Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Over 139 for­eign­ers in­car­cer­at­ed in T&T’s pris­ons have end­ed their hunger strike af­ter they fi­nal­ly got a hear­ing from their re­spec­tive em­bassy of­fi­cials.

Guardian Me­dia was told that 96 of them are re­mand­ed pris­on­ers while 43 of them are con­vict­ed pris­on­ers.

A prison source said, “The for­eign­ers took the hunger strike more se­ri­ous­ly than the lo­cal re­mand pris­on­ers and would have protest­ed to meet with their em­bassy of­fi­cials al­most every day of their hunger strike. Now that they got what they want­ed, they are sat­is­fied and have dis­con­tin­ued with the strike.”

The prison source added that lo­cal re­mand pris­on­ers’ at­tempt at a sim­i­lar ac­tiv­i­ty had fall­en through and was de­scribed as a “failed at­tempt, gen­er­al­ly.”

In a state­ment an­nounc­ing the hunger strike on Sep­tem­ber 16, the pris­on­ers protest­ed for speedy tri­als for those ac­cused of mur­ders; rea­son­able bail for pet­ty of­fend­ers; the im­me­di­ate re­lease of all re­mand­ed in­mates from Build­ing 13 at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP); cloth­ing and med­ica­tion re­quests from their re­spec­tive fam­i­ly mem­bers and a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment in ob­tain­ing and tor­tur­ing re­mand­ed pris­on­ers housed at build­ing 13 (MSP). The state­ment, which was be­lieved to have been pre­pared by a group of in­mates, claimed that Build­ing 13 is an “in­hu­mane en­closed en­vi­ron­ment per­fect for the breed­ing of the COVID-19.”

When con­tact­ed on the is­sue, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Den­nis Pul­chan said that he had no prob­lem with em­bassy of­fi­cials vis­it­ing the re­mand­ed for­eign­ers and would “glad­ly wel­come them to meet with them as there is noth­ing to hide.”