The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) explained that the prison located in Bolívar, where most of the deceased prisoners were held, does not have a medical service or offer a balanced diet to inmates.
Six common prisoners died in the last four months of 2022, five of them from tuberculosis and one from a heart attack, reported this Monday, October 31, the Venezuelan Prison Observatory (PVO).
The NGO indicated in a statement that the detainees, natives of the Mérida state, died in prisons located in the Anzoátegui and Bolívar states, very far from their places of origin.
All were transferred to these detention centers in 2012, after a riot in the penitentiary where they were serving their sentences in Mérida.
The OVP explained that the prison located in Bolívar, where most of the deceased prisoners were held, does not have a medical service or offer a balanced diet to inmates.
In addition, the detainees consume “contaminated water” from a nearby river that has caused them various diseases, always according to the organization.
“The transfer of prisoners from one prison to another is a measure applied by the Ministry of Penitentiary Service as a punishment every time there is a riot, a strike or an uprising by inmates,” said the NGO.
Last July, the OVP denounced that the hygiene and infrastructure conditions of prisons in Venezuela are “precarious” and that, in addition, there is a “serious food problem.”
The director of the NGO, Carolina Girón, stated that since 1999, when Hugo Chávez came to power, until the end of 2021, 7,792 people died in prisonand that as of 2018 “deaths from malnutrition and tuberculosis exceeded violent deaths.”
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With information from EFE
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