XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: alt.survival   
   From: rachel-madcow@msnbc.com   
      
   In article    
   forging asshole  wrote:   
   >   
      
   Shocking video footage released last week further exposed the   
   torturous and inhumane conditions inmates face inside Haiti’s   
   National Penitentiaries and prisons and confirmed findings in   
   United Nations reports. The horrific video leaked last week   
   showed prisoners in Les Cayes, the largest city in the country’s   
   southwestern peninsula, who are being systematically subjected   
   to forced starvation and dehydration.   
      
   The footage at the Les Cayes Penitentiary had been publicized in   
   a tweet by HaitiInfoProj and received thousands of views in a   
   few hours. The camera shows dozens of extremely malnourished and   
   underfed detainees crowded together outside the prison facility,   
   with prison authorities looking on and merely walking past.   
      
   The searing images of prisoners, a majority of whom have never   
   been seen a trial for alleged crimes, forced to endure hunger is   
   a testament to the repression and criminality of Haiti’s ruling   
   class and puppet regime led by President Ariel Henry, who do the   
   bidding of the imperialist powers operating in Haiti.   
      
      
   Many of the bodies of those captured on camera carry a skeleton   
   appearance, with the camera panning around to scores of   
   prisoners clearly wasting away from food deprivation. At the   
   beginning of the two-minute clip a detainee can be seen nearly   
   unconscious on the floor and barely able to move, with two other   
   prisoners struggling to help him stay upright.   
      
   A report last week revealed that at least eight inmates have   
   starved to death recently at the overcrowded prison, which   
   currently houses 833 prisoners.   
      
   According to Ronald Richemond, the city’s government   
   commissioner, hunger and scorching heat contributed to the   
   inmates’ deaths in Les Cayes. The deaths resulted from the   
   prison running out of food two months ago, adding to dozens of   
   similar deaths this year inside the country’s dilapidated and   
   crumbling prison system. The food crisis is the result of   
   soaring inflation and that has caused food insecurity to   
   skyrocket throughout the nation.   
      
   The United Nations Security Council released a report last week   
   that found 54 prison deaths related to malnutrition in Haiti   
   between January and April alone of this year.   
      
   By law, prisons in Haiti are required to provide inmates with   
   water and two meals a day, which itself consists of an   
   insufficient amount of porridge and a bowl of rice with fish or   
   some type of meat. In recent months, however, inmates have been   
   forced to rely solely on friends or family for food and water.   
   Often, prisoners are unable to receive visitors because of gang-   
   related violence throughout the major cities.   
      
   The cell occupancy rate in Haiti stands at a staggering 280   
   percent of capacity, with 83 percent of inmates lodged in   
   pretrial detentions that in some cases drag on for more than a   
   decade before an initial court appearance is scheduled. Many   
   prisoners are forced to take turns sleeping on the floor while   
   others stand or try to make hammocks and attach them to cell   
   windows, paying someone to keep their place.   
      
   Moreover, Les Cayes and other cities in Haiti’s southern region   
   have been affected by the spike in gang violence that has   
   blocked the main roads leading out of Haiti’s capital, making it   
   almost impossible to distribute food and other supplies to the   
   rest of the country, according to Pierre Espérance, the   
   executive director of Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense   
   Network.   
      
   The harrowing footage from Les Cayes recalls the images of   
   survivors rescued from the Nazi extermination camps at the end   
   of World War II, as food rations had been deliberately lowered   
   in the four years prior and a wave of death through starvation   
   was set in motion. In fact, Haiti’s prison network has for years   
   been documented as a bastion of political reaction and brutality   
   meted out against the country’s most vulnerable and destitute.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)