XPost: alc.general   
   From: too_many_toolls@yahoo.com   
      
   The imprisonment of American Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini in   
   Iran's infamous Evin prison has sparked an international outcry   
   and shined a spotlight on one of the world's cruelest gulags.   
      
   But Evin is just one of many prisons where conditions exist that   
   would shock medieval jailers, and where the level of human   
   misery is incalculable. Prisoners brazenly carrying guns and   
   machetes, guards rousting inmates in the night for mock   
   executions and captives forced to stand in water up to their   
   noses for 24 hours when they’re not being worked literally to   
   death are common at the world's most draconian dungeons. Most   
   operate in rogue nations, beyond the influence of human rights   
   organizations or appeals from Western nations. The few who have   
   escaped or been freed carry the scars from their imprisonment   
   for the rest of their lives.   
      
   CAMP 22 and the North Korean gulag system:   
      
   Also known as Hoeryong concentration camp, and part of a large   
   system of prison camps throughout the communist dictatorship,   
   Camp 22 is an 87-square-mile penal colony located in the North   
   Hamgyong province colony where most of the prisoners are people   
   accused of criticizing the government.   
      
   Inmates, most of whom are serving life sentences, face harsh and   
   often lethal conditions. According to the testimony of a former   
   guard from Camp22, prisoners live in bunk houses with 100 people   
   per room and some 30 percent bear the markings of torture and   
   beatings -- torn ears, gouged eyes and faces covered with scars.   
      
   Prisoners are forced to stand on their toes in tanks filled with   
   water up to their noses for 24 hours, stripped and hanged upside-   
   down while being beaten or given the infamous "pigeon torture” --   
    where both hands are chained to a wall at a height of 2 feet,   
   forcing them to crouch for hours at a time.   
      
   Tiny rations of watery corn porridge leave inmates on the brink   
   of starvation, and many hunt rats, snakes and frogs for protein.   
   Some even take the drastic measure of searching through animal   
   dung for undigested seeds to eat. Beatings are handed out daily   
   for offenses as simple as not bowing down in respect to the   
   guards fast enough. Prisoners are used as practice targets   
   during martial arts training. Guards routinely rape female   
   inmates.   
      
   “The conditions are brutal,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of   
   the Asian Division of Human Rights Watch, told FoxNews.com.   
   “These people are constantly hungry and constantly scavenging.”   
      
   At Camp 22 and most other prisons in North Korea, getting locked   
   up means a death sentence.   
      
   “It’s considered a one-way ticket," Robertson said. "They send   
   you there to work you to death.”   
      
   Kang Cheol Hwan was the rare exception. Imprisoned at Camp 14   
   for a decade beginning at age 9, his crime was being the   
   grandson of a man who allegedly criticized the government.   
      
   “In North Korea, if one person is condemned of betraying the Kim   
   dynasty, then all family members until the third generation can   
   be sent into prison,” Hwan, who is now executive director of the   
   North Korea Strategy Center, told FoxNews.com through a   
   translator.   
      
   Prisoners toiled 15 hours a day in mines, at lumber mills or in   
   manufacturing, according to Hwan.   
      
   “Prisoners worked every day from 5 a.m and only had two days to   
   rest a year," he said. "They barely had any food to eat, the   
   food was mostly based on corn and it wasn’t sufficient. This is   
   why most people were eating whatever they could find, including   
   rats. At a young age I realized the benefits of breeding rats.   
      
   “I was lucky to have learned how to survive and stay strong," he   
   added. "But I had to watch many people die out of starvation and   
   sickness.”   
      
   La Sabaneta, Venezuela   
      
   Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called it “the gateway to the   
   fifth circle of hell.” At La Sabaneta prison, some 30,000   
   inmates live in a facility meant for 15,000. There's just one   
   guard for every 150 prisoners, and gun-toting gangs led by   
   "pranes" run protection rackets. Poor inmates pay them for   
   everything from a place to sleep to protection from murder.   
      
   At the low-end of the inmate hierarchy, are los anegados, or   
   "the unwanted ones." These prisoners have recently taken to   
   stitching their mouths shut, taking literally the longstanding   
   La Sabaneta code that says, “When one sews his own lips, no one   
   can kill him.” And inmates do get killed, with shocking   
   frequency. In 1994, 130 La Sabaneta inmates were burned or   
   slashed to death with machetes during a gang fight. The   
   following year, more than 200 inmates died in other incidents   
   and another 624 were severely injured.   
      
   “It's a place where you literally have to keep your wits about   
   you, or you could end up dead,” Kay Danes, advocate and founder   
   of the Australian-based Foreign Prisoner Support Service said to   
   FoxNews.com. “Violence is prevalent, even rape a common   
   occurrence. Human dignity means very little and for foreigners,   
   a single day can seem like a life sentence. It's a place where   
   one mistake may be your last.”   
      
   Black Beach Prison, Equatorial Guinea:   
      
   Located along the coast in the capital city of Malabo, Black   
   Beach Prison is known as one of the most notorious prisons in   
   Africa and has an infamous reputation for neglecting the basic   
   needs of inmates.   
      
   Torture and starvation are the norm at Black Beach, with many   
   victims being denied medical care after being beaten. Food is so   
   scarce many prisoners have died of starvation. Inmates are kept   
   in their cells and shackled at their feet for more than 12 hours   
   a day.   
      
   A large number of the current prison population are part of a   
   failed coup d’état against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in   
   2004. South African arms dealer and mercenary Nick du Toit, who   
   spent five years in Black Beach, told Rapport that prisoners   
   were tortured with electric shocks and burning cigarettes. One   
   coup plotter suffered a fatal heart attack while being tortured,   
   he said. In an article he penned entitled “My prison hell,” du   
   Toit  wrote of how his handcuffs cut down to the bone and were   
   left to rust in place. He lost more than 80 pounds before he was   
   suddenly pardoned in 2009.   
      
   Tadmor Prison, Syria:   
      
   Rising up from the desert sands in eastern Syria, Tadmor Prison   
   occupies a former military base. Known for some of the most   
   horrific human rights violations in the world, with torture and   
   summary executions occurring every day, the prison houses   
   dangerous criminals side-by-side with political prisoners.   
      
   The most infamous episode in Tadmor's bloody history came on   
   June 27, 1980, when all 500 inmates were shot dead by the forces   
   of Rifa’al Assad, brother of then-President Hafez al-Assad and   
      
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