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Contradictory reports hovered around Venezuelan jails; rash of hunger strikes broke out earlier this week
Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Contradictory reports hovered around Venezuelan jails, where a rash of hunger strikes broke out earlier this week in protest against prison conditions and the slow pace of the judicial system.
Inmates at 15 jails were said to have suspended their protest after the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ) had been asked to clarify 12 Articles of the Organic Code of Penal Process relating to drugs. The plea by People's Defender Gabriela Ramírez was seen as an attempt to respond to the prisoners' complaints and a demand some be allowed to work on day release. - However, elsewhere, it was claimed 5,000 prisoners were still refusing to eat at prisons in Metropolitan Caracas and the states of Aragua, Barinas, Guárico, Lara, Miranda, Monagas and Yaracuy.
Relatives of prisoners were reportedly still occupying parts of Vista Hermosa and El Dorado prisons, both of which are in Bolívar state. Latest unofficial figures put the prison population at 21.601, of which about half are said to be on remand awaiting trial.
These are the people speaking: the victims of systemic, systematic capitalist alienation from society. These jails and prisons are not something socialist. They are something capitalist. So the long-term goal has to be the job of winding these obscene institutions down completely. And in the meantime: you listen to the people and institute concrete, immediate reforms, in conformation with the new constitution -- not the old one.
ReplyDeleteDO IT. NOW.