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Zimbabwe's
prisons are death-traps
Sokwanele
March 30, 2009
http://www.sokwanele.com/articles/sokwanele/zimbabwesprisonsaredeathtraps_31march_310309
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Zimbabwe's
prisoners are suffering untold horrors in Zimbabwe's jails. The
State is locking them up in hell-holes, condemning them to slow
starvation and possible death from nutrition-related illnesses or
the vast array of other diseases they are exposed to through unhygienic
conditions. Despite terrible desperation, their position as 'prisoners'
means they are denied the most basic human instinct and that is
to fight for survival: inmates can't beg for food from passers-by,
they can't forage for wild berries in the bush, and they can't rummage
through dustbins for waste food. Because of this, Zimbabwe's prisons
constitute a unique and especially cruel form of torture that has
both physical and psychological impacts on the people affected.
In October last
year, the Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation
of the Offender (ZACRO) released
a report noting that there are 55 prisons in Zimbabwe (including
satellites), with the capacity to hold 17 000 inmates. But in October
2008 it was estimated that more than 35 000 people were in jail.
Extreme hunger, inhumane squalid conditions, exposure to a variety
of diseases and stripping people of their dignity are standard practices
in Zimbabwe's jails, resulting in shameful misery hidden away from
the public gaze behind high walls and razor wire.
This article
will show that conditions in the prisons have been steadily deteriorating
for years. Those in charge of the prisons - Prisons Commissioner,
Paradzai Zimondi, and Patrick Chinamasa, the Minister of Justice
- are directly responsible for hundreds of lives lost as a direct
result of inhumane neglect.
The Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court defines 'crimes against humanity'
as:
particularly
odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human
dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human
beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part
either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need
not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice
of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto
authority.
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