“The situation of people deprived of liberty at the country level and in the municipality of Neiva is regrettable and unfortunate from every angle that one wants to see or analyze them,” the representative of the city of Neiva, Jerson Andrés Bastidas, this, after discovering a video on social networks, where a group of women deprived of their liberty denounce violation of their “rights.”
“We are not animals”
Last Tuesday, through the social platform, Facebook, a video was released, where approximately 9 women deprived of liberty or PPL, located in the Transitory Detention Center, CDT, of the CAI in the Bogotá neighborhood of the city of Neiva denounced a series of situations that threaten the ‘quality of life’ and their “rights” within the place.
“It’s not fair that we have to do chichí and poop, in the same part where we sleep and live together, and the bad smell that can hurt us, as well as our colleagues,” intervenes one of the women who are seen in the video, referring to the infrastructure and unhealthy situation in which they find themselves, due to having to do their physiological needs in the same place where they live permanently.
In another moment of the visual product, the women state: “Look how the food comes, this is not food, it is like for the lavaza, food for ‘pigs’. The meat is not there, because it was damaged, we had to eat only the rice… it is an injustice that they lock us up as if we were animals… we are human, we make mistakes, but it is not so that they treat us like garbage.”
Look how the food comes, this is not food, it’s like for the lavaza, food for ‘pigs’
It is not a new crisis
Neiva’s representative, in dialogue with LA NACIÓN, mentioned that “in the specific case of the video, what we have is the sum of everything. The female PPL who are there are denouncing the delay in their judicial processes, the quality of the food and the infrastructure conditions where they are.”
According to the Public Ministry, the office has received, due to these situations, between “10 to 12 complaints in one day” directly from the people who are in these detention centers or through their families.
Bastidas explains about the complaints about the infrastructure in these transitional centers: “These people are in infrastructure conditions that are not suitable. They are small, humid, dark spaces, with multiple ventilation restrictions; That is to say, wherever you want to analyze the space, it does not have any type of viability or opportunity for improvement, because they are not adequate spaces”, since in these centers that originally have a capacity of 15 people, they end up having a little more than 30.
Part of this prison crisis in the city is strongly linked, according to the Personería, to the delay in the “judicial processes” by the competent authorities of the municipality.
In relation to these complaints, the Secretary of the Government of Neiva, Ferney Ducuara, stated that although the state of the three prisons in the city is not “optimal,” neither are “the conditions subhuman as they are expressing.”
Ducuara was emphatic in warning that “of course we have to improve, of course there is overcrowding. They must understand that this is what we receive as a municipal administration, we are starting a government; is what we found. “What we have done is some forceful actions to improve the conditions of these people.”
Unhealthiness and poor quality of food
The Municipal Person’s Office comments that, to the above, it is added that “the food supply (for people deprived of liberty) in Neiva has suffered some alterations”, this, according to Bastidas, due to the changes in the food contracts. the operators in charge of feeding the inmates, by the Penitentiary and Prison Services Unit, Uspec.
Bastidas argues that as a result of these changes “a whole series of consequences are generated at the level of food quality. Due to the climate of our municipality and the conditions in which these quantities of food are transported to the destination, they arrive in most cases according to the complaints, with odors that are not appropriate for consumption, and at untimely hours.
Closing of the premises
It is precisely these inconsistencies on the part of the food service operator, located in the El Altico neighborhood of Neiva and from there transporting part of the food to the municipality of Rivera, that led to the Huila Regional Attorney’s Office, headed by Attorney Diego Tello , request the Secretary of Health of Neiva, Lilibeth Galván, to visit said establishment; The inspection ended in a temporary closure of the site.
The National Administrative Deputy Director of the Uspec, Karol Vanessa Ortigoza, stated that after the decision from the municipal portfolio: “Due to the incidence of the Uspec, the contractor has already requested the municipal Health Secretariat to visit the facilities of the Uspec again. external plant”, visit that will take place today.
“It is important to point out that the operation has never stopped, even on the day (that) the inspection visit to the external plant took place, the operator did not stop providing the service or bringing food to the penitentiary center. The people deprived of their liberty received their breakfast, lunch and dinner normally,” said Hortigoza.
This operator provides food service to approximately 380 people in the transitional centers in Neiva and to more than 1,300 people who are in the penitentiary and prison center located in the jurisdiction of Rivera, Huila.
