Mortality due to detention condition

SUICIDES IN PRISON: 1.4 IN US, FOR 14 IN FRANCE AND 25 IN BELGIUM

Mortality due to detention condition

Ladies and gentlemen members EU Parliament

Concerns: request statistics on the number of prisoners who die within the European Union, before that the local authorities grant them a release on parole for health reason or humanitarian reason.

We request your attention at the time when France has ounce me been condemned by the European Court of the Human rights, for the very serious inhuman and degrading treatments of a prisoner. These treatment are al the same without commun measures with those inflicted to Mr VERVLOESEM, a Belgian prisoner of exception.

A chamber of seven judges judged unanimously, the nature inhuman of 4 years of isolation regime, unjustifiable for majority, and of 14 transferring in 8 years of detention of French prisoner, who was condemned to ten years of prison sentence for having tried to help escape his brother, by helicopter. The condemnation of the brother add up 38.5 years of prison and the developed means presume a support from organised criminality.

In Belgium, Mr. VERVLOESEM, who is presumed innocent untill the European Court of the Human rights will judged legality of his condemnations, was object, in 9 months of detention and without that a disciplinary council had sanctioned him, 32 of his 37 days first days an isolation regime, 7 months of disciplinary block, as 26 transfers including for 6 hospitalizations in intensive care and 5 major surgical operations, because the kingdom does not claim to have the "means" to pay preventive health care to the prisoners.

First actions of Mr. Vervloesem NGO in 1988 in favour of children in danger, were struck by a prohibition to distribute pamphlets in Antwerp. Since, he was condemned to an effective prohibition of contacts with the press during two years. The court of appeal did not retain this prohibition, but he remains prohibited of visit from journalists. He spent one week in an isolation regime as a sanction inflicted because the NGO who supports him have refused to censor their internet websites and asked the ministry to use its right of answer. A tribunal has refused him an electronic bracelet to ensure his paliative care in dignity, in reason of "criticism on justice" on the website DROIT FONDAMENTAL. He cannot treat a 4.5 year old cancer with metastasis on the floor below the "scene of the crime", where the exposed articles are written. The ministry of justice refuses him penitentiary vacation at the home of the author of these articles for the same reasons.

The width of the vulgarizing of the violation of the fundamental rights is illustrated by the legal arrear of the European Court of the Human rights. It is explained by the total impunity of the magistrates who do not claim to know the provisions of the international laws and of ministers who refuses to ensure the legality of the procedures.

The survival of Marcel Vervloesem in prison enabled us to discover real death camps, which it seems, are current within the European Union. Suicide rate is seven times higher in the European prisons than in free world, whereas this rate in the American prisons is equal to the one of the free world.

Drugs has multiplied the American incarcerated population by eight and the European one by two, which explains that criminality has not increased. When the American noted the suicide rate, they granted the prisoners the necessary treatment to prevent them, whereas Europeans claim a "lack of means" to deprive them of treatment. Europe took the American model by filling its prisons of sick people, and the African model, by depriving them of health care, alledging a "lack of means".

There are over 600.000 prisoners in Europe, to whom the Union only conceded fine recommendations, but does not protect them by constraining laws. They are thus around 300.000 sick people, imprisoned by a political decision, taken at the end of the "Golden Sixties" and the beginning of the economical crisis. The Americans, experts in escalvagism, understood the interest to take car of prisoners' health, as they provide a hand work at a price which defies any conccurence. In Belgium, this hand-work can be acquired starting from 0.69 € per hour, thus +/- 5% of what is paid in the free world.

Belgium provides an excellent law to protect the prisoners, but which has only served to ennoble its author. The ministry persists in refusing the health care by administrative decision, without advising the prisoners, in such way that they cannot oppose it to the Council of State.

The economic impact these secret (since without notification) administrative decisions is considerable. 20% of the incarcerated population are touched by hepatitis, because of the large number of drug addicts. Hepatitis is not treated in the Belgian prisons, "due to the lack of means", which degenerates into cancer and cirrhoses. Europe can thus save 2.4 billion euros, by killing slaves that the press teaches to despise.

In Belgium, the Court of Cassation cannot recognize the lays of an application of the sentence court for a refusal of release for health reason, because the voted law that gives it this mission is not applicable, for as long as the Minister of justice refuses to ask the King to sign it. The Ministers of justice who followed one another since the vote of this law, justify not to have requested King's signature, by a lack of means for its application, this is to say, to grant health care to the prisoners. The Court of Cassation thus confirms systematically that the decision belongs to the minister, who has a right of life or death, as the sole judge of the health care requested to 10.000 people without defense.

The Court of Cassation generally estimates that the loss of freedom of a person condemned does not contravene with article 3 of the Human Right Convention by the sole fact that this condemned person is suffering… and if he is dying, that supposes the checking elements of facts, for which the Court is without capacity.

Article 3 says "Any individual is entitled to life, freedom and security of its person". How a prisoner can be protected from cruel and inhuman treatments, which deprive him of his health, therefore of his life and safety of his person, in an isolation cell, where he is sent by a unconsigned admnistrative decision, therefore without means of requesting the application of his fundamental rights?

We ask you, as a guarantor of the respect of the European laws, to insist near the King of the Belgians and his Minister of Justice, to ensure in extreme emergency the applicability of the voted laws and request statistics which will allow to evaluate the situation of prioners' health within the Union.

We ask you to demand as of today, from all Members countries, to take all the necassary measures to prevent the death of prisoners, and to grant parole under electronic controle to all the prisoners with terminal deseases, who are physically uncapable to do any harm, so that they can have proper treatment.

Here attached, the synthesis of the Vervloesem prosecution, the synthesis of inhuman treatments in prison that enabled to predict that he may arrive alive at the European Court of Human rights and a syntesis of the absence of effective recourse of political prisoners in the European corridors of death.

Any absence of answer or pro format answer will remain engraved forever in our memories, as the martyrdom of a just and courageous man, whom he endures for having having defended the right for the children not to undergo cruelty. We would thus have to understand that the EU does not have the moral power to request from one of its smaller members, to ensure that a prisoner arrives alive at the Court of Human Rights.

By thanking you in advance for each useful intervention, please accept the expression of all our consideration,

Jan Boeykens - Jacqueline de Croÿ
Werkgroep Morkhoven

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Mortality due to detention condition