RED ONION PRISONERS CONTINUE TO SET THEMSELVES ON FIRE IN DESPERATE RESPONSE TO ONGOING ABUSES (2025) by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

As of latter-Feb 2025, Charles Coleman is housed in the medical department at Red Onion State Prison after setting himself on fire yet again. Coleman was one of numerous men who set themselves on fire at the prison during 2024 in desperate response to abusive and racist conditions there, which received widespread media and public attention.

Absolutely nothing was done by officials to address the conditions that prompted these self-immolations. In fact a series of lies and coverups were staged by the prison’s warden David Anderson and the Virginia prison system’s director Chadwick Dotson and his communications director Kyle Gibson. First, they lied to journalists and in the media denying any self-burnings had occurred. Then when state legislators went in the media confirming the burnings on Dec 4, 2024, they accused the prisoners of manipulate behaviors and claimed they had nothing to be disturbed about at Red Onion.

Va delegate Holly Siebold responded in a Dec 6 letter to Dotson denouncing these claims and stating she found conditions at Red Onion to be “inhumane” when she visited the prison in May 2024 after numerous prisoners, including me, went on hunger strikes in protest of conditions there.

On Dec 30, 2024 another delegate Michael Jones paid a surprise visit to Red Onion where he toured the prison and talked to various prisoners and staff, including two of the men, including Charles Coleman, who set themselves on fire. Joined brought the media with him for the visit but they were denied entry.

Jones left the prison and issued a press release where he identified numerous problems at the prison, including racist abuse of Black prisoners, inadequate food and medical care, lack of rehabilitation programs, arbitrary transfers to the prison, abuse of canines and so on. He expressed that, “what impacted me the most were the self-immolation incidents.” As a resolution he proposed nothing except self-investigation and self-correction by VADOC officials. An obviously absurd proposal. A literal case of the proverbial fox guarding a henhouse.

And as proof of the meaninglessness of his asinine proposals ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has changed at Red Onion. In fact things have gotten worse.

The men who spoke to Jones have been targeted with retaliation. One of them Ekong Eshiet, has been subjected to having his family’s personal addresses circulated to other prisoners as guards told them he was a snitch, a guaranteed move to set him and his family up for violent attack. He has had foreign objects put in his food, he’s been cut off from access to communicate through the secure email system with loved ones, his mail has been routinely destroyed or returned to senders, he’s been threatened, and much else.

Demetrius Wallace, another prisoner who has set himself on fire, has suffered even worse. He didn’t get to talk to delegate Jones because he was afraid guards were lying about the visit and trying to set him up for another assault when they came to get him. Wallace has been repeatedly assaulted by guards, most recently in Jan 2025, when he was punched by guards using handcuffs as brass knuckles. He’s been slammed face-first to the floor while cuffed from behind. He’s been held without property on suicide watch statuses and threatened not to talk to the media. This all after he was brutally beaten on Nov 23, 2023 while handcuffed by a gang of ranking Reed Onion guards who called him racist names while their body cameras were recording.

Demetrius’s mother Tomeka Wallace has appealed repeatedly to legislators and prison administrators over and over again, to intervene and protect her son. She has received no help except to be lied to, strung along and gaslit. Like multitudes of loved ones, she expresses both desperation and fear for her son’s life at the prison.

As media outlets recovered internal emails exposing that Dotson and his colleagues had lied to the public denying the prisoner self-burnings, Red Onion administrators explored sinister ways to head off future publicity for abuses. They totally cut off all prisoners in solitary confinement, even for their own safety, from access to the prison’s secure email system, to block their communications to the outside and publicizing abuses which are especially prominent in these units. As in Ekong’s case, snail mail is routinely destroyed and returned undelivered.

They tried to coerce solitary prisoners to sign agreements not to harm themselves in exchange for increased privileges, and if they didn’t agree, they’d have all electricity to their cells turned off.

Again, NOTHING has been down to address the racism and abuses at the prison. Which was the intent of the empty proposals for self investigation and self reform.

So it is no wonder Red Onion prisoners like Charles Coleman are setting themselves on fire once again.

What is even more sinister is the outside reform groups who pretended to support VaDOC prisoners endorsed the calls for self investigation and self reform because they have friendly relationships with the officials who are allowing and causing these racist abuses and are concerned with money. These groups and individuals were able to be heard BECAUSE of the suffering of the Red Onion prisoners like me (who went on a 71 day hunger strike) and those who set themselves on fire. Yet their opportunistic moves have proved to do nothing to help or change those conditions, leading to yet more self-immolations.

We the victims called for these unneeded and expensive remote, abusive and racist prisons to be shut down and their corrupt leadership to be fired. We maintain this call. Even delegate Jones admitted these remote prisons exist SOLELY to prop up rural economies, not for valid security needs, which he called asinine.

They need to be shut down!

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!