Madagascar: Died in custody

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According to Amnesty International, 2017, dozens of prison inmates in Madagascar died in front of your process. Tamara Leger has co-authored the report. In a DW Interview, she talks about part of inhuman conditions of detention.

Inmates in the prison of Manakara, Madagascar

DW: For the report you are publishing today, you and your colleagues have visited nine prisons in Madagascar, and there, with inmates and staff spoken to. What you have experienced there and heard?

Tamara Léger: The prisons are extremely overcrowded. They are only designed for half that many prisoners, like there actually will be recorded. Often, it is even more so. We visited, for example, last month a prison in Manakara, which has about 700 inmates. Officially space 121 is there. You can imagine what it is like to walk about the prison yard, where the prisoners spend the whole day under the burning sun, almost no shade. And at night they come in large, overcrowded cells. There are no individual cells. The remand prisoners have to sleep with a convicted Criminal in the same cell. For their safety and for the presumption of innocence, of course, serious consequences. There is often not even enough space to Lie down, so the prisoners take turns at Sleeping. There are also no toilets with running water. We have seen a lot of illnesses, tuberculosis, the main cause of death in these prisons. Obviously, there is also a lack of medical care.

According to the report, died in Madagascar in the past year, 52 prisoners in pretrial detention while they waited for their court proceedings. What is wrong in the Malagasy legal system?

Our studies show that half of all prison inmates are waiting for their procedures. That is, according to international law, the presumption of innocence applies to you. However, the conditions of detention do not correspond to the. There is a lack of food, medical care, you are not able to contact their families. And the great majority of the prisoners, between 80 and 90 per cent, has never seen a lawyer. This is a violation of international, but also Malagasy law.

Hardly any place to Sleep: a prison cell in Manakara, Madagascar

Why in Madagascar are so many people in custody?

We show in our report, is that officials tend to take people up to the beginning of your procedure in pre-trial detention. This is contrary to international law, according to which detention the exception. It must be all of the Alternatives explored, and this is especially true for women and children. In the prisons, we have encountered many children from the age of 13, were in custody. Some of them because of trifles, because of stolen vanilla beans or chickens. In women, it is the Same. Many of them will not be detained for minor, non-violent Offenses that justify a detention at all. Certainly not under these conditions.

The title of her report is: “to be Punished because of poverty”. Why?

Once the probability in pre-trial detention is to land for the poorest people in the largest. This is partly due to the fact that many of these minor crimes are associated with poverty. If you steal a chicken, then it has a lot to do with the material conditions in which one lives. In addition, these people wind up more in prison, because they can’t afford a lawyer. And then it is so, that the Poorest also suffer the most from the conditions of detention. There are only very, very little to eat in these prisons. Prisoners have shown us their daily ration, just a handful. It tastes terrible, and often has worms in it. But if you are poor, you can buy any additional food. So you have to get by on that. This explains the high Rates of malnutrition among the prisoners, it is estimated that between 70 and 80 percent. The poorest people are really disproportionately affected by this Problem.

Street scene in the capital, Antananarivo. A large part of the population of the island state lives in poverty

After all, what have you found out What needs to be done to improve the Situation?

First of all, must be the government and the Malagasy authorities, it is clear that you need to address this issue urgently. We urge you to take all necessary measures to end these arbitrary and excessive use of pretrial detention. Because the Poorest are the most affected by this arbitrariness, we demand real equality before the law. Everyone needs to get legal assistance from the Moment of arrest. And who can afford an attorney, one needs to get a free of charge assistance. And finally, we demand that those released from custody who have been arbitrarily imprisoned or had procedure wait.

Tamara Léger’s Madagascar expert at the human rights organization Amnesty International.

The Interview was conducted by Jan Philipp Wilhelm.