Venezuelan jail dead buried in mass tomb
Questions linger about why jail for 36 prisoners was jammed by over 200
VALENCIA, Venezuela — They died together when flames tore through an overcrowded police station jail in Venezuela. Now, many of them are buried beside each other, too.
Weeping relatives lowered caskets of many of the 68 people officials say were killed in one of the nation’s worst jail fires into a mass tomb on Friday.
Cemetery workers said they expected to bury about half of those killed in three-deep graves, each separated by a layer of hastily constructed cinderblock. Simple white crosses with their handwritten names, dates of birth and shared death date were put around the tomb.
“How am I going to forget seeing my husband burned?” asked Wilca Gonzalez, 36, whose loved one was the first to be placed into the ground Friday. “How can you forget that?”
The mass burial comes two days after the horrific blaze in the industrial city of Valencia where an estimated 200 people were being kept in cells meant for no more than three dozen. As they bury their dead, relatives are clamouring for answers from officials who have yet to release a full account of what happened, state how many were injured or release the names of those killed.
“The state is keeping far too silent,” said Humberto Prado, director of the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, an independent group that advocates for prisoner rights.
In a statement Friday, the Venezuelan government defended its commitment to human rights and instructed the chief prosecutor’s office to investigate.
Officials also lambasted the United Nation’s human rights office for comments made Thursday urging Venezuela to address concerns like dangerously cramped cells and ensure the nation’s prisons meet international standards.
Rights advocates said the silence from officials was symptomatic of unwillingness to address long simmering concerns about the nation’s jail system.
According to the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, at least 32,000 people are being placed in police jails designed as temporary holding cells for 8,000.
Inmates are often able to obtain drugs and weapons with the help of corrupt guards. Now, as Venezuela struggles with one of the most severe economic contractions in Latin American history, those conditions are believed to have gotten even worse. Like much of the nation, activists say prisoners are going hungry and unable to get health care.
Wednesday’s fire is one of the worst mass casualty events at Venezuelan prisons, but not the first. A 1994 fire killed more than 100 inmates. In 2013, 61 people died mostly from bullet wounds during a riot.
Absent an official narrative, relatives are left to cobble what little details they could from photographs passed along from cellphones and survivor accounts.
Jeyne Lugo, whose 27-year-old son Roner was killed, said he called her shortly before the fire and said police had shot a pregnant woman at the jail in the head. Inmates then set a mattress on fire to draw attention to the dying woman. He told her officers then began pouring gasoline, igniting the flames further and causing them to spread.
Other accounts suggest inmates may have set the fire in an attempt to escape.
Carlos Nieto, the director of A Window to Freedom, an organization that monitors prison conditions, said accounts from survivors and relatives indicate the incident began when inmates tried to hold two guards captive.
Later they reportedly set some mattresses on fire in an attempt to force guards to open cells.