Behind Bars and Beyond Breaking Point: 60 Desperate Inmates Unite in Daring Hunger Strike at Lara Prison

||Editorial of El Periodiquito

AFP

Yesterday around 60 prisoners from the state of Lara (west) in Venezuela joined the hunger strike that 48 other prisoners started last Monday, in protest against “overcrowding” and “procedural delays“, reported the non-governmental organization Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons (OVP ).

Through They start the strike, according to the non-governmental organization, which added that the prisoners “refuse to eat food until they get concrete answers.”

Humberto Prado, director of the OVP, told EFE that the NGO estimates that, of around 23,000 prisoners in police cells, around 85% are in procedural delays.

This is due, he assured, to “lack of some parties in the trial, lack of witnesses appearing,” among others, which causes the case to be postponed.

“The problem is the State. If the prosecutor is not there, there is no one to accuse; If the public lawyer is not there, there is no one to defend him; If there is no judge, there is no one to sentence,” he said.