The injustice continues: MOVE 9 women denied parole

The Philadelphia Inquirer announced April 22 that the three remaining MOVE 9 women—Debbie Sims Africa, Janet Hollaway Africa and Janine Phillips Africa—were denied parole by the Pennsylvania Parole Board. The Inquirer quotes parole board spokesperson Leo Dunn as saying that parole had been denied because the three MOVE prisoners had “minimized or denied the ‘nature and circumstances’ of the offense, ‘refused to accept responsibility’ and lacked remorse. He said the fourth reason for the rejections was the ‘negative recommendation’ by the prosecutor.”

The parole board used several of the stipulations that MOVE spokesperson Ramona Africa had predicted that they would try and use to deny parole, including that the MOVE women “refused to accept responsibility” and lacked remorse. The unfairness and arguable illegality of this is so obvious, because how can you expect someone to “admit guilt” when they’ve always said they are innocent? Where does remorse come from if someone is actually innocent?

The “nature and circumstances” stipulation is a blatant resentence, since the serious nature of the charges were considered by the judge at the time when he ruled that MOVE should be eligible for parole after 30 years. How can this fairly be used to deny parole?

A further outrage is that the women never even faced weapons charges, unlike the male MOVE 9 prisoners. Because of this, it had been thought by many observers that the women would have a better chance of receiving parole.

Therefore, if this is any indication, it does not look good for the MOVE 9 men, for whom the parole decision is still pending. If supporters want to make a difference and hold the parole board accountable for these blatantly unconstitutional parole stipulations, we must increase public pressure.

This blatantly unfair decision can only serve to validate the argument that the MOVE 9 are indeed “political prisoners.”

At www.move9parole.blogspot.com there are resources for contacting the parole board as well as articles and a new video series focusing on the MOVE 9 parole that feature new interviews with Ramona and Mike Africa Jr. mixed in with archival footage from the recent documentary on MOVE by Cohort Media, narrated by Howard Zinn.

The writer is a member of Journalists for Mumia. Be in Philadelphia, May 10, 12-3  p.m., 11th and Market, to demand freedom for the MOVE 9.

Call 215-387-4107 for more information.