Vol. 78/No. 7      February 24, 2014

“Prisoners have protested over the past two months against intolerable conditions, inadequate access to water and electricity, torture in solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, abusive mandatory hair cuts, including of the prison’s imam, and even insufficient food,” journalist Manolis Kalatzis told the Militant. Kalatzis has been covering prisoners’ fights against abuse over the past four years for the Cypriot daily O Politis. The paper had been banned by the prison since 2009.

The escalating mobilizations by prisoners forced the ousting of Central Prisons’ warden, Giorgos Tryfonidis, said Kalatzis. He was removed hours after publicity got out about yet another suicide attempt, this time unsuccessful, by a young Turkish-Cypriot Jan. 14.

The prisoners’ efforts have made other gains, Kalatzis said. “Restrictions on water and electricity use have eased, and Politis is now allowed back in the prison.”

Central Prisons has been crammed with double the 350 inmates it was built for, Kalatzis said. More than half are immigrants.

The Justice Ministry just decreased the sentences of all prisoners there under pressure to reduce overcrowding, he said.

KISA (Action for Equality, Support, Antiracism), a Cypriot organization that pushes for decriminalization of immigrant workers without papers, has championed the prisoners’ fight. Inmates face “institutionalized discrimination and racism,” the group says on its website, “especially with regards to the exercise of their religious rights and the exercise of their right to communication and contact with members of their families.”

A large percentage of the prisoners are migrants who have been detained for “illegally staying, working and/or falsifying personal documentation,” KISA says.  
 
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