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Dear Friend,
“Before I have to stay up here and do the rest of my time up here, I would rather die. Every day I’m dealing with discrimination, whether it’s behind my race, my last name or my religion.” Ekong Eshiet, Red Onion State Prison.
Red Onion State Prison is a historically troubled institution in Virginia’s 1.5 billion dollar prison industrial complex. A level 5 super max prison in Wise Country it is located on a mountain top, in rural Virginia next to the Kentucky border. The conditions at Red Onion are notorious: guards and administration use dogs, mace, and solitary to threaten prisoners who are speaking out.
DeAndre Gordon, Demetrius Wallace, Tre’vaughn Brown, and Ekong Eshiet prisoners at Red Onion have set themselves on fire while demanding to be taken “off the mountain.” The warden confirmed six men burned themselves in protest. Prisoners report the total is over a dozen men treated for burns. A number were taken for skin grafts, seven hours away, at the Evans-Haynes Burn Center at VCU Hospital in Richmond, VA.
“These acts of self-immolation are desperate cries for help from at least twelve Black men, since September 15, who allege systemic abuse, neglect, and blatant human rights violations,” the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus statement reads and continues. “People who have been incarcerated at Red Onion State Prison describe being regularly subjected to racial and physical abuse from correctional officers, medical neglect including the withholding of medicine, excessive stays in solitary confinement with one report of 600 consecutive days, inedible food having been covered in maggots and officers’ spit, and violent dog attacks.”
This recent round of atrocities taking place at Red Onion State Prison were first reported by Prison Radio correspondent Kevin “Rashid” Johnson in “Self-Immolation in Virginia Prisons.” Rashid, at great risk to himself, continues to document abuses he and his fellow inmates experience. As part of his pending federal civil rights lawsuit, his attorneys at Rights Behind Bars have filed an emergency order in federal court documenting the prison’s threats to set Rashid up to be killed. The federal court held a hearing in late November and is preparing to issue its ruling on the injunction seeking to protect Rashid and others from retaliation.
This past week the story has become international news. The Al Jazeera daily news magazine The Take– and The Guardian have interviewed our staff and correspondents.
Link: Al Jeezera’s The Take: Why Are Incarcerated Men Setting Themselves Alight?
The episode explores the story of Ekong Eshiet, a young Black man who, alongside his cellmate Tre’vaughn Brown, set himself on fire in an attempt to escape the unbearable conditions of Red Onion.
- Dogs are used to intimidate and viciously maim prisoners, guards beat prisoners, spit in prisoners’ food, and destroy religious materials, including the Quran.
- Mace is routinely used, and often on defenseless and/or handcuffed prisoners.
- Isolation is routine with restricted housing, solitary confinement and denial of tablets and phone calls.
- Systemic degrading racism: A nearly all-white staff use racial slurs while beating prisoners.
Why This Matters
The inhumane conditions at Red Onion reflect a broader system that requires violent punishment to maintain a sense of supremacy. The public would never know the extent of these abuses without the voices of those inside and platforms like Prison Radio that listen to folks inside, and broadcast their stories.
Noelle Hanrahan explains to Al Jazeera:
“Our job as reporters is to go where the silence is, to hear what people on the ground have to say. When people write, document, and engage with the media, that is when power is built—power that prisons fear.”
Our correspondents are being threatened and punished for their reports of the extreme brutality and of the desperate measures of self-immolation that several prisoners have taken as a result.
We must demand:
A full investigation into the human rights violations and endemic racism at Red Onion State Prison. An end to solitary confinement, beatings, and retaliation. The transfer of those in need of medical care. And the closure of these torturous facilities.
Responsible officials to contact are:
Governor of Virginia, Glenn YoungkinPhone: (804) 786-2211
Email: glenn.youngkin@governor.virginia.gov
VA DOC
chadwick.dotson@vadoc.virginia.gov
rose.durbin@vadoc.virginia.gov
The general switchboard number is (804) 674-3000.
The general email contact can be found at:
Prison Radio has been amplifying voices like Rashid’s and Ekong’s for over 30 years. This work exposes the brutality of the prison system and builds pressure for change. Thank you for standing with us in this fight for justice.
Below we have compiled some of the coverage the of the self-immolations at Red Onion.
Hunger Strike and Self-Immolation Update – Ekong Eshiet
“I’m trying to get up off this. I, 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 up here, I would rather die before I stay up here, because every day I’m dealing with discrimination, whether it’s behind my race, my last name, or my religion.”
Self-Immolation in Virginia Prisons – Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
“He had been placed in the cell next to me in the prison’s Medical Department, where I overheard him telling others about a series of prisoners, including himself, setting fire to themselves. I could not help but ask him what was going on. He told me simply that the racism and abuses, the hard and inhumane conditions at Red Onion, were so intolerable that he and others were setting themselves on fire in desperate attempts to be transferred These were not protests, he made clear, but acts of desperation, hoping to get out of an insufferable situation,”
Propaganda and Red Onion State Prison – Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
“This racial dynamic has always been behind the prison’s notorious history of extreme racist abuses of its prisoners. This is the dynamic of history: These fabricated and opening images were meant to hide and continue throughout the documentary with the interviews of prisoners at Red Onion. Four were White, one was Black. Again, a dishonest representation of the actual demographic makeup of the prison’s population. One of the interviewed White prisoners, Dennis Webb, whom I’ve known for decades and am in the block with as I write this, revealed to me that he and others were given free television by Red Onion’s administrators for doing the interviews.”
Gang Wars to Race Wars – Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
Upon returning to Red Onion in October of 2023, I saw what was amiss. Prisoners from Colorado, Oregon, or simply ones involved in actively violent Aryan gangs were being interstate transferred to these Virginia Prisons, and put with Virginia’s splintered Aryan groups who would use them for their own violent brand of anti-Black politics. Worse still, I listen as Red Onion Guards laugh and boast about facilitating attacks by the white on black prisoners to create a race war between these groups,”
Why Was My Neighbor Teargassed? – Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
My neighbor here at Red Onion State Prison B3 Solitary Confinement cell block was just teargassed for the most absurd reason, which is typical here where white guards don’t use force because they need to, but rather because they want to. And they look for any pretext or none at all to justify these gratuitous assaults on the defenseless, predominantly black prisoner population,”
Prisoners Treated Worse Than Dogs – Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
“The US public has become so desensitized to state violence against people of color. Its use of carnivorous animals to bite and rip through human muscles, tendons, nerves, and bones doesn’t even raise alarm,”.
Why Was My Neighbor Teargassed? – Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
My neighbor here at Red Onion State Prison B3 Solitary Confinement cell block was just teargassed for the most absurd reason, which is typical here where white guards don’t use force because they need to, but rather because they want to. And they look for any pretext or none at all to justify these gratuitous assaults on the defenseless, predominantly black prisoner population,”
Prisoners Treated Worse Than Dogs – Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
“The US public has become so desensitized to state violence against people of color. Its use of carnivorous animals to bite and rip through human muscles, tendons, nerves, and bones doesn’t even raise alarm,”.
In creative, revolutionary struggle,
Drew Tribble
