The Tragic Reality of Lebanon’s Prisons: Amnesty International’s Report Reveals Neglect, Ill-Treatment, and Slow Death

2023-06-08 13:37:18

Joanna Farhat

central – 24 hours have passed since the release of Amnesty International’s report on the tragedy in prisons run by the Ministry of Interior in 2022 compared to 2018, and no response, comment or statement was issued by the Minister of Interior in the caretaker government, Bassam al-Mawlawi.

The same reaction was repeated when a report was issued by the organization entitled “How I wished I might die”, accusing members of the Lebanese security forces of committing violations once morest Syrian refugees arrested on charges of terrorism, “including resorting to” horrific methods of torture” and depriving them of a “fair trial”.

Today the death wish may be more pressing. If the prisoner falls ill, he cannot find a pill. Prior to 2021, the treatment of prisoners was at the expense of the state, but with the huge increase in drug prices and following the subsidy was lifted, the state was no longer able to secure the cost of treatments, and medical prescriptions began to appear marked with the phrase “at the expense of his family,” meaning that the prisoner’s family is required to secure medicines for him.

Faced with this reality, many remain unable to secure medicines, at a time when prisoners try in some cases to collect the price of medicine from each other to secure it for a fellow prisoner. As for the prison administration, it tries to search for alternative sources of medicines, including NGOs and donations.

In prison, there are also complaints and cries of prisoners regarding the “crumbs” that they get as a daily meal. Not only that, the quality of food has also declined as a result of the high price hike, with the decline in the exchange rate of the Lebanese pound once morest the dollar and its dollarization, which prompted contractors to shorten the quantities of meat and chicken and sometimes zero them. Only the relatively affluent prisoners buy their food in the prison shop, whose prices have risen, just as in all shops in the country.

In Roumieh prison, which is supposed to hold no more than 1,050 prisoners, there are regarding 4,000 prisoners, piled on top of each other. Some of them prefer to remain seated throughout the day so as not to lose their “position”, and if they get tired they fall on their knees.

We have not yet touched on the deaths, which constituted a phenomenon that prompted Amnesty International to take action to shed light on a tragic reality that violates human rights. Within one year, the number reached 33, and most of them occurred under “mysterious circumstances” or circumstances known only to those behind bars in the cell and they are forbidden to speak, and without a single investigation being opened until today?!

The Director General of the Cedar Center for Legal Studies, Attorney Muhammad Sablouh, sums up the prisoners’ cry with the phrase “slow death”. It reveals that the documentary information issued in Amnesty International’s report yesterday is nothing but the result of the efforts of a number of local organizations that have placed these facts in the organization’s custody, provided that a second report by Human Rights Watch will follow. The aim of the report is to shed light on the human tragedy and the conditions that violate human rights in Lebanese prisons, specifically the hospitalization situation, the disregard for the lives of prisoners, and the failure to investigate the 33 death cases within one year.

The reasons for the majority of death cases are the negligence and disregard for the health status of prisoners. Sablouh narrates some of them, “I imagine that a prisoner needed an urgent open-heart surgery, which was postponed due to the unavailability of the cost, which amounted to 7,500 dollars. When the amount was secured and he was admitted to the hospital, he passed away. Another patient was suffering from pain in his neck.” It seems that he was suffering from heart attacks, but due to the absence of an emergency hospital and doctors inside Roumieh prison, the security forces gave him a sedative pill.

Let’s be real. If the state is unable to provide food and medical care for the security personnel, how is it able to provide that for the prisoners? Is the solution to publish tweets of denunciation every time a prisoner dies, or an uprising takes place inside Roumieh prison, or a state of rebellion?

“The question is not one of the taboos,” Sablouh says. “We have put forward many solutions, including a draft law to reduce the prison year for a period of 6 months for one time. Some say there are terrorists, and we say, let it be for once following checking the prisoners’ files. As for the second solution that some put forward in terms of returning Syrian prisoners to their country, this is not possible at this moment because there are prisoners who oppose the regime and the solution. According to Sablouh, the file of every Syrian prisoner should be studied and ensure that his return to his country will not lead him to the guillotine.

In light of the challenges the country is going through, the file of Lebanese prisons may be far from a priority. Hence the importance of the report published by Amnesty International, as it “constitutes a conviction among the international community regarding how to deal with prisoners in Lebanon. It is not a hypothetical threat, according to Sablouh, as the international community had previously threatened security officials in 2021 to stop providing aid to their institutions if the situation continues as it is inside Lebanese prisons.

Regarding the aid, Sablouh asks, “Where was the $100,000 money that a European country provided 6 years ago to the Roumieh prison administration to supply the building with power for hot water, and the prisoners only got it once? The question is regarding the investigation, if it happened!”

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