The Alliance for Global Justice
has just received an urgent alert from our partners in Colombia,
Traspaso Los Muros, saying Sanabria is in dangerously bad health,
having lost over 28 pounds in a hunger strike that began under
already harsh conditions. He has also received multiple death
threats.
Sanabria has two demands:
1) That La
Tramacúa's political prisoners be separated from the general
population, where they are being preyed upon by paramilitary
prisoner gangs that are armed by and allied with prison
guards;
2) That he be transferred immediately to La Dorada
Penitentiary in Ibague because of the numerous death threats he has
received.
WHAT TO DO:
1) Copy and paste the
following sample letter, or write your own, to US and Colombian
authorities:
"I am writing to express my concern for the life
of Felix Rodrigo Sanabria, a political prisoner engaged in a hunger
strike against the inhumane conditions at La Tramacúa Prison in
Valledupar, Colombia. Sanabria has been subjected to numerous death
threats and abuse. I support his demands:
· that La
Tramacúa's political prisoners be separated out from the general
population where they are subject to attacks by paramilitary
gangs;
· that Sanabria be moved to La Dorada Penitentiary in
Ibague since his safety is compromised due to the many threats
against his life at La Tramacúa."
La Tramacúa was designed
and funded by USAID and the US Bureau of Prisons. Beatings and
torture are common, meals have been documented to be rotten and
contain fecal contaminants, and prisoners are allowed access to
running water only 10 minutes a day on average.
I ask that
you use your influence to see that these demands are met and that
conditions are improved at La Tramacúa."
We are asking you to
send this email to your Representative and Senators and to relevant
Colombian officials.
Write
your m.p.
To contact Colombia's Ministry of
Interior and Justice, INPEC, General Prosecutor, and National Public
Defender, please copy and paste the following email
addresses:
sgeneral@mij.gov.co,
atencionalciudadano@mij.gov.co, reclamos@inpec.gov.co,
webmaster@inpec.gov.co, cap@procuraduria.gov.co,
quejas@procuraduria.gov.co, webmaster@procuraduria.gov.co,
secretaria_privada@hotmail.com, agenda@agenda.gov.co
2)
Please download and circulate AFGJ's petition demanding better
conditions at La Tramacua. Send the filled out to petition to the
address at the bottom of the form or to AFGJ/Tramacúa Campaign, PO
Box 2815, Tucson, AZ 85702 Download
the petition here.
BACKGROUND
INFORMATION:
According to our Colombian partners,
Traspaso Los Muros - Beyond the Walls, there are over 7,500
political prisoners in Colombia. Political prisoners are defined as:
Prisoners of Conscience; Prisoners arrested on the basis of
frame-ups and paid testimony; and Prisoners of War who are members
of groups involved in armed struggle. Prisoners of War are included
among the political prisoners because at the root of this struggle
is a political and economic cause that can only be adequately solved
by a political, not military, solution. Some 6,500 to 7,000 of the
political prisoners are unionists, students, members of opposition
parties, journalists, citizens of rural, indigenous and
Afro-Colombian communities, and other segments of nonviolent
resistance. An estimated 500 prisoners are captured combatants from
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and an unknown
number are from the Army of National Liberation (ELN) and other
armed movements. Hunger Striker, Felix Rodrigo Sanabria is a
Prisoner of War and has been in jail since his capture in
2000.
The following is from a report from the political
prisoners of La Tramacúa's Tower Five that gives some idea of the
prison's conditions
: "The food service system is one of
total indignity, as is publicly known in this graveyard of liberties
called 'Tramacúa', since thus it is demanded and oriented by the US
Federal Bureau of Prisons, whose doctrine orders the quantity and
quality of the food. Only the basic minimum is permitted in order to
survive and not die from physical hunger because, according to them,
here there are only terrorists and the anti-social....For this they
add the contamination of foods with fecal material, as was proven
with laboratory studies recently realized by the Health Ministry of
Valledupar, a situation that has been repeatedly denounced by the
prisoners' Committee for Human Rights. Also, it is a constant that
the food supplies may be in a state of decomposition-meat with
worms, poorly cooked, raw or rotten, and including that on the
tablecloth can be seen to swim larva and worms that are submerged in
the receptacles the prisoner must use to drink and eat for physical
hunger and thirst without having eaten and thus avoiding that he
might protest....
For such reasons, 70% of the population
remains sick, with strong illnesses of the stomach-constant diarrhea
and vomiting, gastric ulcers, headaches and all kinds of
gastrointestinal diseases....
When they punish us up to a
week without water, the chaos is total, since there are three
toilets for 170 prisoners that in only a short while remain
absolutely full of fecal material, obliging us to have to do our
physical necessities in the drains of the patio, in the open air and
in view of the population because in a site so narrow, there is
nowhere and no way to avoid it. In order to try to remedy the
problem we are obliged to collect the urine in a receptacle, with
which one empties themselves or defecates in whatever element so he
might empty it through the window when we are in the cells. It is in
this way that we are invaded by the flies and that the putrefaction
ferments in the sun. Meanwhile the jailers and directors turn deaf
ears to the clamor of the prisoners."
USEFUL
LINKS:
"La
Tramacúa": Colombia's Abu Ghraib
The
"New Penitentiary Culture": US Designs on Colombian Jails, How
USAID, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the School of the Americas
Have Impacted Colombia's Prison System
Today, Felix Rodrigo Sanabria
completes one month of a hunger strike amid the squalid conditions
of La Tramacua. La Tramacua is the first prison built under a US
designed program to restructure Colombia's prison system and
increase its capacity by 40 percent. 
