walls between us!