Torture in jails skyrocketing: Helsinki Committee

The number of tortures and inhuman treatment in the Moldovan jails rises alarmingly, finds the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights from Moldova. Its representatives say a cause is the election race, Info-Prim Neo reports. Compared year on year, the number of complaints the Committee has received in 2009 has doubled, said Committee president Stefan Uratu at a news conference on Thursday. According to him, “curing the ill-treated inmates costs the state more than if they were released to cure themselves.” He referred to the cases of two prisoners from Penitentiary 16 from Pruncul (near Chisinau), which are in an extremely bad situation and cannot be dangerous since they cannot walk. The Committee's executive manager, Teodor Carnat, has said one of those two suffers from brain lesion and is dying. “The cause of his disease is the battery he got from police while in detention. His body temperature has been 37-40 degrees for a year,” Carnat said. The Helsinki Committee failed to make him be checked up by a medical board. “The answers we have got are confusing, the medicines he gets are not fit. The prisoner is now hunger striking,” Carnat said. Another inmate, HIV-infected, is not transportable. He is dying so that is why he decide to complain, said the executive. He also believe the rising number of complaints is due to the election campaign. “Since the Central Election Commission (CEC) allows the minor offenders to vote, they are subjected to additional pressing, to be made to vote as required,” Carnat said. He adds “society becomes more active in campaign periods, and the detainees also claim their rights with more determination than usually, because the politicians promise much during these periods.” Teodor Carnat says “the detainees do not get enough food. They report much but give little in order to save.” Teodor Carnat says it's discriminating to allow only some prisoners to vote, since the Constitution grants this right to everybody.