The artists who came to spray the cultural centre were from all over the region, from Brazil, Colombia and Chile to Buenos Aires’ very own Bs. As. Stencil and Rundontwalk crews. The event is a good indication of how far graffiti has come in Argentina’s capital – now hosting international get-togethers – and how quickly the art has been incorporated into mainstream culture.

What attracts artists from all over the world is the laissez-faire attitude to painting in public places. Marina Charles, a Briton who moved to Buenos Aires and set up her own graffiti street tour, explains. “Buenos Aires has a long history with writing on walls,” she says. “It’s an essential form of political commentary – politicians as well as political protesters share the public space of the city to communicate with people and share their views. Graffiti started appearing in the city over 100 years ago and is now an accepted part of the landscape.”

 Police have got more important issues to deal with than clamping down on street artists, and locals generally see graffiti as a means of communicating. On a simpler level, graffiti is a way of turning the urban chaos of the city into an aesthetically more beautiful place.

The city’s street art is roughly divided into two distinct types of art. The microcentro – long a hotbed of political dissent and protest – is where the slogans and messages appear scrawled on the walls around Congreso, the government headquarters. Occasionally a stencil will voice concerns over working class rights or question President Cristina Kirchner’s leftwing credentials.

On the other hand, the northern suburbs of Palermo, Colegiales and Villa Crespo have been overtaken by middle class artists. “I started in late 2002 [just after the economic crisis],” says Fede Manuchin, one of the scene’s most important stencilers. “That summer was interesting as new people kept on doing stuff on the streets. It was a good time and luckily the people of Buenos Aires are still quite tolerant on having things painted to their walls. After this stencil craze, all different types of what now is called ‘street art’ started appearing, so that formed the street art movement you can see today.”

Manuchin is an artist clearly influenced by the UK’s Banksy who uses traditional spray cans to paint. Yet within the new street art movement, paintbrushes and conventional paints are being used on walls, something some of the original artists from the early 90s aren’t happy about.

What’s clear is that there’s a fascinating mix of different styles and imagery covering empty wall spaces, abandoned buildings, bus depots, train carriages and even bins all over the capital. Gaulicho, a solitary artist, is known for painting in bright oranges and reds, heavily influenced by 1970s San Francisco; Jaz uses cheap aerosols because they create a diluted effect similar to watercolours; and Nema is interested in age and society, often painting elderly figures.

The street tour set up by Charles, graffitimundo, is proving successful. It’s a chance to see another side of the capital beyond the traditional ‘Paris of South America’ cliché promoted by the mainstream media. “People go away feeling really inspired by what they’ve seen,” Charles explains. “Such is the energy and prolificness of the Buenos Aires scene. There is something really raw and exciting going on here, and people pick up on that.”

Yesterday, the traditional act was given extra momentum as an open-air trial inside the square unfurled in front of several thousand spectators.

The symbolic people’s court, with no judicial power, read out a long list of Argentine journalists, including current employees of Claín and La Nación newspapers, accused of colluding with the dictatorship. As the names were pronounced, the crowd let out whistles of disgust.

The trial, which started at 5pm, was presided by Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo president Hebe de Bonafini. Addressing the audience, she said: “We want to recover the reputation of journalism, the reputation of the media and the repuation of journalists.”

Three prosecutors listened to evidence presented by several journalists before the crowd, wearing blue armbands with the word ‘juez’ (judge) written on them, returned a guilty verdict. 

Citing articles published during the 1976 to 1983 military junta, journalist Claudia Acuna – a former Página 12 and Clarín employee – recognised that there had been no freedom of expression during the dictatorship. Yet she condemned editorials that consistently justified what the military referred to as ‘the process’.

Addressing the court, she said: “The criminal plan of the dictatorship included a group of media organisations and individuals whose task was to justify repression and counterbalance reports about human rights violations.”

Giant posters erected around the square showed articles published during the dictatorship, or shortly afterwards, defending military rule. One article from La Nación, 1977, showed a picture of the Argentine and US leaders together under the headline ‘Videla and Carter talk about democracy and human rights’.

Another article from Somos, published in the same year, showed a picture of a so-called rehabilitation centre for extremists under the headline ‘How those who abandon subversion live’. The picture was taken from an underground torture centre.

Whilst the majority of the evidence presented was from articles published during the dictatorship, the court highlighted the fact that many of the journalists concerned were still working for national newspapers, occupying key positions.

The Chamber of Deputies’ Freedom of Expression Commission, controlled by opposition politicians, condemned yesterday’s event.

The trial follows fierce debates in both government chambers about the role of the press and freedom of expression following last year’s controversial media law, passed by Congress but subsequently held up by the courts.

Aimed at breaking monopolies of, amongst others, Grupo Clarín, the government argues its aim is to make the media a more democratic institution. Opponents say it is a cynical move to silence dissenting voices.

 In a intriguing twist, Clarín’s owner Ernestina Hererra de Noble, has been the centre of a recent court case involving irregularities over her adoption of two children during the 1970s. Concerns have been raised as to whether they are the children of disappeared parents illegally abducted by the military. A court recently rejected the children’s application to have their identity kept a secret.

Two weeks ago posters appeared around Buenos Aires showing pictures of 12 Grupo Clarín journalists under the banner ‘Can one be an independent journalist and work for a multimedia owner accused of appropriation children of the disappeared?’

Condemned by politicians and international organisations, it has reignited the debate over freedom of speech and the role of journalists during the dictatorship. Several of the journalists named in the posters were tried at yesterday’s court.

Yesterday’s symbolic act isn’t the first time figures implicated in the dictatorship have been tried by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Previous trials have judged medical staff who worked in torture rooms and Martinez de Hoz, finance minister during the dictatorship.

Last week a judge overturned de Hoz’s pardon granted by former president Carlos Menem and ordered him not to leave the country.

Hebe de Bonafini said it wouldn’t be the last time a popular court was organised to bring justice to those who colluded with the junta. She added: “The next time, it’s going to be the judges.”

Bignone, 82, was the country’s last military ruler before the return to democracy in 1983. A Buenos Aires court found him guilty of human rights abuses committed in 1977 at the Campo de Mayo, one of the largest torture centres during the dictatorship.

During the trial, a frail looking Bignone, who had his house arrest overturned by judge Marta Milloc, had questioned the figure of 30,000 people killed during the military junta and denied the systematic adoption of babies by military personal in what he called an “irregular war”.

The tribunal found Bignone guilty of 11 forced entries, 6 robberies, 44 abductions and 8 acts of torture. Five other former military officers received sentences between 17 and 25 years. A former police official was absolved.

Around 400 members of the public had been present at the trial, silently holding black and white photos of disappeared family members above their heads. When the verdict was read out, applause broke out.

“My father would have been very happy because justice has been carried out,” said Francisco Scaraptti whose father survived the Campo de Mayo and reported the horrors of what happened there to the world. He died before seeing Bignone and his co-accused brought to justice.

Five thousand people are estimated to have passed through the Campo de Mayo.

Bignone inherited the presidency from Raúl Alfonsin, ruling from the aftermath of the 1982 Falklands war until December 1983.

During his tenure, Bignone gave an order to destroy the armed forces’ archives in a bid to cover up crimes committed by the military. 

More than 1,400 people are accused of crimes during the last dictatorship that ran between 1976 and 1983, according to the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales.

Citing legal delays and reports of corrupt judges, a recent article in the left-leaning daily Página 12 said it would take 30 years to bring to justice all those implicated in the dictatorship.

During the final military junta up to 30,000 people were abducted, tortured and murdered and as many as 500 children taken from their families.

The festival, which started 12 years ago, is set to welcome a quarter of a million visitors and organise over 1,000 screenings. Additional activities include debates with industry insiders, an outdoor cinema and free evening music concerts.

Argentina’s film industry has been growing rapidly over the last decade and now produces around 80 films a year. On March 7, El Secreto de sus Ojos, directed by Juan José Campanella – and the most popular film in Argentina in 2009 – picked up the best foreign-language film award at the Oscars in Los Angeles.

BAFICI has built up a well-respected reputation as a festival prepared to show bold, often risqué work that mainstream channels avoid.  “Generally Latin American colleagues refer to us as the most important festival in the region, at least in terms of independent cinema,” says festival programmer Fernando Chiappussi. “There are other bigger or more glamorous festivals, like Mar del Plata, Rio de Janeiro or Guadalajara, but BAFICI is very well established and is a dearly loved festival that gets a lot of attention.”

BAFICI has 19 films in its international awards category spanning countries from Romania to Singapore. Unlike the mainstream US movies that normally show in Argentina, the three American films up for an award are from indie directors tackling divorce and heroin addiction amongst other subjects.

Of the Argentina films at the 2010 edition, there are several innovative new works including Sebastián Lingiardi’s Las Pistas/ Lanhoyij /Nmitaxanaxac, a cleverly woven indigenous thriller, and El Rati Horror Show directed by Enrique Piñyera, denouncing contemporary political corruption.

The opening and closing films of the festival treat the years of military dictatorship, one set in the 1970s and the other in contemporary Argentina. So why does local cinema continue to tackle these issues from the past? “It’s an idea that’s still attractive due to its dramatic possibilities,” Chiappussi explains. “And, at the same time, it’s perceived as a burden because in the 80s many films were made documenting the repression, and [even now] Argentine cinema tends to be associated with this theme from abroad.”

Argentine cinema has received increased international attention over the past decade through a new generation of directors including Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso and Pablo Trapero.  The 12th edition of BAFICI runs until April 18.

www.bafici.gov.ar

Argentina and China are locked in a growing trade dispute after the Chinese government said it plans to boycott imports of soya oil from Argentina.

A Chinese ban on imports of soya oil could have a devastating effect on the Argentine economy.  Argentina is the biggest exporter of soya oil in the world and China is it’s biggest single customer.  In 2009 the country exported over 1.8 million tonnes of soya oil worth $1.4 billion to China.

On Monday the government formally complained to the Chinese authorities after China’s traders were told not to buy Argentine soya oil last week.

China says Argentine oil could be banned because it fails to meet new quality standards and contains excessive levels of a solvent used in processing.

The move is also seen as the latest move in a long running trade dispute between the two countries.  At the end of 2008 Argentina proposed “anti-dumping” restrictions on imports of some Chinese goods including footwear and textiles to protect domestic industries.

Demonstrators will march on the British Embassy in the capital to mark the April 2 anniversary of the Argentina’s brief occupation of the Falkland Islands during the 1982.

The march has been organised by the Asociación Civil Combatientes en Malvinas and has the backing of several trade unions.

Marches in previous years have rallied only a few hundred people but organisers are predicting many thousands will take to the streets today to show their anger over the British exploration.

Organisers are demanding the complete block of the “pirate” oil platform Ocean Guardian, operated by the UK’s Desire Petroleum and calling for a boycott of British companies within Argentina.

Two separate demonstrations will set off from different areas of Buenos Aires at 2pm today before marching towards the British Embassy in the city centre.

A British Embassy spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the specific events organised for Friday but warned British nationals to stay away from all marches.

Javier Baliana, 48, an ex-infantry soldier, called Britain an “historic enemy” of Argentina. Sitting next to a flag proclaiming ‘The Malvinas are Argentine’, he said: “Recent events don’t surprise me. I wouldn’t expect anything less from the British who continue to exploit everything. They do what they want.”

Earlier this week, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner talked of an endless fight to win back sovereignty of the sparsely populated archipelago.

The president, who will attending a memorial service in Ushuaia, southern Argentina, today, said: “The battle is going to be eternal but it is not going to be like in the past, with force.

“We’re going to put up a cultural, political and diplomatic fight on all fronts and in all forums in defence of our heritage which is not just heritage but also the management of our resources.”

Friday’s protests are scheduled despite Desire Petroleum’s announcement earlier this week that its initial explorations had revealed poor quality petroleum.

Desire is one of four British companies granted a license to drill for oil. The company is expected to give more detailed information on its finding by the end of the week.

Tensions between Argentina and Britain have reached new heights in recent months due to the exploration.

Argentina secured the backing of other South American countries recently over their Falklands claim and has also asked the UN to call the UK to talks.

Britain has insisted it will never discuss the sovereignty of the Falklands but is prepared to hold talks on oil exploration.

This article was published in The Telegraph on 1 April 2010

They say that their mission is to “spread Argentina’s position in international waters”. The group also plans to “enlighten” staff at the Argentinian offices of the Chilean airline LAN about the need to halt all flights from Chile’s mainland to the islands. It is also calling for a national boycott of all British companies and goods.

The fighting talk of the public communiqué issued by veterans last week reflects the rage of Argentina’s 30,000-strong veteran community over what they consider another act of “piracy” by Britain. “We believe that collective action… can provide an effective contribution to strengthening the capacities of our country to face the looting of our natural resources by the British aggressor,” the group says in its communiqué.

Veterans’ associations came out strongly in support of their government’s continuing diplomatic efforts to claim sovereignty over the islands in the South Atlantic. There were regular, if small-scale, protests in Buenos Aires last week, with ex-combatants and left-wing groups burning British flags and shouting their support for the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“The oil platform and the start of oil drilling is a blatant act of aggression on the part of the UK. For us it is not about the oil, it is simply about the fact that the islands are part of our territory and you should give them back,” said Juan Carlos Ianuzzo, the administrative secretary of the Association of Malvinas Veterans. “Many of us died trying to protect Argentina’s rightful sovereignty in 1982. This is just like a kick in the face for all those who died.”

The arrival of the Ocean Guardian oil rig in the waters north of the Falklands last Monday has seen tensions between Argentina and the UK rise to their highest level in almost three decades. Argentina has gained the support of Latin American states in its calls for the UK to enter into discussions over the sovereignty of the islands, an idea that London has so far rejected.

Some 649 Argentinians died during the 1982 war, with more than 300 estimated to have killed themselves since the end of the conflict. Despite decades of battling for the right to war pensions and healthcare, veterans’ associations have always backed the government’s continuing claim over the Falklands.

Last week’s communiqué reminded Argentinians that the cause of recovering the islands that they call the Malvinas from the British is part of Argentina’s national constitution.

This article was published in The Observer on 28 February 2010

Marchers took to the streets of Buenos Aires yesterday to mark the 28^th anniversary of the Falklands War, given extra impetus this year by British oil exploration off the islands’ coastline.

The rally targeted the British Embassy in the Recoleta area of Buenos Aires, although a police cordon stopped protesters a few metres short of their destination.

The march was headed by Luis D’Elía, member of the CTA trade union and leader of the Central de Movimientos Populares. He said: “If we’d met with the British ambassador, we would have wanted to say that the islands were, are and always will be Argentine.”

Several trade unions and social groups took part in the march that rallied at 2pm yesterday before heading towards the embassy. The march culminated at 4pm when the bulk of the piqueteros dispersed, many of them driven away from the scene in privately-operated buses.

One of yesterday’s veterans’ groups, Asociación Civil Combatientes en Malvinas, called for a blockade of the “pirate” oil platform Ocean Guardian, operated by the UK’s Desire Petroleum, and a boycott of British companies within Argentina.

A separate demonstration was organised by Resistencia Patriótica, two blocks from the embassy. Speaking on Thursday, founder Toni López said he planned to send a boat to the archipelago to forcibly take the islands’ back, although he wouldn’t comment on a date.

Speaking at a memorial in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, President Cristina Kirchner re-emphasised her desire to win back sovereignty of the ‘Malvinas’. She called the British presence “an exercise in colonialism, maybe one of the last of the 21^st century.”

Relations between Argentina and Britain have become increasingly strained in recent months due to offshore oil exploration undertaken by four British companies.

Whilst Britain has steadfastly refused to discuss sovereignty of the Falkands, it said it would hold talks on the oil exploration issue.

Nina Chamorro runs her finger across the montage of photos of neighbourhood children tacked to the wall of her community soup kitchen in Villa Itatí, a sprawling urban slum on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

“He is dead now. And him. And him,” says the 75-year-old grandmother, her eyes drifting sadly over grinning faces. She points to another photograph. “He was shot by the police last month. That girl disappeared. We have lost so many of our beautiful children. We knew them since they were born. They had their whole lives to live.”

Villa Itatí is only a few minutes’ drive from the more upmarket parts of Buenos Aires. Ask most people here to explain the cause of the grisly gallery in Chamorro’s kitchen and the answer will be a single word: “paco”. A toxic and highly addictive mixture of raw cocaine base cut with chemicals, glue, crushed glass and rat poison, paco is the curse of Argentina‘s urban poor. And consumption of this bastardised, low-grade drug is eating away at the vitality and hope of the most deprived neighbourhood areas of the capital.

Essentially a chemical waste product, paco is what remains from the narco-kitchens producing cocaine bound for US and European markets. Since its appearance on the streets of Buenos Aires in the late 1990s, the drug has taken a deadly grip in slums such as Itatí. ­Levels of addiction rose by more than 200% in the first part of the decade and more than 400,000 doses are now being consumed daily.

Users are witheringly referred to as the muertos vivientes – the living dead – of Buenos Aires. Addictive after one or two hits, the drug systematically destroys the nervous system. Users quickly become skeletal and ravaged, resorting to crime, violence and prostitution to feed their habits. Enormous numbers die in short order.

Villa Itatí runs on paco: an economy that is an endless, grim cycle of illicit profit, addiction-fuelled crime and wasted lives, all witnessed by a despairing generation of parents.

According to urban myth, the first paco in Argentina was sold here. Residents say narco-traffickers started flooding the neighbourhood with paco in 2005, selling hits for little more than 10p each. According to provincial government reports, an astonishing 50% of Villa Itatí’s 60,000 residents have used or are currently addicted to the drug. Across the country, 2008 government figures show that 64.9% of under-18s in addiction and treatment services are there because of paco.

Virtually no one owns a car in Villa Itatí. But in a place where there is only one source of wealth, there are stark signs of big money being made by some. Shiny black four-wheel-drives with darkened windows are parked in the unpaved street near Chamorro’s kitchen. “Paco,” says one woman, pointing to the trucks. “Those cars are what they buy with our children’s blood.”

“The dealers came here and first they targeted kids,” says one resident running a community project who didn’t want to be named. “They sold these kids hits of paco for one peso and got them hooked and now they work for them selling it in the streets. If they lose one dose, they shoot them in the legs or kill them. Families are cooking paco in their houses because it is the only way they can make money.

“This place used to be a real neighbourhood, people had work. We were poor but we were a community; now it is all crime and drugs and sewage,” says Chamorro. “There is no work, the factories all closed. Some of the women go into the city to clean rich people’s houses and a few of the men collect cardboard. But there is nothing for the young people.”

Sonia Andrade, Chamorro’s daughter who helps her run the soup kitchen, describes how she lies awake at night hearing the children of her friends scrambling across the roof “like rats” looking for things to steal.

“They are so desperate they rob everything from their families to get another hit, and when there is nothing left to take they steal from their neighbours,” says Andrade. “They didn’t have much of a chance before paco, and now they don’t have any at all.”

The scourge of paco may be the final act in the tragedy of decline in what is one of the city’s oldest and largest slums. When Chamorro started her soup kitchen more than 20 years ago she used to feed 20 or 30 people a day; now it is closer to 200. Her simple two-room soup kitchen is at the heart of the urban shanty town. It is only midday, but already the smell from “La Cava”, the huge open pit filled with household rubbish and ­sewage at the heart of the slum, is overpowering.

Andrade points to the high embankments of the highway. When it rains, she explains, water pours down the slopes and floods into the pit. The slum’s poorest families living closest to the pit find themselves knee-deep in putrid water in under an hour.

“All the children here have scabs all over their bodies, they don’t eat outside of what we give them here, they all have breathing problems,” she says. “The ­kindergarten used to give them milk and breakfast, but now the money from the government has stopped and the teachers don’t come any more.”

But however appalling the poverty, it is the growth in drug abuse that has turned the place into an urban hell.

Dr Carlos Vizzotti, director of national assistance and prevention programmes at Sedronar, the government’s agency for drug treatment, prevention and enforcement, admits the government is struggling to contain the problem of serious drug addiction in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods.

“We can’t compete with the dealers who are paying kids and families 200 pesos a day to sell and traffic paco and cocaine. We try to get them off drugs, but then we just send them back to the same problems which brought them to paco in the first place.”

The accounts of those working on the front line are unremittingly grim. Father Pepe, a missionary priest, runs addiction and poverty alleviation projects from his small, whitewashed church in another slum, Villa 21-24, close to the heart of Buenos Aires.

“Paco is a manifestation of everything that is rotten in Argentina,” he says. “It exposes the systematic and growing failure of the whole system, health, education, basic services – they are all falling to ruin. It isn’t that paco is a drug of the poor; it is that it feeds off the poverty and exclusion that was always here. Paco just shows us what lies at the heart of our country today.”

Outside the heat is searing, but inside the church is dark and cool, the walls covered in murals depicting the harsh reality of life in Argentina’s slums. The largest shows a child paco-user ­protected from the grave by angels. “Paco is a tsunami that has hit the most vulnerable. If we weren’t working here, then there would be nobody to help families fight against this. The state and wider society have washed their hands of us,” says Pepe.

Rising crime has made Villa 21-24 a byword for violence in Buenos Aires with many areas of this vast urban settlement being controlled entirely by narco-gangs. Last year Pepe was forced to ask for official protection and faced death threats after he spoke out against the traffickers and rising crime in the neighbourhood. “In the last few years we have seen many more problems with crime, with violence and guns linked to a more co-ordinated narcotics operation here in the slums. It’s an increasingly big business,” he says. “Yet the capacity of the people to prevail, to want something better, lives on, and this is what we should be supporting.”

But as Argentina gains a new unwanted status as a premier narco-trafficking route, the outlook for ­campaigners such as Pepe is bleak. ­Traditionally used mainly as a transit route to get cocaine out of Latin America to Europe, Argentina is increasingly used as a producer and consumer of cocaine and cocaine byproducts in Latin America.

Drug Enforcement Argentina, an anti-drugs pressure group, claims cocaine kitchens like those first discovered in the slums in 2006 are booming and that there are more than 1,500 clandestine airstrips bringing cocaine base into the north of the country.

Sedronar admits that porous borders, limited resources and expertise, and a lack of effective co-ordination between regional and national agencies means that Argentina is losing the battle to contain the rise of narco-trafficking into the country.

In Villa Itatí, Nina Chamorro and thousands of others like her are ­desperate that paco should disappear and their children be given the chance of a way out of the spiral of poverty and drug addiction that is destroying their future.

“We have been abandoned by the government, by everybody. They are all terrified of our children coming to their houses and taking their things, but they need hope for something better. There has to be more for them than this,” says Chamorro as she heads inside the soup kitchen. Her words are an almost certainly futile expression of despair.

This story was printed in The Observer on 21 February 2010.

The violent deaths of four inmates in Argentine prisons in the past few weeks has confirmed the ‘systematic’ violation of human rights in the country’s penal system according to human rights groups.

A new report by the Coordinating Committee against Police and Institutional Repression (CORREPI), an organisation for families of the victims of police brutality, says that the deaths of four prisoners in December exposes the violent conditions in Argentina’s jails.

CORREPI says that 33% of the 2,826 deaths linked to police brutality between 1983-2009 took place in prisons, juvenile detention centers or police holding cells.  Although a large number are attributed to suicide of fights between inmates, CORREPI says prison authorities are also culpable.

According to the group, abusive treatment in prisons occurs all over the country, but is particularly serious in the Buenos Aires province and the Western province of Mendoza.

In 2004 and 2006 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered provisional measures to be taken to protect inmates in certain prisons across both provinces.

However despite this and the Argentine state ordering the Mendoza authorities to ensure human rights were respected in its jails in 2007, Pablo Salinas, a lawyer representing some of the plaintiffs in the Argentine prison cases before the Inter-American justice system told IPS news service that the situation has not improved.

Salinas added that only one other prison in the Americas – in  Urso Branco in the Brazilian state of Rondonia -  has ever been handed a similar order from the Inter-American Court.

In his interview with IPS, Salinas says that Boulogne Sur Mer prison in Mendoza has a capacity to house 500 inmates but there are currently 1,700 people incarcerated within its walls.  Seventeen deaths of inmates were reported at the jail in 2004.

“The prison “is built over a sewer, and inmates dip their knives in the raw sewage and then attack each other. Stab wounds become infected, sometimes causing meningitis. The entire sewer system is in a state of collapse,” he said, adding that the healthcare system within the prison was like  “something out of Dante’s Inferno.”

IPS also reports that another human rights group, the non-governmental Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) has also just issued a 2009 report on human rights in Argentina which criticises prison management by local authorities in Buenos Aires province.  The report also says the provincial government has adopted prison policies that respond to societal concern over security by stiffening sentences and harsher treatment of prisoners which disregard constitutional rights.

The province’s prison population was 24,166 at the end of 2009 while the provincial government has admitted that prison capacity is no more than 17,858.