Home > New Caledonian union leader set free from ‘inhumane’ jail

New Caledonian union leader set free from ‘inhumane’ jail

by Open-Publishing - Monday 18 January 2010

Edito Trade unions Prison France

New Caledonia’s pro-independence USTKE (Union of Kanak and Exploited Workers) union leader Gérard Jodar has been granted release from a nine-month jail sentence he was serving for disrupting air traffic during violent clashes on the tarmac of the Magenta domestic airport late May 2009.

The ruling was handed down by an Appeals Court in New Caledonia’s capital Nouméa, local media reported.

Mid-September 2009, a former appeal ruling reduced Jodar’s initial
sentence of 12 to nine months.

Since the hard-line union leader has been jailed, co-leaders and sympathisers have remained mobilised, demanding his release.

Further support came last week when a prominent figure in the French political and activist spectrum, José Bové, a long-time USTKE ally and supporter, led a visit of European MPs to New Caledonia’s prison, which has come under heavy criticism over the past few months for a record in breakouts and particularly poor living conditions characterised by a blatant overcrowding.

Jodar’s imprisonment in Nouméa’s Camp-Est prison is also perceived to have brought those conditions, denounced for years by both prisoners and guards, under the spotlight.

Jodar’s release also coincides with an interview of French Justice Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, published on Thursday in the local daily, Les Nouvelles Calédonnienes.

Fact-finding mission
In the interview, the minister, who has also recently ordered a fact-finding mission to be sent to New Caledonia to inspect the Camp-Est, says the living conditions there were “unacceptable”.

The Camp-Est (East Camp) has seen a record 18 escapes over the past 12 months.

In a letter sent last month to the French Prisons Administrations, Alliot-Marie said there was a need for a feasibility study prior to a possible “heavy restructuring” exercise for the French Pacific territory’s overcrowded jailhouse.

This, she wrote, would involve “further commitments” to reach the objectives of New Caledonia’s corrective policies and could also materialise by a significant increase of the jail’s capacity, depending on recommendations of a fact-finding mission from the French Penitentiary Administration to be sent shortly to New Caledonia.

The three-strong mission is to be led by the Head of Security of French prisons.

Earlier commitments include a reinforcement of the surrounding walls and the installation of new surveillance video cameras.

The French minister stressed that for 2009 only, around US$10 million had been spent on New Caledonia’s jail, mainly to improve standards.

Nouméa’s jail, which started to be built for the purposes of forced labour under New Caledonia’s 19th century penal colony regime, was designed for a maximum 192 inmates.

It is currently believed to have more than 430 “guests”.

Damning report
Locally, the Camp-Est has also been recently dubbed “prison break” – in a direct reference to the popular American TV series.

Just before Christmas, up to a hundred people took to the streets of Nouméa to protest against the jail’s poor living conditions.

Early ilast month, the International Observatory for Prisons expressed once again serious concern about the living conditions in Nouméa’s cells, saying they were far from respecting the basic norms of human dignity.

This included food and hygiene.

“Camp-Est is a reflection of the worst in terms of detention. This prisons is concentrating all the negative points that are also found in many of French prisons, only in much higher proportions,” International Observatory for Prisons member François Bès wrote in a damning report.

The eventual target would be to build a whole new corrections centre, outside Nouméa, with a capacity to hold up to five hundred inmates, but this is currently not envisaged to eventuate before 2016, a recent call for tender revealed.

High suicide rate

Prior to this unprecedented wave of escapes, Camp-Est also made the headlines over the past five years due to a rising number of suicides.

Most of the victims chose to hang themselves.

New Caledonia’s Human Rights League (LDHNC) President Elie Poigoune said in a release in January 2005 that “in spite of their sentence, prisoners are human beings and they have the right to human prison conditions”.

Poigoune also called on the French central government and local New Caledonia authorities to be more concerned about this situation and to “take the necessary steps so that prisoners are detained in normal conditions, according to legislations and in the respect of their humanity”.

The local human rights campaigner says this wave of suicides could be due to overcrowding in the local jail, “which leads to a deterioration of hygiene and health”, but also to under-staffing and lack of psychological assistance available to detainees.

Prison staff union Force Ouvrière (FO) secretary general Claude Cortes also agreed at the time.

Ethnic Melanesian Kanaks make up for 80 percent of the prison’s current population.

But the jail also serves for offenders from Wallis and Futuna, where there is no prison.

‘Inhumane conditions’
“These are really inhumane conditions. It’s like going back to the time of the penal colony”, an unnamed prison guard who wanted to remain anonymous told the local daily in October 2004.

“They are jammed all day in those cells, for or five per cell, and the ventilation system is not optimal. This is hell for them, especially in the hot season,” another guard said.

“What is really at stake here is our own security and that of the inmates,” he added.

The deteriorating conditions have also been underlined by the local prison wardens union and a visiting high-level French official, who had also expressed shock at the prisoners’ living conditions.

Back in 2003, New Caledonia’s then territorial, President Frogier, was in France to plead for French authorities to build a new prison and replace the old, overcrowded facility of Camp-Est.

“The Camp-Est was built in the penal colony days, around 150 years ago,” Frogier stressed.

At that time, New Caledonia was primarily a remote forced labour facility where political prisoners such as Louise Michel and other ring leaders of the Paris Commune rebellion movement had been sent.

“Of course, since then, some upgrading has taken place, but we definitely need new buildings … All I can say is that working conditions for prison wardens and detention conditions for prisoners are no longer acceptable,” he said at the time.

http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2010/01/new-caledonian-union-leader-set-free-from-inhumane-jail/