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Doctor's Book Describes Horror in Paris Jail

Mila Parot Zubimendi.

"I had to break the law of silence, to tell things that are hard to bear. Nobody takes note of what goes on behind prison walls," doctor Veronique Vasseur told the French daily Le Figaro this month. Vasseur is the chief doctor at the maximum security Prison de la Sante since 1992. Her book, `Chief Doctor at La Sante Prison,' published this month in France, tells about the hidden world of horrors in a country that prides itself as a standard bearer of human rights. Vasseur's book, an account of her work, describes life for all prisoners as marked by overcrowding, lack of privacy, appalling sanitary conditions and rape. Except for the French celebrities serving time in this 19th century complex, all of whom have better living conditions that other, less famous detainees, convicted prisoners as well as those awaiting trial are crammed into separate wings with up to four people to a cell. At La Sante, whose name means "Health" and was formerly a hospital, skin diseases are the norm, self-mutilation and suicide are common, and the weak is victimized by rackets and rapes.

Indeed, Vasseur's courage to denounce the inhumane conditions at La Sante should be praised. But this lack of respect for basic human rights at La Sante and other prisons in the French state with similar conditions has been denounced by the Basque political prisoners and their families who for many years have let the government know that in France, the punishment inflicted on the detainees does not stop at the privation of freedom. Their complaints have been consistently ignored by the government and, unlike Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, investigated and denounced by the International Prison Observatory (OIP) which refers to the ETA detainees as political prisoners.

"I have tears in my eyes," Vasseur writes. She had just learned the prisoners are sent to La Sante in tiny cubicles in the back of trucks. "Like cattle." I wish Vasseur had read the OIP annual reports; or listened to Frederik Haranburu before he was treated with two free brain surgeries.

Nabarra, January 25, 2000

Mila Parot Zubimendi is a law student and environmental activist. She lives in Miarritze, Lapurdi.