Venezuela - Protests swamp prisons

Interior and Justice Minister Tarek El Aissami said he was willing to talk with discontented prisoners about their complaints, but said the participation of relatives including children in jail protests was “unfounded.”

As many as a dozen jails in the country have been hit by a wave of protests, occupations and hunger strikes including the large El Rodeo I and II complex in Miranda state. The latest jail to join the protests is in Yaracuy state, where inmates are demanding a meeting with El Aissami and the dismissal of the prison authorities.

El Aissami claimed the government had attended to problems in the prison system like none before it. He said that people behind the latest wave of protests represented "factors interested in trying to obstruct the constructive relationship of peace and dialogue that there is with the prisoners.” A greater familial presence at prisons might help resolve problems, he added.

Humberto Prado, head of the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, a non-government organization, and a long-standing critic of prison conditions in this country, said the best way to put an end to the protests was for the minister to listen to the inmates’ demands. [3]