The French newspaper Lundi Matin has published a letter from the military prison of Cesare Battisti announcing his renunciation of hunger strike and medical care.

"Here are my words to my dear children, to my traveling companion, to my brothers, nephews, friends and comrades, to my peers and to all those who have loved me so much and sustained so much.

I call on all of you to make a final effort, to understand the reasons that lead me to fight to the very end in the name of the right to the dignity of all and all prisoners. Maintaining personal dignity in meeting their responsibilities.

My choice is radical, if you can call it an alternative, when in fact there has been a single means to defend personal love, human values and justice that you have so far shared with me, to preserve historical memory and affective memory.

I started the hunger strike on June 2, 2021 with the awareness that I will not go back and, therefore, I will do you a lot of harm. But at the same time, I am sure that when time saves the bite of pain, you will agree with me that you will die on your knees to avoid the most dignified action you could do, after having been exalted by power and used for all shameful purposes.

That would be to betray the values of the past that I have believed to the armed drift. I never felt criminal then, I don't feel like I was today, even though I realized I had fooled myself. I followed, like so many others, the values of the most elementary rights of people, I will not allow myself to betray them when we reach the goal.

Here's why, for the last time, you asked me for help to remain myself and I'm sorry for the pain I do to you.

I want to make it very clear that my struggle is a protest struggle, a demand for inalienable rights.

My decision has nothing to do with mixtures of a psychological nature. I have made objectively precise demands, clearly made to the authorities concerned. Therefore, there will be no justification, no unexpected conduct, no psychiatric excuses. If necessary, I will keep the hunger strike to the last breath.

I'm not stupid, I fight for life.

You are wonderful people, always defend freedom and respect.

I will always live with you.

Rossano, 9 June 2021

Cesare Battisti

Cesare Battisti (1954) was a member of the Communist Armed Proletariat in 1970. The Italian judges sentenced him to life imprisonment in connection with four murders and other acts of the same institution.

Battisti was one of hundreds of Italian militants who supported François Mitterrand. In 2004 he jumped to Brazil, fearing that Jacques Chirack would extradite him to Italy, and then to Bolivia fleeing the far-right Bolsonaro. In January 2019, he was arrested and extradited to Italy by the government of Evo Morales, since, according to the Interior Minister, Carlos Romero, the fugitive had not formally requested protection.

In total, he has spent more than 40 years abroad, until Rossano has been imprisoned after being forcibly returned to Italy. They are isolated in the hardest prison regime called AS2. Other ex-militants are in a similar situation today, including the nine Italians detained by France last April, all of them with a standard and visible life in the Hexagon by people over 60 years of age.

Battisti, who in recent years has published more than a dozen novels, the latest entitled "Indio" in 2020, has gathered a great deal of solidarity between the writers and the left-wingers. In 2007, when he had refuge in Brazil, Koldo Izagirre published on the Bazka website an article about the life and situation of Cesare Battisti.