HR against ‘intimate’ search in new prison

After the review process that the police subjected the visits of the inmates in the new jail in Guayaquil, representatives of Human Rights in Ecuador ensure that female visitors are subjected to alleged vaginal and anal review during the security check, before seeing the inmates.

Billy Navarrete, executive secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (Cedhu for its Spanish acronym,) said that the alleged vaginal inspection is “humiliating.” “It’s a cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (…These procedures are “highly adverse to the set standards for prisons.”

Navarrete announced that three relatives of inmates in La Roca prison, will present a witness who will submit a testimonial detailing what they experienced before the Committee on Human Rights.

Elsie Monge, director of the Ecumenical Commission of Human Rights, also questioned the review system, where even some mothers have complained that they have been forced to strip their children, creating a “psychological harm to children.”

Julio Cesar Cueva, private lawyer, said that Ecuador should invest in  high technology to screen visitors “to allow a dual role, respect the rights of others and, on the other hand, help to a  more rigorous control.”