The Inter­na­tional Red Cross is now feed­ing Zimbabwe’s pris­on­ers to keep them from starv­ing to death. The Red Cross is feed­ing over 6,300 pris­on­ers and the num­bers are expected to rise as the Red Cross expands the aid to more cities in Zim­babwe.

Before the recent har­vest, some seven mil­lion peo­ple in Zim­babwe were receiv­ing some sort of food assis­tance. The huge amount was caused by the col­lapse of the nation’s econ­omy and the cholera out­break that killed thousands.

From the IRIN, we learn more about the Red Cross’ oper­a­tion in Zim­babwe and a doc­u­men­tary that may have helped to coax it.

Askar Umar­bekov, ICRC head of oper­a­tions in Zim­babwe, told IRIN that the pris­ons in most provinces had been sur­veyed, but declined to divulge the pris­on­ers’ state of health as all find­ings were confidential.

Pris­ons in the sec­ond city, Bul­awayo, and most other provinces had been seen by the ICRC teams, but those in and around the cap­i­tal, Harare, have yet to be visited.

A report by Zimbabwe’s Asso­ci­a­tion for Crime Pre­ven­tion and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Offender, an NGO advo­cat­ing the rights of pris­on­ers, said at least 20 inmates were dying daily in the country’s jails.

In March 2009 the South African inves­tiga­tive tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary pro­gramme, Spe­cial Assign­ment, secretly filmed con­di­tions in two of Zimbabwe’s 55 pris­ons and revealed ema­ci­ated inmates sur­viv­ing on a daily hand­ful of prison rations of sadza, or maize-meal por­ridge, the sta­ple food.

Jus­tice and Legal Affairs Min­is­ter Patrick Chi­na­masa told local media a few days before the doc­u­men­tary was broad­cast: “As I speak, the [over­all] prison pop­u­la­tion is at its low­est — 14,000; we have never been that low.” He admit­ted to poor nutri­tional lev­els, but dis­missed reports that cholera was afflict­ing inmates.

Umar­bekov said the doc­u­men­tary pro­gramme, Hell Hole, had had an impact but “was not directly linked” to the ICRC’s “offer of ser­vices made in Decem­ber 2008″ to the prison author­i­ties to assist in pro­vid­ing ade­quate nutri­tion to pris­on­ers. Food assis­tance to pris­ons started in April 2009, he said.

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