Straits Times

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Haiti) — PRISONERS are dying in quake-hit Haiti’s largest jail due to ‘alarm­ing’ con­di­tions, human rights groups warned, say­ing that new facil­i­ties need to be built to relieve overcrowding.

Two pris­on­ers died in fights in the last two weeks as inmates bat­tle for sur­vival in the squalid National Pen­i­ten­tiary in the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince, the National Coali­tion for Hait­ian Rights (RNDDH) said.

‘The sit­u­a­tion is very alarm­ing,’ the group’s spokes­woman Marie-Yolaine Gilles told AFP Mon­day, adding that detainees are being crammed into tiny cells and not given any med­ical attention.

The jail is ‘hell,’ said Jean-Claude Bajeux, direc­tor of the Ecu­meni­cal Cen­tre for Human Rights, warn­ing that con­di­tions are so extreme that inmates ‘are sleep­ing stand­ing up or just on scraps of fab­ric.’ It is ‘scary what’s hap­pen­ing in over­crowded pris­ons in Haiti — the inmates are not con­sid­ered human,’ said Mr Bajeux, call­ing for the build­ing of more jails.

After Haiti’s cat­a­strophic Jan­u­ary 12 earth­quake that killed up to 300,000 peo­ple, more than 5,000 inmates escaped from pris­ons and sev­eral prison upris­ings were also reported after the disaster.

The New York Times reported on Sun­day that Hait­ian police attempt­ing to quell a riot killed up 19 inmates in a prison in Les Cayes, one week after the earth­quake, and pro­ceeded to blame the mas­sacre on a prison ring­leader. Cit­ing a con­fi­den­tial UN report and tes­ti­mony of for­mer inmates, prison work­ers and rel­a­tives of the deceased, the daily said that unarmed pris­on­ers were made to lie down and were shot. — AFP

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