Several sick detainees have reached a critical condition, after being denied medication.
For the sixth consecutive day, the administration of Gamasa prison, in Egypt’s Dakahlia governorate, has continued its campaign of abuse against the prisoners of conscience held there.
The campaign, which began last Sunday, 12 December, has seen detainees denied medical treatment and face masks, prevented from exercising, and their rations reduced to one meal a day, and including only a small piece of bread and cheese.
The prison’s administration stripped detainees’ cells of their possessions, including clothes, personal hygiene items, food, and even medicines.
Approximately 150 detainees have been subjected to so-called “westernization”, meaning the transfer of prisoners to detention centres deliberately far from their hometowns, so as to make family visits more difficult, or impossible. The conditions in those second prisons tend to be worse for transferees.
Several sick detainees have reached a critical condition due to the denial of healthcare. A number suffer from chronic diseases and require continuous treatment, which has been denied them by prison officials.
Such campaigns of abuse are routine at Gamasa prison. Witnesses of these periodic, systematic campaigns against the prisoners-of-conscience held there report the use of physical violence against the detainees.
A group of detainees in the prison conducted a hunger strike from 7 February of this year in protest against their ill-treatment, in particular the physical and verbal humiliations they suffered – including the punitive shaving of heads – at the hands of the prison administration.
