DRC. PRISONERS DIE FROM MALNUTRITION AWAITING TRIAL COUNTRY, UN

prisoners awaiting trial are dying from lack of food, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in prisons in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN mission to the central African country said.
"The prisoners are like cadavers and skeletons," said UN mission (MONUC) human rights director Fernando Castanon during a press conference in Kinshasa.
"The state of prisons means that prisoners - the majority of whom are on remand - receive a de facto death sentence because of hunger and the sanitary conditions in these penitentiaries," Castanon said.
In the most recent incident 14 men died from "malnutrition" or "lack of medical care" between April and May in the prison of the central city of Mbuji-Mayi which held 350 inmates or seven times its capacity.
Of the remaining Mbjui-Mayi inmates "35 people were assessed as being in a state of malnutrition" at the beginning of May, Castanon said.
The UN mission MONUC chief William Swing wrote on May 5 to the Congolese president Joseph Kabila to "alert him to the alarming situation in the prisons of RDC" and to call for emergency measures to feed prisoners.
In the prison of Murenze, in the eastern city of Goma, "the 219 prisoners have not had food for three days" and 51 were suffering from malnutrition, Castanon said noting that already in April prisoners "had not received food" for several weeks.