Even Dead Bodies Must Work - Office of the High Commissioner for ...

The conditions at some Ugandan prisons are improving but—particularly in rural, former
locally administered prisons—are still far below international standards. Overcrowding is
endemic, with prisons nationwide at 224 percent of capacity. Of the 16 prisons visited by
Human Rights Watch, all but one was significantly over its official capacity, in one case rising
to a staggering 3,200 percent of capacity. Prisoners often sleep on one shoulder, packed
together so that they can only shift if an entire row agrees to roll at once.
Prison food is nutritionally deficient, leaving inmates vulnerable to infections and in some
cases blind; sex is sometimes traded by the most vulnerable for additional food. Water is
often unclean or unavailable. At some prisons, boiled water has become a commodity sold
by inmates with kitchen privileges. Proper hygiene is difficult with limited governmentprovided
soap, and lice and scabies are rampant. Mosquitoes and malaria are a constant
threat, but the prison administration has only sprayed with insecticide at three prisons, and
bed nets are forbidden for male inmates because of security fears.
A brutal compulsory labor system operates in rural prisons countrywide. Thousands of
prisoners, convicts and remands, are forced to engage in hard labor—cultivating crops,
clearing fields—day after day. Compulsory labor is often combined with extreme forms of
punishment, such as beatings to punish slowness, and handcuffing, stoning, or burning
prisoners who refuse to work. Few prisoners receive proper medical care for their injuries,
and prisoners are regularly refused access to medical care because officers will not allow
them to miss work. Prisoner productivity translates directly into profit for prison authorities,
but prison authorities often do not account for the funds raised through prison labor.
In addition to abuses in the fields, prisoners are beaten and abused within the prison,
allegedly as punishment. Inmates are also sometimes confined in isolation cells, often
naked, handcuffed, and sometimes denied food; the cells are sometimes flooded with water
up to ankle height. Some have had their hands or legs broken, or have become temporarily
paralyzed as a result of beatings, and seldom receive medical care. Prisoners with mental
disabilities are in some cases targeted for beatings, and even pregnant women are not
spared.
The prevention and treatment of disease pose major problems in Uganda’s prisons. TB
spreads quickly in the prisons’ dank, overcrowded, and poorly ventilated wards. TB
prevalence in the prisons is believed to be at least twice that in the general population,
which already is one of the world’s highest. While the prisons service has recently rolled out
TB entry screening at 21 prisons, more than 200 still offer none. Prisoners routinely reported
having coughed for long periods without having been tested for TB. TB treatment is only
“Even Dead Bodies Must Work” 2