Moldovan prisoner compelled to eat letters he wrote to speaker Marian Lupu

The Moldovan Helsinki Human Rights Committee has brought to daylight another case of severe violation of detainees’ rights. It’s the story of a prisoner in a Taraclia-based jail, who was tortured and compelled to eat the letters he addressed to the Parliament’s President Marian Lupu, Info-Prim Neo reports. The president of the NGO Ştefan Uratu told a news conference on Thursday, April 10, he had learnt of the case following an anonymous phone call. A mission of the Committee went to the place to find facts. The human rights activists found the prisoner had bruises and body injuries. He told he had been insulted, menaced and beaten up by a penitentiary worker. He was hit in the chest with legs and his head onto wall, being compelled to eat the letters addressed to the speaker. He wrote about the ways of maltreating and torturing prisoners. “Protesting and trying not to be transferred to the “bad guys” block, the victim cut his hands and belly,” the executive director of the Helsinki Committee Teodor Carnat has said. The Committee regularly receives complaints from relatives and detainees about the violations in jails, as it points out a series of serious abuses and violations especially in the Taraclia prison. Many petitions sent by prisoners to central authorities are censored and their authors are tortured. Despite the law, the detainees are not allowed to speak on the phone. The Taraclia penitentiary has but two phones used only by the administration, said Teodor Carnat. The medical assistance provided to them is below any requirements. The medications are scarce and of bad quality. The difficult access to penitentiary, the obstacles created by administrations and the leadership of the Penitentiary Institutions Department not only for prisoners’ relatives, but for human rights NGOs do not correspond to the Penal Code and the penitentiaries’ mission, the executive manager concluded. According to the Moldovan Helsinki Human Rights Committee, in 2007, the rights of the jailed people are violated most frequently in Moldova, especially the rights to healthcare and medical assistance, not to be subjected to torture and inhumane and degrading treatment, to defense, correspondence, phone calls, meetings and to a fair trial.