Imagine this – you’re walking down the street near your home on the way to the local market to buy some food. It’s hot so you’re wearing a short-sleeved shirt that shows off your muscled arms and colorful tatoos. The police stop you and ask about your tatoos – are you part of a gang? You say no, but they don’t believe you and the next thing you know you’ve been arrested and put in jail. You continue to protest your innocence but are told it will be several weeks before you’ll be able to go before a judge and tell your story.

So, through no fault of your own, you find yourself locked up in a severely overcrowded jail with thousands of others, lacking adequate food, water and basic sanitary facilities. It’s hell but you console yourself with the belief your innocence will eventually win your release. You’re lying in your cell thinking of your family and suddenly you smell smoke and hear people yelling, “FIRE”. You search for an exit, but there is none……You realize that you’re trapped……..is this how it ends for you?

Sounds like the script of a bad t.v. movie, but it was real life for hundreds of prisoners trapped in a Honduran jail this week. More than 350 people died when fire raged through an overcrowded jail near the capital, Tegucigalpa.

As reported in the Washington Post:

Family members said guards fired on prisoners to keep them from fleeing the flames, though guards and firefighters said they were shots in the air to summon help and to respond to what they thought was a prison break.

The attorney general’s office said it was investigating all angles.

“It’s impossible to believe that prisoners set the fire themselves when they too were going to die,” said Felix Armando Cardona, 56, whose son, Luis Armando Cardona, 28, died in the blaze that broke out in Comayagua prison late Tuesday night.

In Geneva, the U.N.’s human rights office said Friday that an independent probe is needed and that Honduras must prevent a recurrence since it was the third fatal prison fire in a Honduran prison in a decade.

From the time firefighters received a call at 10:59 p.m., what should have been a rescue became a catastrophe.

Only six guards were on duty, four in towers overlooking the prison and two overseeing 852 people crowded into a facility built for half that number. Some 57 percent had yet to be convicted, either awaiting trial or being held as suspected gang members, according to a government report.

Survivors said they watched helplessly as the guard who had the keys fled without unlocking their cells.

“He threw the keys on the floor in panic,” said Hector Daniel Martinez, who was being held as a homicide suspect.

Martinez said an inmate who was not locked in because he also worked as a nurse picked up the keys and, braving the scorching heat, went from one cell block to another, opening doors.

Lest one thinks these types of tragedies only happen to prisoners in other countries, let’s not forget what happened in New Orleans to the prisoners who were unfortunate enough to be locked up in the Orleans Parish Prison when Hurricane Katrina struck. In the clip below, a New Orleans law enforcement officer recounts the conditions he observed at Orleans Parish Prison in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of people, many of whom had been picked up for minor offenses were abandoned and left to die when the levees broke and the building flooded.

Similarly, James Ridway of Mother Jones talks to Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, about NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision not to evacuate the thousands of people being held on Rikers Island in preparation for Hurricane Irene.

PRISONERS ARE PEOPLE TOO!! Join the movement for Justice = OCCUPY4PRISONERS.ORG

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