Relatives of prisoners at the Carabobo Penitentiary, known as the Tocuyito Prison, asked the prison authorities to guarantee medical assistance and food for the prisoners, during the social quarantine decreed by the Maduro regime to contain the COVID 19.
NGOs like Una Ventana a La Libertad – A window to Freedom- have said that the situation inside prisons, where some 300 inmates out of an 80,000-plus total population die or are murdered every year, is much worse than in the country at large.
Relatives of the prisoners expressing, outside Tocuyito’s walls, their concern, assuring that transportation restrictions in the state make it difficult to carry food to the prison, and since the social quarantine began, the visits are suspending.
You must read 192 prisoners died in Venezuela under police custody during 2019
“They don’t have proper hygiene, they don’t have food, there are people sick with tuberculosis who need medical assistance. They don’t have food, if you don’t bring them food they go hungry, we have to pay, so that they assist them,” said Carolina Gonzalez, mother of a prisoner.
Sorely Leon said that, after the quarantine decree, transportation in her community has become even more difficult, so she must walk long distances to visit her son in the Tocuyito prison.
“There is no transportation, sometimes we coming on foot, or walking because if we don’t come, our relatives don’t have any way to feed themselves. We ask that they be aware of their food and illnesses, of the virus, that they are given their medicine”, she said.
Relatives of prisoners are asking for a resumption of visits with mechanisms to prevent the Coronavirus. They also requested improvements in the water supply inside the prison.