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Six inmates die at Mutimurefu Agric prison this week
Restoration of Human Rights (ROHR)
May 29, 2009

About six prisoners died this week alone at Mutimurefu agric prison in Masvingo. Four of the six inmates were found dead in the cells, one died at the hospital and the sixth died soon after arriving back from hospital where she had been discharged. Prisoners continue to die at Mutimurefu prison with the reports that last year seven inmates died of hunger related diseases.

Pellagra continues to claim lives of inmates in the country. Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency disease caused by lack of niacin (vitamin B3). Other reports allege that six people were found dead in their cells at Chikurubi Maximum security prison on the 15th of May this year.

The gravity of situation in the Zimbabwe prisons was exposed in a South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) documentary aired in March. The Government of Zimbabwe dismissed the video as a fraud arguing that the documentary was shot in some African states which is not Zimbabwe. The government then conceded that the country's prison system had collapsed and appealed for international donors to provide food for the inmates.

It is alleged that 970 prisoners had died due to malnutrition in 2009 only. The figure is "three times higher the number of deaths recorded during the same period last year" said Jessie Majome the Deputy Minister of Justice and Legal affairs who was quoted in this weeks edition of financial Gazette.

ROHR Zimbabwe president Ephraim Tapa said in an address at Zimbabwe independence celebrations in the United Kingdom that the experience in the prisons can be likened to the Jewish holocaust under Nazi regime.

The prison conditions in the country are epitomic of the general rot and decline of standards of living in the country. The Government is grappling to provide for its own citizens outside the prisons as reports of children dying of starvation countrywide are being received by our field officers. In its first 100 days, the Inclusive Government of Zimbabwe (IGoZ) has little to show for the nation as progress. In fact the humanitarian and human rights situation continues to deteriorate.

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