<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 20, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Venezuela's Yare II prison was rocked with serious rioting on Friday resulting in the death of 11 inmates and 34 wounded. According to prison authorities, the cause of the riot was infighting between gangs to gain control of prison racketeering and extortion. 

• Miranda State Firefighter chief, Benis de Lima says 10 inmates died inside the jail and 1 in hospital, 10 to 15 prisoners are in hospital in a critical state.  

Since Friday, Interior & Justice Minister General (ret.) Lucas Rincon Romero has confirmed a total 12 deaths and dozens of wounded, adding that the situation is under control. "There's a scarcity of prison guards throughout the prison system." 

The General has promised a thorough investigation to discover the causes. 

Las Ultimas Noticias supplies an answer to the General's question, stating that there are three gangs fighting for control of the prison. "Miranda State Judiciary Circuit president, Luis Guevara says the riot had nothing to do with complaints about delayed legal processes but infighting over transfers to other prisons, which started boiling over last Wednesday."

<a href=www.sfgate.com>SFGate.com-Associated Press Friday, April 18, 2003
(04-18) 16:12 PDT CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) --

A fight between inmates wielding homemade knives and machetes left 11 dead and 40 injured inside a maximum security prison in northcentral Venezuela, authorities said Friday.

Dozens of National Guardsmen were dispatched to restore order at Yare II prison, located roughly 30 miles from Caracas. It was the third Venezuelan prison riot in the last 15 days.

"We have 10 dead inside the prison, one of them decapitated," Fire Chief Denis De Lima told The Associated Press by telephone. "One died when he was being treated at the hospital."

De Lima said the riot was a fight over territory disputed between rival prison gangs.

The Interior Ministry's Inmate Custody and Rehabilitation Director, Carlos Sutrun, told the state-run Venpres news agency that 40 inmates were transferred to nearby hospitals.

Riots are common in Venezuela's 32 overcrowded and understaffed prisons, where almost half the inmates are in pre-trial detention. On April 4, four prisoners died and 10 were injured by gunfire during fight between inmates at Uribana prison.

Six days later, 15 inmates and a security guard were injured during a riot at Rodeo I prison.

There were 244 deaths and more than 1,200 injuries in prisons between Oct. 2001 and Sept. 2002, according to the U.S. State Department 2002 Human Rights Report. Most of the deaths resulted from fighting between prisoners, the report said.

CBSNews.com HAVANA, April 18, 2003 (AP)

"The unquestionable majority vote is a clear signal from the Human Rights Commission that Cuba has the right to apply its own laws." Felipe Perez Roque Cuban Foreign Minister

(AP) The U.N. Human Rights Commission's failure to condemn Cuba for its recent crackdown affirmed the island leadership's belief in the right to defend itself from attempts to subvert its system, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Friday.

"The unquestionable majority vote is a clear signal from the Human Rights Commission that Cuba has the right to apply its own laws," Perez Roque told a news conference. "`This was a resonant victory for Cuba, and we express our profound satisfaction."

The top United Nations watchdog on Thursday rejected a proposed amendment criticizing Cuba's recent crackdown on opponents, instead approving a milder resolution calling for a U.N. rights monitor to visit the island.

The 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission, which regularly criticizes Cuba on its rights record, voted 31-15 during its meeting in Geneva against condemning the communist state's month-long drive against dissidents and other opponents.

Cuban tribunals earlier this month sentenced 75 dissidents to prison terms ranging from 6 to 28 years on charges of being mercenaries who worked with the American government to harm the island's socialist system. The dissidents and the U.S. government deny the accusations.

The rejected amendment expressed "deep concern about the recent detention, summary prosecution and harsh sentencing of numerous members of the political opposition" and called for them to be released.

Governments and human rights groups around the world have condemned Cuba for jailing dozens of dissidents. The crackdown was followed by the April 11 executions of three men convicted of the hijacking nine days earlier of a ferry filled with passengers.

Perez Roque accused the U.S. government of concocting the failed attempt to condemn the communist-run island and questioned the human rights records of those countries that backed the measure.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday that despite the measure's defeat, the United States was pleased that the commission passed a Cuba resolution.

"It sends a strong message of support for the courageous Cubans who struggle daily to defend their human rights and their fundamental freedoms," Boucher said.

Although Perez Roque acknowledged that the final measure was not a condemnation of Cuba's, he said his country would not comply with it.

The milder resolution, passed 24-20, urged the Caribbean nation to accept a visit by U.N. human rights investigator, French jurist Christine Chanet. There were nine abstentions.

Cuba has previously refused to allow Chanet to visit, claiming such a visit could infringe on its sovereignty.

Latin American countries voting in favor of the resolution that passed included Mexico a longtime Cuban ally as well as Paraguay, Chile, Guatemala and Costa Rica. Argentina and Brazil abstained on the resolution that was approved. Venezuela, a strong political ally of Cuba, voted against it.

The commission also turned down a proposal 26-17, brought by Cuba itself, that criticized the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba.

DailyCamera.com April 19, 2003

Refusing to face reality, much less grow a spine, the United Nations Human Rights Commission voted Thursday in Geneva to give Fidel Castro nothing more than a gentle slap on the wrist for his brutal surge of new human rights violations in Cuba.

The commission had a choice. A resolution amendment, soundly voted down, had been presented by small, democratic Costa Rica. That text expressed "concern about the recent detention, summary prosecution and harsh sentencing of numerous members of the political opposition" and called for them to be released.

The text that was finally approved mildly urged Castro to allow a representative of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights to visit the island. Cuba has refused to allow a U.N. investigator to visit, alleging that would infringe on its sovereignty.

Even the Costa Rican version made no mention of the summary executions of three Cubans accused of hijacking a boat in an unsuccessful attempt to flee the island. Arguing for an outlandish notion of neutrality and "fairness," Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela either abstained or voted against that mild amendment.

Some among the amendment opponents incongruously argued that the U.S. embargo imposed on the island four decades ago was illegal and just as much a human rights violation as the practices of the Cuban regime. The embargo is certainly worth arguing about, but the equation above is not worth the breath used to express it.

Another factor that influenced the vote was a vigorous antipathy to President Bush. An old ghost of anti-Americanism has made a furious comeback after the United States struggle with the Security Council and the subsequent war in Iraq. Members grumbled that they didn't want to justify any U.S. actions against Cuba.

Tentative bursts of freedom in Cuba followed the 1998 visit of Pope John Paul II and last year's visit by former President Carter. But since mid-March, Castro has imprisoned the most effective advocates of free speech and democratic reform, handing down long sentences for their daring to call for freedom of expression, press and association.

What U.N. commission members did, in the false name of political parity, was to make Cuba's newly brutalized human rights advocates pay for the perceived sins of the U.S. president. Shame.

The Los Angeles Times

BBC Last Updated: Saturday, 19 April, 2003, 05:56 GMT 06:56 UK

At least 11 prisoners have been killed in gang-related violence in one of Venezuela's largest jails, officials say.

The dead men were hacked and shot to death by prisoners armed with pistols, knives and shotguns at the Yare 2 prison in the central state of Miranda, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the capital, Caracas, they said.

At least two inmates were reported to have been decapitated. A further 40 prisoners were injured.

Prison authorities quelled the riot after calling in national guard troops and police to restore order to the jail complex.

It is not clear how the disturbance started.

The police say they intervened to stop a violent clash between two rival gangs of prisoners, but some of the inmates' relatives said it was the police who started the riot.

Overcrowding

The Yare 2 prison complex, which holds about 1,200 prisoners, once held current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez after he led a failed coup in 1992.

Last month, inmates at the prison went on hunger strike to protest conditions at the complex and continual delays in trial processing, French news agency AFP reports.

Correspondents say violence is common-place in Venezuela's over-crowded and poorly-regulated prisons, with a series of major riots taking place in the last few years.

More than 200 prisoners were killed and more than 1,200 injured in violence within the Venezuelan prison system between October 2001 and September 2002, according to statistics from the Venezuelan ministry of interior and justice.