BOGOTA,
May 4, 2010 (IPS) - "Loss of freedom should not mean loss of fundamental
rights," Diana Sánchez, a lawyer with the Political Prisoners Solidarity
Committee (CSPP), told IPS. "But in Colombia prisoners are punished
twice over: with a prison sentence, and with restrictions on their other
rights."
Women prisoners in Colombia face poor medical care and
hygiene conditions, overcrowding, harassment by male guards, mistreatment and
abuses at the hands of staff, and lack of privacy during conjugal visits,
according to complaints filed with state oversight agencies. In addition,
they are often transferred to prisons far from their homes and families.
The same kinds of abuses are faced by women inmates
whether they are common prisoners or political prisoners in this civil
war-torn country, human rights organisations report.
To address the situation, the CSPP and other local human
rights groups are organising a campaign for the Rights and Dignity of Women
Prisoners in Colombia, to be launched in June.
The organisers of the campaign argue that "being
deprived of freedom does not mean the same thing for men and women,
because…women carry the weight of being judged by a moralistic society that
reproaches them for violating the idea of the submissive woman who is the
caretaker of order, values and the family."
The campaign is aimed at drawing national and
international attention to the situation of women in Colombia's prisons. In
this South American country of 45 million people, an estimated 76,500 people
are in jail, including 4,830 women, or 6.3 percent of the prison population.
The figures are approximate, because the National
Penitentiary Institute does not provide precise numbers, Sánchez said.
The head of the CSPP, Agustín Jiménez, said that as a
result of the "democratic security" policies of the government of
right-wing President Álvaro Uribe, "some 2,000 women have been
incarcerated over the last six years for 'falsos judiciales'."
"Falsos judiciales" is a term referring to
trumped-up cases that lead to arbitrary arrests used by the government to
exaggerate the success of its hard-line counterinsurgency tactics against the
leftist guerrillas.
María, who asked not to be identified, is a case in point.
She told IPS that early one morning in April 2005, armed men ransacked her
home and arrested her, while seizing the only "suspicious" thing
they found: her students' homework.
María is a teacher, a former trade unionist, and a
supporter of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole party. "But I
have never been a guerrilla," she said emphatically.
After spending 13 days in a cell at the Departamento
Administrativo de Seguridad -- Colombia's domestic intelligence agency -- she
was transferred to a prison in Bogotá, accused of "rebellion"
against the state and "terrorism" -- charges often faced in
Colombia by labour, social, student and human rights activists.
After a year in the Bogotá prison, she was driven in a
police motorcade, complete with armoured vehicles and sirens, to a city she
hardly knew, where she was tried as a "dangerous guerrilla."
"I'm a teacher, not a guerrilla," she told the
court over and over again.
Like 33 percent of the prison population in Colombia,
María was held in preventive detention without bail. She spent a total of 19
months behind bars before she was released without any explanation or
apology.
"It was all so absurd," she said. She is now
waiting for a settlement hearing with government officials before deciding
whether to sue.
Packed in like sardines
Jiménez and Sánchez talked about the problem of
overcrowding in prisons that hold, on average, twice the number of inmates
for which they were designed -- or in some cases, many times more.
"Seven people are squashed into a cell for two, and
there are no facilities for studying or working, which means there is no
rehabilitation," Sánchez said.
In 1998, the Constitutional Court declared overcrowding in
prisons unconstitutional, which prompted the construction of new penal
facilities, built in line with U.S. specifications.
"Access to water for people in cells on the upper
floors is difficult in these buildings, for example," said Sánchez.
"The women have to lug up heavy buckets, causing health problems or
fuelling a new 'business' in the prison."
In addition, the number of women transferred to prisons
far from their homes, and their children, has increased, "causing deep
depression and suicide attempts, like what happened last year in the prison
in Valledupar," in northeast Colombia, Jiménez added.
"That separation is the most painful thing,"
María said. The youngest of her two children was nine years old, and María
still cries when she remembers how hard their visits were, and how difficult
it was to be so far away.
"It was heart-wrenching. I can't forget the sight of
a 24-year-old woman whose little children would be brought to her, and they
would cling so tightly to her legs that the guard had to peel them off when
the visit ended," she said.
In Colombia, children can stay with their mothers in prison
until they turn three. After that, they are handed over to the family, or to
the government Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) if there are no relatives who
can take them in. The ICBF can place them in foster homes.
"It is the children, the innocent ones, who are the
most disregarded by the state. It's hard to conceive why many women in for
lesser crimes are denied house arrest when white collar criminals serve their
sentences at their country houses," María said.
Another problem is the prison system's refusal to allow
women, even those who are in prison for decades, to have conjugal visits with
anyone but the partner they initially named at the start of their sentence.
"They have the additional penalty of having to have sexual relations
with the person they registered or with no one," Sánchez said.
She said that in contrast to women, who normally continue
to visit and support their imprisoned husbands for years, men often visit
three or four times and stop going.
Prisoners who dare to protest or speak out about abuses or
poor conditions are often beaten or punished by means of a transfer to a
facility that is even more distant from their homes or where conditions are
worse.
Jiménez and Sánchez also mentioned the elimination of the
ban on male guards in women's prisons, which has given rise to cases of
sexual harassment and abuse.
Another problem is that since 2008, medical care in
prisons has been in the hands of a public health care provider that is facing
bankruptcy.
The campaign for the rights of women prisoners will seek
solutions to all of these problems.
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