Prisoners and non-prisoners: same rights?
Josué Bila (uhurubila@gmail.com)
Araçatuba, 15 February 2009
If official statistics are to be believed, half of
Mozambique's population is mired in social deprivation below the poverty line.
Under these conditions, it is difficult, but not impossible, to talk about the defense
of prisoners' rights. Probable questions and reasons for this difficulty are
often raised when discussing prisoners' rights by the state, prison
authorities, the media and citizens, individually or collectively.
Before I get to the heart of the matter, let me raise
four of these probable questions and reasons:
1) How can the Mozambican state guarantee the rights
of prisoners, while its human, material and financial resources are (seen as)
limited to materialize the human rights of the population in general?
2) Why and how can the state maintain a doctor or
nutritional security in a prison unit with 800 inmates, if in a locality of at
least 150,000 inhabitants it is incapable of maintaining medical staff and/or
food security?
3) Minimization and public ignorance of the human
dignity of prisoners.
4) The state does not follow an inter-sectoral
National Human Rights Plan.
In exploring these questions, even though I'm aware
that I won't answer them fully, I don't want to suggest that the state should
be less attentive to prisoners, because it could be committing that crime by favoring
only the population that enjoys (supposed) freedom. On the contrary, I want to
suggest that the state should obtain more resources to make them available in
prisons, thereby materializing prisoners' rights. However, the implementation
of prisoners' rights must not be superior or inferior to what is guaranteed to
citizens outside of prisons, except in particular cases arising from the
fulfilment of the former's prison sentence.
Continuing, I also note that it is difficult to
discuss the causes of the lack of a National Human Rights Plan, only to emphasize
that there are, on the one hand, certain associations between the then
Marxist-Leninist orientation, with the consequent torture laws, legislated by
the People's State (1977-1990); the 16-year fratricidal war; the General State
Budget with strong external dependence; poor political-governmental commitment
to human rights; the lack of coherent Strategic Plans validated by all actors
(Agenda 2025 was an exception) and material and civic poverty in Mozambique.
On the other hand, there is a great lack of popular
ethics in looking at and recognizing the humanity and dignity of prisoners. In
fact, the reports produced by the Ministry of Justice in 2007-2008, funded by
the European Union and the United Nations Development Programme, reveal that
the perception of human rights among Mozambican citizens is very low.
In Mozambique, the violation of prisoners' rights has
been an unfortunate and unbearable reality, even for those who are insensitive
and morally depraved. It has been reported by the media, non-governmental organizations,
intellectuals and the diplomatic corps, through the embassy of the United
States of America. The reports from these organizations, in particular the
Mozambican Human Rights League, list torture and other cruel and degrading
treatment, overcrowding in prisons (e.g. Maputo Central Prison was designed to
hold 800 prisoners), and the fact that it currently holds 800. But it currently
holds 2,300 prisoners), one meal a day (starvation or not enough calories),
hundreds of prisoners over the 90-day pre-trial detention period, inhumane
sleeping conditions, poor medical care and medication and poor (re)socialization.
In addition, the violation of prisoners' rights also points to contempt for the right to be heard and the virtual lack of lawyers, contrary to the contemporary civilizational order of human rights. It should be remembered that contempt for the right to be heard and the virtual lack of lawyers is not something that only happens to prisoners, but also to almost all segments of the population living in Mozambique.
Having said this, it has been understood that the lack
or weakness of materializing prisoners' rights is indicative of the structural
and institutional deficiencies of the state in all its sectors. All sectors
suffer from its ills, eroding, to our misfortune, human dignity. And because
all sectors subsist within an inter-relational network, they contaminate each
other. For example, in Mozambique, the very poor provision of adequate food is
not only something that happens inside prisons, but also to patients in
hospitals or outside them - children, women, people with disabilities, individuals,
families, workers, schools and other sectors, precisely because the production
and distribution of food, in quantity and quality, for all, in a human rights
vision (National Human Rights Plan) does not exist or if it does, it is timid.
In this way, the defense of prisoners' rights can be
frustrated if the defense of human rights, in its inter-relational basis, is
not founded on a National Human Rights Plan, discussed and designed by the
State, Government and Civil Society, Universities and other research centres;
implemented by the State and monitored by the Assembly of the Republic and
Civil Society. When I repeatedly talk about the National Human Rights Plan, I
am suggesting a document-action-guide that puts the human being at the centre
of the state's attention, regardless of whether he is a prisoner or not: he (the
human being) has a human right to food, education, health, leisure, sport,
work, a healthy environment and other individual rights, freedoms and
guarantees and to respect from state agents and authorities. By invoking Civil
Society, I am not only proposing and giving confidence to the publicly known
and already existing, but also to the contextual emergence of prisoners
‘associations (they can co-monitor the prisons where they are serving their
sentence, within international and domestic standards for the treatment of
prisoners - this can be part of their civic re-socialization) or prisoners’
family associations.
The problems in prison centres and, consequently, the
rights of prisoners are the result of a lack of multisectoral intervention by
the state, based on a human rights perspective, and why not point out an almost
complete lack of political-governmental commitment. So to speak, the existence
of a considerable number of prisoners with minor offences may be denoting or
explaining this deficiency of multi-sectoral intervention by the state in
education, employment and other intellectual, cultural, aesthetic,
environmental, social and economic rights. Various documents and debates by the
government, research centres and social and religious organizations point out
that the child-adolescent-young person who doesn't have access to
ecclesiastical-spiritual culture, school education, leisure and sports spaces,
reading circles and artistic-civic-intellectual culture, decent housing and
employment is very close to entering the coitus of provincial-stomach crimes
(robbery/theft of ducks, mobile phones, bicycles...), which, down the road,
will lead them to the calaboos. However, and in favor of the truth, this does
not ignore the fact that children and adolescents can often fall foul of social
deviance, even if they live up to a high standard of human rights.
In order to counteract this deficient multi-sectoral
intervention, the Mozambican state must make it more flexible to plan,
implement and expand public policies whose aim is to fully satisfy people's
needs, regardless of where they are, in response to article 11 of the
Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique, paragraph c), which says: the
building of a society of social justice and the creation of material and
spiritual well-being and quality of life for citizens; e) the defence and
promotion of human rights.
This constitutional article opens up the possibility
of interpreting that, for example, the implementation of an agricultural,
agro-industrial and commercial production policy based on the ethics of human
rights can reduce hunger in prisons as well as in families, schools, labour
sectors as well as in prisons. The same can be said about the training of
medical staff and servants, the construction of health units, laboratory
centres, research and the manufacture of medicines, to guarantee the right to
health of citizens and other prisoners.
By doing so, the state can comply with (inter)national
human rights laws on the treatment of prisoners as holders of human rights.
These standards all place human beings as holders and recipients of equality
and fraternity, regardless of the prison circumstances in which they find
themselves. Thus, it can be said that the humanity of prisoners does not lie in
the fact that they are detained or sentenced, but in the fact that they are
human beings.
Therefore, dealing with prisoners' rights means
dealing with people's human dignity. It is therefore difficult to think about
the rights of prisoners without thinking about the dignified treatment of
people who also suffer from human rights violations. It's hard to argue that
the state should guarantee the basic rights of prisoners if the bulk of the
population doesn't enjoy them, and vice versa. The logic of materialising human
rights does not allow room for satisfying only the population, to the detriment
of prisoners, nor the other way around. In other words, the logic of
materialising human rights makes room for public policies that are balanced and
satisfy the needs of the human person.
Mozambique's biggest challenge today is to understand
that the problem of human rights violations is not specific to one sector
(prisoners or detention centres), but to all segments of society. In the
meantime, this will help the country to materialise the defence and
implementation of human rights on an inter- and multi-sectoral basis,
neutralising and dismantling the unscrupulous fragmentation of human rights
actions that is as widespread as it is unproductive in our midst.
As Mozambique becomes more mature in the defence,
protection and implementation of human rights, I believe it will be able to
guarantee them in all sectors, in a balanced way.
In fact, the challenge for human rights implementers
and defenders - state and non-state authorities and agents, professional
activists, journalists, lawyers, doctors, teachers - is greater and more
urgent. Greater, because rhetoric and in-depth knowledge of human rights per se
will not be enough; they will need the pedagogy of speech, political wisdom,
human sensitivity and the ability to act, applying real medicine to a common
disease: violation of the human rights of the majority of the Mozambican population,
whether inmates or not. Urgent, because the barbarism to which inmates and
other social segments are subjected must be replaced, right now, with the
elegance of freedom and equality - human rights for all.
I'll end with the titular question. Prisoners and
non-prisoners: same rights? Of course they have the same rights, except in
circumstances where the prisoners are serving their sentence. And the
fulfilment of the sentence must not violate the human dignity of the prisoner,
in response to human rights law. Whether we like it or not, living human rights
law is the secular ethic of today's Man - prisoner or not!
Araçatuba, 15 February 2009
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