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	Brazil Prison Hellholes by Giovana Vitola SBS Dateline Brazil   GIOVANA VITOLA: I went to this prison - it''s called the Central Prison of Porto Alegre, in the south most state of Brazil - where I am from, actually - and this is the largest prison in Latin America and considered, for the past few years, the worst in Brazil. The conditions are shocking.   JUDGE SIDINEI BRZUSKA, PRISON INSPECTOR (Translation): Most Brazilian prisons are so bad that the prisoners lose their sense of dignity in terms of how they are treated. There is no money spent in this area, so lots of prisoners are crammed into terrible conditions. The level of disease in our prisons, diseases that should have been eradicated – like tuberculosis – for example, is very high and resembles medieval times.   We have prisoners dying every day in our prisons - the majority don’t receive medical assistance – they end up going to the hospital in a terrible state and many do not survive. Some die in prison without any assistance. There is a popular expression we have in Brazil which says ‘If a prisoner has committed a heinous crime – that person should rot in hell.’ That is a popular expression and here we have people, who are literally rotting in hell.   The prison wall has two functions, the first is to stop the prisoners escaping and the second is to stop people seeing what happens inside. So, because society distances itself from this more and more and because they want prisoners to suffer and be punished and go through hard times, our system is the way it is today. That is how it is in Brazil.   Funding regarding all aspects of the prisons is basically zero – very little. This is the result of a historical issue – it has never been a priority for the political factions – improving the prisons has never been on their agenda because it does not win votes. So the prison system is like a snowball, people start committing more barbaric crimes and many of them are controlled from inside the prisons. The internal gangs exploit other inmates and they demand money – they make profits because they charge the prisoners – they charge them to sleep, to shower, for medication, for food, right? We have prisoners who sleep sitting up – there is not enough space..   * Visit the link below for more details. Visit the related web page
	New Report shines light on rape as war weapon by Agence France Presse (AFP)   April 2010   A new report has shown the real extent of rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo -with details published on 4000 rapes in the war-wracked east of the central African country.   The report found that more than half of the rapes committed in the east of the DRC, largely ruled by militias and rebel movements, were by gangs of "armed men," Oxfam International said.   The inquiry by the charity, carried out in the Sud-Kivu province town of Bukavu, "shows that 60 per cent of the rape victims questioned were raped by gangs of armed men and that more than half of the aggressions took place inside the homes."   Rape as a weapone of war is nothing new - nor is it new in the DRC - but the authors of the report, carried out over four years, point to evidence to suggest a dramatic rise in rape committed by civilians.   It revealed that 56 per cent of the attacks were perpetrated by armed men inside family homes, nearly 16 per cent in fields and nearly 15 per cent in the forest, citing statements by 4311 women questioned at Panzi hospital which specialises in treating victims of rape.   Carried out for Oxfam by The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the report spoke of "the stigmatisation that the women are victims of in their families after having been raped and the difficulties they encounter in accessing medical care."   "Fewer than one per cent of the rape victims went to Panzi hospital with their husbands and nine per cent of them were abandoned by their partner," Oxfam said.   Margot Wallstrom, special representative of the United Nations secretary general for sexual violence in combat zones, has been in the DR Congo since Monday and was to visit Nord- and Sud-Kivu provinces in the east of the country.   The two regions are highly unstable due to the presence of several armed groups who have been committing all kinds of atrocities, especially sexual violence, for more than a decade.   Oxfam International recommended that the Congolese government "reform the security sector and the judiciary system to guarantee total intolerance of rapes, whether they are committed by civilians, militiamen or soldiers." Visit the related web page
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