Courtesy of reader Glenn, we have the documentary from Ross Kemp on his trip to Venezuela last December. That is right, just as the electoral campaign started. Ross Kemp has jumped from soap opera acting to hard core investigating journalism and the results are impressive. In his new series "Extreme World" he visits hot spots and, well, Caracas had to be in the list.
The two segments below with some of my comments. Trust me on that one, you really need to watch this.
Of course, I cannot comment on all because the coverage is so complete, so rich in details, I'll do just some that you may miss.
Showing posts with label venezuela jails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label venezuela jails. Show all posts
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Yare, brought to you since 2005 (at least)
A few minutes ago I was checking my Google Analytics on the blog and an old post of mine was receiving quite a few hits. Yes, I know, I like to check what posts a read more often even though I will still write about what I think is important. It is my blog, you know.... Well, yesterday yet another jail in Venezuela burst in arms, at least 20 people killed, and once again the now chavista age old question: how come so many weapons find their way into Venezuelan jails and how come after so many of such incidents nothing seems to be done about it by the regime?
I am tired, I do not want to write again on Venezuelan jails, so I leave you with a 2005 post to remind readers that I have been writing about Venezuelan jails for quite a while, even before Chavez was reeelcted. And the creep wants yet another 6 years term..... The old post, incidentally, about Yare, yesterday's murder scene, to prove to you that nothing has been done to solve this issue since at least 2005. Why is Iris still a minister?
I am tired, I do not want to write again on Venezuelan jails, so I leave you with a 2005 post to remind readers that I have been writing about Venezuelan jails for quite a while, even before Chavez was reeelcted. And the creep wants yet another 6 years term..... The old post, incidentally, about Yare, yesterday's murder scene, to prove to you that nothing has been done to solve this issue since at least 2005. Why is Iris still a minister?
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Then and now: those Orwellian moments....
Readers will surely remember the picture from the La Planta jail in Caracas, smoke billowing out, sent by a reader (dodging the occasional "lost" bullet)..
Well, the same reader sent me a current picture where you can appreciate that the walls have been covered with giant posters of the beloved leaders. Mote the exquisite details on how the support columns have also been painted in red.
In such ways is history rewritten. What was a jail riot where inmates had enough weaponry to hold off the army, where the incompetence of the jail minister was exposed crudely (she had not been able to even manage to put a director in a couple of months or feed them for that matter), where the "solution" was to allow inmates to go, un-cuffed, to the jail of their liking (with drugs and cash), where surprisingly no weaponry of significance was recovered is now set as a bright example on the prowess of El Supremo who recognized he negotiated personally with the inmates he could not control. Then again, it was a meeting of the minds, a negotiation of pairs, of course.
Orwell would have had it this easy.
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| La Planta aflame in tear gas, from a reader's window |
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| Renovating La Planta |
Orwell would have had it this easy.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Tweets on jails and delusions of the chavista aristocracy
Looking through twitter for actual quotes is an ungrateful task, but it can pay off. On last Friday I heard in Alo Ciudadano that the science minister, Jorge Arreaza, was congratulating Iris Valera as the "FIRST" person with the courage to tackle the jail problem. Well, even though Globovision was wrong (it was a re-tweet) it is still a faux pas from Arreaza who of all people should have known better.
The retweet
It says:
The retweet
Mi solidaridad y apoyo a la Ministra @irisvarela, por ser la primera con el VALOR de destapar y resolver el prob de las cárceles. VALIENTE
It says:
La Planta as theater of the absurd: bringing out the inner criminal in the regime
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| The missing AR-15 of La Planta? |
And today the regime keeps giving evidence of being such a gang. Not only with La Planta sequels but with the return of Loyo to office!
Monday, May 21, 2012
Sometimes you need to read stuff three times to acknowledge the text
There is an article in El Universal today about the debacle of the La Planta Caracas ex-(?)-jail that defies any common sense. Here, the excerpts:
Friday, May 18, 2012
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
La Planta: more Venezuelan jails in trouble....
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| La Planta aflame in tear gas, from a reader's window |
But the regime has other priorities for its cash...... corruption surely trumps humanity.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
"Historia de una canción" para "Privados de inteligencia"
Las dos últimas semanas nos han mostrado cuán bajo hemos caído como país. Suponiendo que todavía sigamos siendo un país, una idea de una dureza que me ha dejado deprimido como no lo había estado en bastante tiempo. No tiene sentido discutir los detalles de los acontecimientos recientes: la red está llena de ellos para los que tenían su mente distraída por otros asuntos. Tal vez sea más útil pensar en qué significa todo esto.
Ya no estas mas a mi lado, corazón.
Ya no estas mas a mi lado, corazón.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Reckoning
The past two weeks have shown us how low we have fallen as a country. Assuming that there is still a country, the reality of an idea that has left me despondent as I have not been for a while. There is no point discussing the details of recent events: the web is full of them for those who had their mind elsewhere. Perhaps it might be more helpful to think hard about what this all means.
Ya no estas mas a mi lado, corazón.
Ya no estas mas a mi lado, corazón.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Human Rights in Venezuela: the jail hell
The OAS bureau that deals with human rights in the hemisphere has released its report:
Venezuela as it has become usual makes it to the top of states with routine violations, along Cuba, and Colombia. Among the violations to Human Rights made by Venezuela we find plenty of freedom of expression violations, but we also find an accusation as to the inconceivable conditions of Venezuelan jails which make, among other things, the death penalty a sure thing even if it is banned in the 1999 constitution. Who knows, for the sake of coherence Chavez might want to include death penalty in the "reform" secretly discussed these days...
Sure enough, to confirm these serious accusations that the Chavez cynical government tries to minimize, we had yesterday yet another prison riot. This time close to home, in San Felipe. I was barred access to part of the town where I had business to do; a large section was cordoned off while the police dealt with a grenade thrown in the prison courtyard. A cop I talked to told me there were 8 people killed by a grenade thrown in jail. How did a grenade found its way inside a jail? Is the director and the Interior and Justice Minister going to explain to us how come grenades reach cell mates? I also saw from afar the smoke billowing above the prison. I am pretty sure that no TV crew will be allowed inside to film the damage.
But the government is announcing officially only 4 deaths. Who is lying or misinformed? The cop close to the site or the government? The reader can speculate freely.
The big question was whether the internal attack had been sponsored in order to kill "accidentally" the most famous political prisoner in Venezuela these days, ex Governor Lapi jailed by current governor cum slime bucket Gimenez. He is safe but more than ever rumors of chavismo wanting to kill Lapi will be rife. Why do not they judge him for his alleged crimes? The guy has been in jail for a year now and no trial is in sight while all his right are violated in the procedure. Or is it that they have no good evidence but the judicial power, ever so compliant, allows for Gimenez to keep Lapi in jail so he has no strong leader in Yaracuy streets to call him into accounting his dismal and corrupt administration?
But the worst parts of the show were the scenes at the door of the jail where inmates family where fighting the cops to try to get inside the prison to see if their relatives were alive. It was an impressive scene from hell, of all that is wrong with Venezuela today. Scary big time, the total mistrust of the people toward the cops, the willingness of the women to battle armed cops with their bare hands .... A Dante moment.
Oh! and the report also complains that since 2002 the chavista government has refused to receive its inspectors and commissions. Of course, how convenient for Chavez, he refuses to be inspected and screams that the OAS lies. In a way it is true since they could not visit...
But as usual there is also the anecdote with it. Why Chavez should worry about OAS condemnations when he has defenders such as Chesa Boudin? This nice young man happens to be the Rhodes Scholar son of a couple of famous US terrorists before Osama became THE terrorist. Well, during his childhood he visited his parents in jail and he became very young a passionate advocate of prisoners rights. Fine and dandy except that we cannot detect in his work much compassion for the victims of these people that are in jail. That would be fine if it were not because that Boudin is also an ardent defender of Chavez and his fake revolution. I have looked hard but I could not find a single instance where Boudin worried about jail conditions in Venezuela. You can find an example of his lame propaganda prose here, kind of disappointing writing for some one who was a Rhodes Scholar from Yale. Of course, I have no stomach to check his books, and even less to pay for them but if someone can prove me wrong I will be delighted to add a correction at the end of this post.
Now, this Chesa is small fry in the big scene, even if the government sponsors him to write books to justify the Venezuelan regime and pays for his trips to visit locales such as Berkeley (imagine that! as if they needed to promote chavismo there! why not send Chesa to, say, Auburn?). If I mention him it is just to give a clear example on how Chavez manages to corrupt the brain of folks that support him, specially outside Venezuela (the famously infamous PSF). Here we have that guy who made a name, and got one of the most prestigious awards of the Anglo Saxon world, on detention conditions and yet, he comes to Venezuela and magically his "jail condition survey switch" tuns off for his entire stay.
Meanwhile the poor who are the overwhelming bulk of the jail population in Venezuela, and San Felipe, remain rotting in subhuman conditions. They also have children, these inmates, children that Chesa could interview. The government finds money to buy votes but cannot find money to build at least better jails where the inmates would not be piled above each other. But the Chesa of the world have nothing to say about that. Only mean spirited opposition folks, and few of them by the way, find time and passion to write on this scandal (such as here and here; or in Tal Cual pages under Teodoro Petkoff, the lone constant promoter of decent detention conditions in Venezuela as even the main stream media is only worried occasionally, and forget about the chavista media!).
Enough said!
-The end-
Venezuela, in addition to Colombia, Cuba and Haiti, should be paid "special attention" in terms of human rights, said the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Venezuela as it has become usual makes it to the top of states with routine violations, along Cuba, and Colombia. Among the violations to Human Rights made by Venezuela we find plenty of freedom of expression violations, but we also find an accusation as to the inconceivable conditions of Venezuelan jails which make, among other things, the death penalty a sure thing even if it is banned in the 1999 constitution. Who knows, for the sake of coherence Chavez might want to include death penalty in the "reform" secretly discussed these days...
Sure enough, to confirm these serious accusations that the Chavez cynical government tries to minimize, we had yesterday yet another prison riot. This time close to home, in San Felipe. I was barred access to part of the town where I had business to do; a large section was cordoned off while the police dealt with a grenade thrown in the prison courtyard. A cop I talked to told me there were 8 people killed by a grenade thrown in jail. How did a grenade found its way inside a jail? Is the director and the Interior and Justice Minister going to explain to us how come grenades reach cell mates? I also saw from afar the smoke billowing above the prison. I am pretty sure that no TV crew will be allowed inside to film the damage.
But the government is announcing officially only 4 deaths. Who is lying or misinformed? The cop close to the site or the government? The reader can speculate freely.
The big question was whether the internal attack had been sponsored in order to kill "accidentally" the most famous political prisoner in Venezuela these days, ex Governor Lapi jailed by current governor cum slime bucket Gimenez. He is safe but more than ever rumors of chavismo wanting to kill Lapi will be rife. Why do not they judge him for his alleged crimes? The guy has been in jail for a year now and no trial is in sight while all his right are violated in the procedure. Or is it that they have no good evidence but the judicial power, ever so compliant, allows for Gimenez to keep Lapi in jail so he has no strong leader in Yaracuy streets to call him into accounting his dismal and corrupt administration?
But the worst parts of the show were the scenes at the door of the jail where inmates family where fighting the cops to try to get inside the prison to see if their relatives were alive. It was an impressive scene from hell, of all that is wrong with Venezuela today. Scary big time, the total mistrust of the people toward the cops, the willingness of the women to battle armed cops with their bare hands .... A Dante moment.
Oh! and the report also complains that since 2002 the chavista government has refused to receive its inspectors and commissions. Of course, how convenient for Chavez, he refuses to be inspected and screams that the OAS lies. In a way it is true since they could not visit...
But as usual there is also the anecdote with it. Why Chavez should worry about OAS condemnations when he has defenders such as Chesa Boudin? This nice young man happens to be the Rhodes Scholar son of a couple of famous US terrorists before Osama became THE terrorist. Well, during his childhood he visited his parents in jail and he became very young a passionate advocate of prisoners rights. Fine and dandy except that we cannot detect in his work much compassion for the victims of these people that are in jail. That would be fine if it were not because that Boudin is also an ardent defender of Chavez and his fake revolution. I have looked hard but I could not find a single instance where Boudin worried about jail conditions in Venezuela. You can find an example of his lame propaganda prose here, kind of disappointing writing for some one who was a Rhodes Scholar from Yale. Of course, I have no stomach to check his books, and even less to pay for them but if someone can prove me wrong I will be delighted to add a correction at the end of this post.
Now, this Chesa is small fry in the big scene, even if the government sponsors him to write books to justify the Venezuelan regime and pays for his trips to visit locales such as Berkeley (imagine that! as if they needed to promote chavismo there! why not send Chesa to, say, Auburn?). If I mention him it is just to give a clear example on how Chavez manages to corrupt the brain of folks that support him, specially outside Venezuela (the famously infamous PSF). Here we have that guy who made a name, and got one of the most prestigious awards of the Anglo Saxon world, on detention conditions and yet, he comes to Venezuela and magically his "jail condition survey switch" tuns off for his entire stay.
Meanwhile the poor who are the overwhelming bulk of the jail population in Venezuela, and San Felipe, remain rotting in subhuman conditions. They also have children, these inmates, children that Chesa could interview. The government finds money to buy votes but cannot find money to build at least better jails where the inmates would not be piled above each other. But the Chesa of the world have nothing to say about that. Only mean spirited opposition folks, and few of them by the way, find time and passion to write on this scandal (such as here and here; or in Tal Cual pages under Teodoro Petkoff, the lone constant promoter of decent detention conditions in Venezuela as even the main stream media is only worried occasionally, and forget about the chavista media!).
Enough said!
-The end-
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Death Penalty in Venezuela
The 1999 constitution, retaking something that already existed in previous constitutions (and I stress the plural here, as some people think that before Chavez Venezuela was in the deepest of the dark ages) declared that the death penalty cannot exist (article 43), that the maximum penalty is actually 30 years in jail (article 44). Well, the facts after 6 years of constitution demonstrate that this one, as in so many of its chapters, is just a lie.Today El Universal publishes a damning article on one ofthe most infamous jails of Venezuela, the one from Yare. Yare also used to have a section where political prisoners were held in relatively more lenient conditions. Chavez among other benefited from such conditions after his failed 1992 coup. There he waited for a trial that never came until then president Caldera decided not to prosecute him, in a case that is mistakenly interpreted as a pardon, but which in reality never established the guilt of Chavez for the dozen of deaths in 1992. That juridical limbo is interpreted by many Chavez apologists as a pardon, or even worse, as a fulfillment of a penalty, a rather obscenely low fulfillment, a couple of years in jail for dozens of people killed or murdered.
One would think that once in office Chavez would have done something about Yare. Either destroy it, or humanize it and make it a monument to his past as a pseudo-political victim. But no, like almost everything else in Venezuela, and dramatically in the case of the judicial and penitentiary system, the Chavez administration has been absolutely negligent, establishing along the way an astounding record of human rights violations.
Describing the horrors of what goes inside jails defies words that can be understood outside of Venezuela. El Universal limits itself at describing how gangs of prisoners, benefiting of the presence of only 7 wardens, have established control on all what takes place in Yare, from food supplies to drug traffic, from who sleeps where and when to who dies when and where. A look at the picture below show clearly the run down aspect of the penitentiary, a place not even fit for rats. A place where you might die of typhoid fever while you wait for your trial, if you are not raped and killed first.
The numbers speak by themselves. How many monthly executions in the US, a country over 10 times the population of Venezuela? How many killed by gang internecine warfare? In the US there have been for 2005 a total of 36 executions as of August 31, barely the Venezuelan monthly average!
To the apologists of the Chavez regime I will remind them that these are the deaths of the poor that Chavez was supposed to help. After almost 7 years of a pro-people regime one would have expected some improvement, no? Please, explain.
As for the uselessly repressive nature of police in Venezuela, the recent editorial of Teodoro Petkoff translated by Miguel says that since Chavez came to office more than 6000 Venezuelans have died in a variety of "confrontations" with the authorities. These "death sentences" do not contemplate the putative innocence of the people shot during those confrontations (look at the recent "Kennedy" case with 3 students just killed as roaches), it does not even consider the right of people to die executed in jail by their cell mates.
I suppose that one way to solve the poverty problem is to kill the poor, and let the poor kill each other.
One would think that once in office Chavez would have done something about Yare. Either destroy it, or humanize it and make it a monument to his past as a pseudo-political victim. But no, like almost everything else in Venezuela, and dramatically in the case of the judicial and penitentiary system, the Chavez administration has been absolutely negligent, establishing along the way an astounding record of human rights violations.
Describing the horrors of what goes inside jails defies words that can be understood outside of Venezuela. El Universal limits itself at describing how gangs of prisoners, benefiting of the presence of only 7 wardens, have established control on all what takes place in Yare, from food supplies to drug traffic, from who sleeps where and when to who dies when and where. A look at the picture below show clearly the run down aspect of the penitentiary, a place not even fit for rats. A place where you might die of typhoid fever while you wait for your trial, if you are not raped and killed first.
Yare, a run down jail, weeds everywhere, dirty and crumbling walls.
But the rate of violent death in Venezuelan jails defies any interpretation. El Universal lists the documented ones since January 2005. Before I give the numbers in the table below, it is essential to point out that the Chavez administration has been administering the jails of Venezuela since February 1999, that is for a full 6 years and a half, a period under which NO SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT CAN BE DETECTED. The table next lists how many people have been murdered in the Venezuelan penitentiary system so far this year. And how many have been injured during fights, attempted murders and the like (not injuries at the workshops or other normal activities, real injuries related to violence). Yare by itself accounts, in spite of all its own horror, for only 12.5% of the total deaths.| Month | Body count | Injuries |
| January | 23 | 43 |
| February | 50 | 53 |
| March | 37 | 54 |
| April | 36 | 23 |
| May | 33 | 53 |
| June | 26 | 50 |
| July | 26 | 81 |
| August | 41 | 76 |
| TOTAL | 272 | 433 |
| Average | 34/month | 54/month |
The numbers speak by themselves. How many monthly executions in the US, a country over 10 times the population of Venezuela? How many killed by gang internecine warfare? In the US there have been for 2005 a total of 36 executions as of August 31, barely the Venezuelan monthly average!
To the apologists of the Chavez regime I will remind them that these are the deaths of the poor that Chavez was supposed to help. After almost 7 years of a pro-people regime one would have expected some improvement, no? Please, explain.
As for the uselessly repressive nature of police in Venezuela, the recent editorial of Teodoro Petkoff translated by Miguel says that since Chavez came to office more than 6000 Venezuelans have died in a variety of "confrontations" with the authorities. These "death sentences" do not contemplate the putative innocence of the people shot during those confrontations (look at the recent "Kennedy" case with 3 students just killed as roaches), it does not even consider the right of people to die executed in jail by their cell mates.
I suppose that one way to solve the poverty problem is to kill the poor, and let the poor kill each other.
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