Around 60 killed in Brazil prison riot: state official

[muriel_volestrangler]

Around 60 people have been killed in a bloody prison riot sparked by a war between rival drug gangs in the Amazon jungle city of Manaus, officials said on Monday, in some of the worst violence in years in Brazil's overcrowded penitentiary system.

The head of security for Amazonas state, Sergio Fontes, told a news conference that the death toll could rise as authorities get a clearer idea of the scale of the rebellion sparked by a fight between rival drug gangs.

Manaus' Em Tempo newspaper reported that several of the dead had their decapitated bodies thrown over the prison wall.

The riot began late Sunday and was brought under control by around 7 a.m. on Monday, Fontes said. Authorities were still counting the prisoners to determine how many had escaped, he added.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-prison-riot-idUSKBN14M0QB

[Judi Lynn]

1. Have never read a more horrifying and tragic account of prison conditions.

"These massacres occur almost daily in Brazil," said Father Valdir Silveira, director of Pastoral Carceraria, a Catholic center that monitors prison conditions in Brazil. "Our prisons were built to annihilate, torture and kill."

[center]

Photo of the prison published 4 hours ago.



Military police hunt for fugitives of the Anisio Jobim Penitentiary Complex after a riot in the prison left at least 60 people killed and several injured



Photo released 5 hours ago



3 hours ago

ETC.[/center]
Also from the original article:

Overcrowding is extremely common in Brazil's prisons, which suffer endemic violence and what rights groups call medieval conditions with food scarce and cells so packed that prisoners have no space to lie down.

Absolutely horrifying. How long can the tiny elite hold an entire country imprisoned and subjected to lives of such profound misery? What has happened here says far more about those who control these circumstances than it says about the human beings thrown into hell and forgotten by bigger criminals than they.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Pope appeals for humane prisons after Brazil prison riot

Pope appeals for humane prisons after Brazil prison riot
Updated 2:11 pm, Wednesday, January 4, 2017



VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has prayed for those who were killed in this week's Brazil prison riots, saying penitentiary conditions must be 'worthy of human persons.

Francis invited faithful at his weekly Wednesday audience at the Vatican to pray for the 60 who died in gang fights in the Brazil Amazon region prisons and their families, as well as inmates and prison workers worldwide

He said he was "pained and concerned" about what happened in Brazil. He renewed his appeal so that prisons would be "places of re-education" and "not overcrowded but places for re-insertion" in society after sentences are served.

Throughout his papacy, Francis has pressed for better prison conditions and the need for rehabilitation of inmates. He has also denounced life imprisonment as a virtual death sentence.

http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Pope-appeals-for-humane-prisons-after-Brazil-10834122.php

(Short article, no more at link.)

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Brazil prison uprising: At least 33 Roraima inmates killed in second riot in days

At least 33 inmates have been killed in an uprising in a Brazilian prison in the northernmost region of Roraima, according to local government.

The riot, which broke out at dawn, was reportedly a reaction to the prison uprising and death of around 60 people in the Amazon jungle's Manaus prison on Sunday night.

The government has been quick to blame the Roraima riot, according to daily newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, on northern rebel group the FDN (​Familia do Norte).

A group of prisoners, now back in their cells, reportedly escaped at 2.30am before slaughtering inmates.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brazil-prison-uprising-33-inmates-killled-latest-roraima-second-riot-manaus-a7512906.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Brilliant deduction by the new fascist government,

the same one whose congressmen pledged their vote to impeach Dilma Rousseff to the sadistic a-hole who was responsible for her torture while she spent years as a political prisoner.

Blame these murders by rioting prisoners on a small band of political guerrillas. That'll fix things.

Whatever you do, don't even dream of blaming the government which has created conditions so monstrous by stuffing the prisons with twice the limit, wildly filthy environment, nearly no food, some areas so packed the men can't lie down to sleep, and prisoners all believe when they are going in that they very well may never make it back out.