via RadioVop Zimbabwe – Food Shortages Bite As Prisoners Perish In Zimbabwe December 02, 2013
More than 100 prisoners have died in detention in Zimbabwe’s prisons since January owing to biting food shortages, it has emerged.
Radio VOP understands that the country’s prison inmates are suffering untold horrors which include hunger and nutrition-related illnesses which they are exposed to through unhygienic conditions.
The poor and agonising state of conditions in the country’s prisons was confirmed Monday by the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) which disclosed before a parliamentary portfolio committee that 100 inmates had died as a result of food stock outs and natural causes since the beginning of the year.
“It’s true that we are facing challenging feeding our prison population. The death rate stands above 100 since the beginning of the year which is not a good figure,” said Agrey Machingauta, the ZPCS deputy-commissioner.
Machingauta said the death rate is almost the same as last’ year’s one.
The ZPCS boss said instead of giving inmates the mandatory three meals per day, prisons were currently struggling to serve prisoners one meal per day.
Zimbabwe currently has a prison population of 18 460 inmates who are held in the country’s 46 prisons.
The inmates’ shameful misery is hidden away from the public gaze as prisoners are detained behind high walls and razor wire.
Critics say an ordinary jail sentence in Zimbabwe is as good as a death sentence.
COMMENTS
You can judge an administration by how it treats its prisoners…
To the Zimbabwe Prison Service: If you cannot feed them, then you cannot keep them in prison.
To the Zimbabwe Judiciary: If they cannot be fed in prison, then you cannot sentence them to prison.
To the Zimbabwe Prosecutor General / Attorney General: If they cannot be fed in prison, then you cannot call for custodial sentences.
If you hold someone in custody and then you do not feed them enough to sustain life and they die, this is murder. If you do this to hundreds of people, it is mass murder and it is a crime against humanity. All the branches of the legal justice system that are in any way involved in this horrific chain of events – they are all guilty of crimes against humanity.
Change your ways.
Agreed. Sekuru Mapenga what should be done to criminals? Rapists, murderers etc. Offer solutions vaMapenga. Kujeri ipenga udzoke!
IKE, Read what Mr. Mapenga has written again. He is explaining to you
Zimbabwe Law.
it doesn`t necessarily mean that if one is a prisoner,one is not entitiled to respect and proper hospitality,even our creator tells us to visit and care for prisoners
Justice should prevail at all levels even in prison. It is a crime to commit a crime, but it is not a crime to be a prisoner!