(Crux. Eduardo Campos Lima).
Four months after criminals took control over several prisons, causing a wave of violence in Ecuador, officers are being denounced for continually violating the inmates’ rights. Prisoners who were released have described the situation inside the prisons as a “living hell,” with a lack of food, no medical or spiritual assistance, and frequent sessions of torture. According to Giovanni Dutan, who has been working as a volunteer in the prison pastoral ministry in the city of Cuenca over the past 12 years, the missionaries are stopped from getting into the Turi penitentiary by the military – which now control the prisons – over the past few months. “With two or three exceptions in March and April, when we were allowed to celebrate the Holy Mass at two prison blocks, we have not been allowed there all over that period for safety reasons,” Dutan told Crux.