Venezuelan prisoners have ended a five-day hunger strike that spread to more than a third of the country’s jails, after the government intervened to meet their demands, a prisoners’ rights group said.
Prisoners in 19 prisons and 30 police station holding cells began a hunger strike on Sunday, alleging corruption among prison officials, procedural delays, overcrowding and food shortages, the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory said Thursday.
“Relatives of prisoners in several prisons in the country confirmed that the inmates lifted the peaceful hunger strike,” the group wrote on social media platform X.
The inmates ended their hunger strike after the government’s penitentiary agency reviewed some of their cases and released some prisoners, it added.
Family members of prisoners had carried out protests in support of the strike in the capital Caracas and several other cities this week.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appointed on Tuesday a new penitentiary services minister, Julio Garcia Zerpa, to “end corruption” within the prison system, vowing to “train a new generation of prison guards.”
Garcia Zerpa has promised “deep and structural changes” and deployed officials from his office to prisons in the northern states of Lara and Carabobo.
Human rights activists say detainees were held in overcrowded detention centers, sometimes for years, when by law they should only be held for a few days.
The South American country has an estimated 54,000 prisoners, according to official figures.
Security forces were deployed to several prisons last year to wrest control from organized gangs. Inside some prisons, authorities found caches of guns, drugs, swimming pools and restaurants.
AFP