Inmates at 20 prisons and detention centers in Venezuela have ended a week-long hunger strike to protest conditions and delays in judicial reviews after reaching an agreement with the government, a non-governmental organization said on Saturday (15).
“Between Thursday, June 13 and Friday, June 14, inmates gradually gave up their hunger strike, following an agreement with the ministry of penitentiary services,” the Venezuelan Penitentiary Observatory said, saying that cases of some detainees began to be transferred to different courts across the country.
“They granted some pending releases and began installing technical tables in some prisons to review detainees’ cases,” the NGO added on its website.
President Nicolás Maduro previously replaced the country’s head of penitentiary affairs, Celsa Bautista, and appointed lawmaker Julio Zerpa, in the midst of the strike.
“We continue to work, from center to center, together with families, listening to the demands of the population deprived of liberty, committed to a humanist penitentiary system adapted to the new times”, said the new minister on Saturday on the social media platform X.
NGOs criticized prisons in Venezuela for overcrowding, poor health conditions and food shortages, as well as procedural delays, among other issues.
Source: CNN Brasil
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