Individuals living with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia often experience stigma and discrimination in almost every aspect of their lives, from the local communities and the government. These individuals are often mistreated, stigmatized, and denied their legal rights because of their HIV/AIDS status. Additionally, many individuals with HIV/AIDS are unaware of their legal rights and therefore are more susceptible to being discriminated against and facing unfair treatment within the criminal justice system. Furthermore, the communities are themselves ill prepared to aid individuals with HIV/AIDS in legal defense representation. This lack of resources makes it extremely difficult for these individuals to exercise the rights they are guaranteed under Indonesian law.

Mr. Hernowo provides legal services to people living with HIV/AIDS and conducts community legal empowerment sessions to educate the local community on their legal rights. To facilitate this education, Mr. Hernowo delivers brochures, booklets, posters and other promotional materials to members of the community. In addition to distributing legal education materials, Mr. Hernowo trains individual community members to increase understanding of the legal materials being distributed. These trainings allow them to act as quasi-paralegals to better assist the community in dealing with criminal defense matters. Lastly, Mr. Hernowo provides legal aid services through direct representation of individuals. Mr. Hernowo’s approach empowers individuals with HIV/AIDS to understand and enforce their rights better as well as providing direct legal representation for people with HIV/AIDS.

A young child wipes the tears from her mother's eyes. The woman is recounting her story and how through JusticeMaker Marisol, she has some hope for her situation. She is currently being held in Obrajes, a women's prison in La Paz, Bolivia, along with her five youngest children. -Ruth Lloyd

The rain is pouring down outside and it is cold inside the unheated concrete room.
The room has stacked plastic chairs at one end, ancient-looking computers pushed against the wall and covered in protective plastic dust jackets.
Marisol has told us they offer classes in the room, including basic computer classes.
Marisol and Eliana Barragan, acting as a translator, sit at a small square plastic table, as women they are interviewing take take turns in seats at the table.
We have been in the prison for six hours, and it has been exhausting.
I feel cold and drained of energy, and I can tell I am becoming numb – a natural reaction perhaps to so much sadness and so much emotion.
Yet Marisol is still animated, meeting each interviewee with compassion and she listens attentively to yet another woman tell her story, a difficult story because it is a woman seeking her help with a new problem, not one of the many women Marisol has met through her Justice Makers workshops who she already works to represent.
This happens constantly while we are in the prison walls.
When Marisol leaves the room to find another of the women we are to interview, a middle-aged woman, well-dressed but walking with a cane, comes in to look for her. The inmate holds a folder full of papers, and she wants to speak to Marisol.
When we leave the room, into the common courtyard area of the prison, women approach Marisol to ask for her help with their case or specific concerns.
One woman rushes up to thank Marisol, hugging her and then us as well. Marisol has helped the woman secure a day pass in order to attend the funeral of her father, who recently passed away. The woman’s eyes are red and swollen, and she has been waiting anxiously while Marisol worked on the problem, meeting with a judge and obtaining required papers. Marisol had to cancel our morning appointment to work on the case this morning before we came to the prison, and we had then waited for her in the courthouse, as she finalized the permissions, which thankfully, she obtained.
Then we took the minibus which brought us here, to Obrajes, a women’s prison located in an upscale neighbourhood in the city of La Paz.
After handing over our cell phones and identification documents, our bags were given a quick search and we went through a second, unassuming doorway and emerged into the prison proper.
We are immediately introduced to a woman I will call Tasha, she is an elected official amongst the inmates, who helps to manage the inner workings of the prisoners, and she greets us warmly.
The open courtyard within the prison is bustling with people, inmates, visitors and children give the place a much more social and relaxed atmosphere than I had at first expected.
I have been restricted from taking photos anywhere but inside the interview room, and so I leave my camera in my bag as we watch the children play and women busy themselves.
Two women sit next to each other on the cement walkway, crocheting industriously, others chat in groups, some sit behind small kiosks, selling food, snacks and drinks.
The women in the prison can earn money at various jobs, and the women who have been there the longest usually fill these positions, creating somewhat of a hierarchy within the prison, according to Marisol and Tasha.
But we are not in the prison to learn about its inner workings or the conditions so much as we are there to speak directly to the women who Marisol has been working with, and hear their stories in person. To learn how her work teaching prisoner’s their human rights and how to work within the justice system to ensure their rights are being upheld can change these women’s lives.
Which is what we have spent the six hours within the prison doing.
Women come in, sit down and answer our questions about their situations and how Marisol’s workshops have helped them, how her assistance is changing their situation or simply their perspective, giving them something they had far too little of – hope.

A detainee wipes her eyes as Marisol (right) listens to her recount her story and the difference Marisol has made. The woman and her sister have been held on charges related to a police drug raid of her house. She had rented part of her house to a man making drugs out of desperation for money. The police raided the drug lab while her sister, who knew nothing of the illegal activity, was visiting. Both remain in prison, one year after being detained, without a trial date. -Ruth Lloyd

The only two women who remain dry-eyed in their gratitude for Marisol’s work and the recounting of their difficult circumstances are two immigrant women from Ecuador, caught for robbery after they ran out of money on their trip to Bolivia.
The two women seem defensive, and Marisol explains they are heavily discriminated against within the prison because they are not only foreigners but also because they are lesbians, and a third woman captured with them is of African descent.
But the five other women we interview all shed tears of both gratitude and pain as they speak to us.
Every woman we speak to is incredibly grateful for the help Marisol has provided them, assisting them in forwarding their cases and ensuring their rights are being upheld.
In most of the cases, Marisol is working to obtain conditional releases from pre-trial detention, which can be for as many as three years in some cases.
While there are supposed to be limits on how long prisoners can be held without trial, these limits are not always adhered to, and prisoners can be lost in the system, unaware they had the right to at least conditional release before a trial. This is the ignorance Marisol is working to change.
“When [Marisol] comes, it is joy for us,” said one women (translated).
The woman explains how before Marisol took her case, she and her sister were unsure of where to turn or what they might be able to do.
They report they were defrauded by one lawyer who promised to help, but after being paid a retainer, did nothing on their case, a reportedly common practice according to Marisol and may of the prisoners we speak to.

One of the sisters was visiting the other when a drug lab was raided in her sister’s home, in a part of the house which had been rented out to a man to help support her, as she was in debt.
The one sister was aware of the drug activity in her own home, and had reportedly taken the risk due to debt, but had not told her sister. This is what they tell us, explaining it was only tragic timing on the sister’s part to be there the night the raid took place.
“I thank God for giving me the opportunity to help you,” said Marisol (translated) to the sisters.
Some of the women admit they were first reluctant to trust Marisol because of previous warnings or experiences of unethical lawyers. But by teaching them their rights, the detainees become less reliant on the advice of lawyers and more capable of ensuring any lawyers they do hire are fulfilling their obligations. Another woman tells us how she was arrested because her husband fathered a child with his stepdaughter (the interviewee’s eldest child) and she didn’t report him. She seems to have lived in fear of him, saying he abused her, and she also had five other children at home he was the sole supporter of.
Uneducated and poor, she did not feel confident enough in the system to help her, so she and her five younger children are now in prison for her husband’s actions (he is also in prison somewhere else).
Her youngest child wipes tears from her mother’s eyes as she tells us her story.
The stories are tragic, and heart-wrenching, filled with sadness and regret and I am glad when afterwards we step back through the door and retrieve our identification and cell phones.
We have the luxury of leaving, and I am at least comforted by the knowledge Marisol will be back.

One of the women Marisol is helping gives Marisol a tearful hug before leaving the interview room after recounting her story. Each woman was not only grateful to Marisol, but also to us for hearing their stories. -Ruth Lloyd

Two sisters are helped to obtain freedom after being detained for months without trial

The younger sister, does most of the talking.
We have traveled to the “barrios” (suburbs) of El Alto, just outside La Paz, to a poor neighbourhood of dirt streets and low brick buildings, to hear the story of these women.
The one who speaks first is clearly the leader, the stronger sibling, but though she is more outspoken and forward, still she breaks into tears as she tells the story of her and her sister’s detention.
The sisters, we will call them Maria and Lydia, were arrested along with their brother.
They were in a town where they return from La Paz to do the only work they have ever known, which is harvesting the leaves of the coca plant.
They were seasonal farm workers, and went to the fields to work for two or three weeks at a time to make a marginal living.
Maria, the younger, but stronger sister, says a friend had given her two bags of coca leaves to dry, which is perfectly legal in Bolivia, where the leaves of the coca plant are distinguished from the refined hard drug cocaine. In Bolivia, there are many traditional uses for the coca leaves, and the indigenous peoples chew the leaves to relieve everything from stomach aches to altitude sickness. The mild effects of chewing the leaves or drinking them as tea, is not the same as taking the refined and illegal drug cocaine.

But while it was legal for the siblings to have coca leaves, the coca leaves they had were found to be stolen, and so the three siblings were arrested and charged with having taken the bags of leaves.
Maria said when they were with the police, she saw her friend on the street but her friend pretended not to know them, and they were taken away.
The brother, after appearing before a judge, was released after only eight hours in custody because he suffers from developmental disabilities, but he still has to sign in every two weeks, a form of conditional release.
The two sisters, however, were held for 10 months, and had been incarcerated for four months without trial when Maria attended one of Marisol’s JusticeMakers workshops in prison.

The workshops were to educate the women in the prison on their basic rights, and also about the rights of their children, some of which had changed with the new constitution in 2009. The changes were an attempt to alleviate a problem created by a predominantly machismo culture, where it was not uncommon for men to have children with women they refused to acknowledge as their own, and therefore avoid paying to support the children they had fathered.
The new constitution attempted to address the situation by allowing mothers of these children to declare the father and file for support, and put the onus now on the fathers to prove the child was not theirs by requesting paternity tests.
Both of the sisters were single mothers and Maria came to Marisol to learn how she might be able to obtain child support for her daughter. The father of Maria’s child did not acknowledge the child as his, and Lydia is separated from the father of her son.

But after Marisol helped teach them their children’s rights, she also asked them about their situation, and the women told Marisol the story of their detention.
They did not even realize before speaking to Marisol their right to a fair trial, their right to representation and their right to timely execution of the law.
Maria breaks down, wiping tears from her eyes and hugs Marisol when she reaches this part of the story, repeating how ignorant they were of even these simple things.

They had no knowledge of the law or their rights within the law.
Only through Marisol, did these women learn through a process of application and their obtaining certain documents proving they had a family, a home and a job, they could obtain conditional release until their trial.
This was an incredible relief for the younger sister, Lydia, whose son had been sent to live with his abusive father while she was in prison, and she was traumatized not only by the experience of being incarcerated, but also by the knowledge her young son may be living under very harsh conditions.

The two sisters were thankfully released after Marisol’s intervention on their behalf and assistance, and Lydia and Maria were both reunited with their children.
Maria’s 11-year-old daughter had been living with her grandmother in difficult conditions as well. The grandmother lives with her youngest daughter of about 20 and this daughter’s children whom she must care for, though the elderly grandmother herself is in poor health.
Lydia’s 11-year-old son was also returned to her from his father, and on his body, they said they saw the evidence of his treatment.
Lydia is barely able to speak she is still so sensitive to the impacts of her time in prison, and so she whispers parts of her story quietly, often looking at the floor and crying as she speaks, and Maria is worried her sister needs psychiatric help to heal from their time in prison.

The two sisters also still await a trial, which leaves the problem hanging over their heads, and Lydia lives in dread of returning to the prison and sending her son back to his father.
Marisol still helps to support the sisters as they continue to navigate the system, and hopes they soon can get a trial date so the women can get on with their lives.
She will argue for their release based on their story the leaves were given to them by a friend to dry. However, she says if the women are convicted of the theft, they would likely get two years.
While this would be unfortunate, even this would be a conclusion which then Marisol hopes would allow the women to get on with their lives which are now stalled in limbo.

Translation Spanish interviews by Eliana Barragan
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Según un estudio del Gobierno de Bolivia sobre la situación de las cárceles bolivianas, los  privados de libertad llegan a estos lugares por  robo/hurto, asalto, violación, lesiones a otras personas, por  ser consumidores de sustancias prohibidas, etc. Y de hecho, algunos de ellos están mejor dentro de la cárcel, donde encuentran descanso a las persecuciones y  agresiones vividas en el exterior. Sin embargo, también están aquellos que en el transcurso de una larga sentencia, perdieron a su familia y todo vínculo con el exterior. La liberación representa una gran angustia, pues en muchas ocasiones permanecen simplemente sentados  esperando que pase el tiempo de sus condenas. Esto implica un doble castigo, pues no sólo se someten a la pérdida de su libertad, sino también a las pésimas condiciones que existen al interior de la cárcel. Las políticas estatales  no hacen mucho para los privados de libertad, que están desamparados sin visión ni perspectiva en su vida.

Mabel y Verónica Marisol –también JusticeMaker 2011, han tenido la ocasión de encontrarse en Bolivia un par de veces (aunque viven en diferentes partes del país) y de visitar las cárceles juntas. Las prisiones están extremadamente abarrotadas y es frecuente que los detenidos pasen meses en prisión sin acceso a un abogado. Generalmente ingresan en prisión con sus familias, lo que significa que sus hijos viven ahí también en malísimas condiciones mientras sus padres cumplen con sus sentencias [véase la foto de la izquierda].

El 22% de reos en Bolivia está en Cochabamba, que cuenta con seis cárceles. Más de 1.200 muchachos viven en las prisiones bolivianas y concretamente, la situación en la cárcel de San Sebastián (Cochabamba), donde Mabel ha realizado talleres de formación, es tan infrahumana que el techo se está cayendo, tienen un baño para 650 internos, y además el preso tiene que comprarse su propia celda (entre 500 y 1.500 dólares) porque el Estado no la provee por falta de fondos.

Con su proyecto, Mabel “ha aprendido a compartir”. Dice que “parece una palabra sencilla pero encierra muchas cosas: revisar procesos, compartir experiencias, ayudarles en sus causas y encaminarse a otras, conocer a sus familias, etc.”. El objetivo de Mabel es entrenar a los profesionales que representan a los acusados para asegurar que los detenidos tienen acceso a la justicia eficazmente y proveer de formación a los acusados. De esta manera, sabrán por qué han sido detenidos, los derechos que les protegen y las obligaciones una vez que obtengan su libertad.

Dice que “el proyecto ha sido un éxito entre los internos del centro penitenciario de San Sebastián”, creó una revista con dibujos del procedimiento penal para que aprendieran más fácilmente de qué se trata, han asistido a los talleres dispuestos a aprender y realizan simulacros de juicios para que sepan actuar en los juicios orales. Según Mabel, “Lo más importante del proyecto es que son los mismos detenidos los que colaboran con los demás, puesto que la información que se les ha transmitido la replican entre sus compañeros, lo que ha efectivizado el proyecto sobre el conocimiento de sus derechos.”.

Tras su experiencia trabajando en el centro de San Sebastián, Mabel afirma que es difícil avanzar en el proceso con los profesionales, pues cada 3 meses cambian a los funcionarios de Régimen penitenciario y todo el trabajo que se realiza con ellos debe ser nuevamente repetido para los nuevos. Cree que su proyecto tendría un mayor impacto si pudiera organizar jornadas con la prensa y otras instituciones comprometidas al régimen penitenciario.

For English version, click here.

Mabel Jenny Antezana Arispe is one of the winners of the 2011 JusticeMakers competition organized by International Bridges to Justice. She graduated in Law and Politics and post-graduated in Criminology, has been a member of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights for over ten years, taught Roman Law at the Universidad Mayor de San Simon and has been a practicing lawyer in Bolivia since 1997.

According to a study by the Government of Bolivia about the situation in the Bolivian prisons, most inmates are incarcerated for robbery, assault, rape, injury to others, and for consuming illegal substances. The study also states that these inmates are better off in jail, where they are safe from persecutions and attacks outside. However, those individuals who are incarcerated for an extended period of time have the risk of losing their families and their connections to the outside world.  Lengthy detainments result in a double punishment, because the inmates not only lose their freedom, but they are also subject to terrible prison conditions. State policies do not do much for the prisoners and those who are imprisoned are rendered helpless.

Mabel and Verónica Marisol –who is a 2011 JusticeMaker too, have had the chance to visit the Bolivian prisons together. Prisons are extremely overcrowded and pretrial detainees frequently spend months in prison without access to counsel. Generally, they are taken to jail with their family, which means that children live in prisons in terrible conditions, with their parents while the parents are serving their sentences [see the picture on the left].

In Bolivia, 22% of the inmates are in Cochabamba, which has six prisons. More than 1,200 youth live in the Bolivian prisons. The San Sebastian prison (Cochabamba), is where Mabel has been organizing training workshops. The situation in San Sebastian prison is so dire that the ceiling is falling down, they have one toilet for 650 inmates, and each prisoner has to buy his own cell (between 500 and 1,500 dollars) because the State does not provide them due to a lack of funds.

With her JusticeMakers project, Mabel “has learned to share”. She says that “it looks like a simple word but it involves so many things: looking through proceedings, sharing experiences, helping them in their cases and heading towards others, meeting their families, etc.”. Mabel’s goal is to train the professionals that represent the accused in order to ensure that detainees have access to justice effectively and to provide training to the accused. The goal is that detainees will know why they were arrested, the rights that protect them and their obligations once they are free.

She says that “the project has been a success for the inmates in the penitentiary centre of San Sebastian”. At San Sebastian, Mabel has distributed a pamphlet with pictures of the penal procedures to educate inmates on the proccess. She also gave workshops on the penal process at the prison and the attendees were very willing to learn. She conducted judgment drills as well, to  to train inmates on how to behave at a court proceeding. According to Mabel, “The most important part of the Project is that the detainees are the ones that collaborate with the rest, since the information transmitted passes around the others, which made the project effective about knowledge of their rights.”.

After her experience working in the centre of San Sebastian, Mabel says that it is difficult to move forward in the course with the professionals because the prison officers would be replaced every 3 months so all the work that she carried out with them needs to be repeated over again on the new ones. She believes, though, that her project would have a bigger impact if she could organize conferences with the press and other institutions committed to the penitentiary system.

2011 JusticeMakers Mª Paz Martínez Irigotia

María de la Paz Martínez Irigoitia  is one of the winners of the 2011 JusticeMakers competition organized by International Bridges to Justice. She has been a practicing lawyer in Paraguay since 1997, is currently the Political law I and II Professor at Universidad Catolica and also writing her doctoral thesis on the “Current Problems of Penal Law” for the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain.

María de la Paz is a Criminal Public Defender for adults (individuals who are 18-plus years), and she works in Paraguay, Asuncion. Last 15th of September, the Law No. 4.431/11 came into force in Paraguay, changing the article 245 of the Criminal Procedure Code. This Law prohibits the use of alternatives to detention for individuals who have prior convictions and have been arrested on a new case, but have not been convicted. This has resulted in a disproportionate increase of the prison population. The male prison houses 3,051 inmates, with 2097 pretrial detainees and 954 convicted. The women’s prison has a population of 199 inmates, of which 127 are pretrial detainees and 72 convicted. Prison overpopulation -and consequently, the poor health conditions-   has been a major problem for decades. Inmates are often economically disadvantaged, from extreme poverty to lower middle class, and most of them have not completed primary education. Many of them have had multiple experiences with the criminal justice system and are unemployed or underemployed.

The main subject of her JusticeMakers Project is the access to justice through strategic alliances between lawyers and doctors. Her goal within the next months is to get at least two doctors to be part of her project. She considers it important to work together as a lawyer, technically collaborating in the public legal field where they might eventually be useful to each other. It is critical that lawyers join the project, since the rights to health and healthy eating are often violated in this prisons. In addition, tuberculosis is the most common disease among inmates, which is highly contagious in such crowded conditions.

Maria de la Paz says that the help of doctors on the lawyers’ work has led to “a clear emphasis on lightness of the defendants, quicker justice, less vulnerability to their situation, faster resolution of cases, as well as a fight against impunity for torture and abuse.” María de la Paz is proud of having started through her work a crucial approach between two institutions that never had contact or worked together before, and to facilitate a platform so in the future they can keep collaborating and working together, such as the Public Defender’s Office and the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University.

2011 JusticeMakers Mª Paz Martínez Irigotia

María de la Paz Martínez Irigoitia es una de nuestros ganadores del concurso JusticeMakers 2011 organizado por International Bridges to Justice. Ha sido abogada practicante en Paraguay desde 1997, trabaja como Profesora responsable de Derecho Político I y II en la Universidad Católica y también está haciendo su doctorado sobre “Los problemas actuales del Derecho Penal” para la Universidad de Salamanca, España.

María de la Paz es Defensora Pública Penal de adultos (desde 18 años), y su área de trabajo es la capital de Paraguay, Asunción. El pasado 15 de septiembre de este mismo año, entró en vigor en Paraguay la ley Nº  4.431/11, que modifica el artículo 245 del Código Procesal Penal. Esta Ley prohíbe la aplicación de medidas alternativas a la prisión preventiva a las personas que sean reincidentes, es decir, que tengan procesos penales pendientes, aunque no estén condenados. Esto hace que se aumente de manera desmedida la población carcelaria. De hecho, la cárcel de varones cuenta con una población de 3.051 internos, entre ellos 2.097 procesados y 954 condenados. La cárcel de mujeres tiene una población de 199 internas, 127 procesadas y 72 condenadas. Por tanto, la superpoblación –y como consecuencia, las pésimas condiciones sanitarias- ha sido un problema capital durante décadas. Estas personas suelen ser de escasos recursos económicos, desde la extrema pobreza hasta incluso personas de clase media baja, la mayoría no tiene terminada la educación primaria básica y su nivel cultural también es muy precario. Muchos son reincidentes, ya han pasado por el sistema penal; y otros muchos son personas sin empleo o subempleadas.

El tema principal de su Proyecto JusticeMakers es concretamente el acceso a la justicia a través de alianzas estratégicas entre abogados y doctores. Su objetivo en los próximos meses es conseguir al menos dos doctores para que sean parte de su proyecto. Considera importante trabajar con ellos como abogada, colaborando técnicamente en el campo legal público donde podrían ser útiles respectivamente. Ya ha necesitado de su ayuda previamente, pues se vulneran frecuentemente el derecho a la salud y a una alimentación sana, entre otros. Además, la tuberculosis es la enfermedad más frecuente entre los internos, la cual por las condiciones de aglomeración es altamente contagiosa.

María de la Paz afirma que la ayuda de los médicos junto al trabajo de los abogados ha llevado a “una clara ligereza de atención a los defendidos, pronta justicia, menor vulnerabilidad ante su situación, mayor celeridad en la resolución de las causas, así como una lucha contra la impunidad de casos de tortura y malos tratos”. María de la Paz está orgullosa de haber iniciado a través de su gestión un acercamiento crucial entre dos instituciones que no tuvieron antecedentes de contacto ni trabajo conjunto, y posibilitar una plataforma para que en un futuro puedan seguir colaborando y trabajar conjuntamente, como es la Defensoría Pública y la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de la Universidad Nacional.

For English version, click here.

2011 JusticeMaker Adriana Patricia Castaño Román

Adriana Patricia Castaño es una de nuestros ganadores del concurso JusticeMakers 2011 organizado por International Bridges to Justice. Lleva años trabajando como abogada, particularmente en el campo de los derechos de los jóvenes en la ciudad de Medellín (Colombia). Es activista de la Red Juvenil de Medellín desde 1996 y anteriormente participó en grupos de juventud en el noroeste de Medellín, en actividades de comunidad, y en organizaciones de participación ciudadana que trabajan para el cambio social.

Patricia ha estado organizando actividades para abogados de defensa penal con el objetivo de mejorar sus habilidades legales, pero también entre los estudiantes y grupos jóvenes según la parte de la sociedad que representen (tribus urbanas). Con el proyecto, vio que las personas no tienen un conocimiento claro sobre la legislación actual, lo que propicia  que los agentes puedan abusar de su autoridad sin recibir ninguna resistencia por parte de la población en general. Aunque este tipo de detenciones se presentan en todos los barrios de la ciudad, se observan sectores críticos donde las detenciones son continuas y dirigidas a un tipo de público en especial, como por ejemplo jóvenes salidos del estereotipo de la sociedad cotidiana.

Medellín es una de las ciudades del país con más decretos que limitan la movilización, dirigidos a disminuir la protesta social o la circulación de jóvenes a determinadas horas. La policía, en su tarea por “limpiar la ciudad”, ya ha logrado desplazar a los jóvenes de ciertos sectores, son perseguidos de manera permanente. El derecho a la libertad personal frente a detenciones arbitrarias es un problema en Colombia. Es una violación de derechos humanos cotidiano que parece no ser atendido porque los sujetos víctimas representan el sector “marginal” de sociedad capitalista.

En la ciudad de Medellín, donde nuestra JusticeMaker Patricia ha implementado su proyecto, el motivo para realizar una detención administrativa es la sospecha. Y normalmente, los “sospechosos” o “raros” son los jóvenes que por su apariencia física no corresponden al “patrón normal” establecido (piercings, tatuajes, tribus urbanas…); los que pertenecen a sectores socioeconómicos bajos de la población; los que se dedican a actividades artísticas en la calle (cantantes, vendedores ambulantes…); etc. Son movimientos de detención administrativa abiertamente inconstitucionales y violan derechos fundamentales como la libertad de expresión, la igualdad, la libertad de conciencia, la libre circulación.

La creación de un grupo de trabajo amplio conformado por abogadas/as unido a la buena aceptación de las personas de la ciudad hace que el proyecto tenga muy buenas expectativas en su continuidad y duración en el tiempo por ser la libertad la que siempre está en riesgo en sistemas de corte autoritarios. Han publicado también un blog en internet que contiene las detenciones arbitrarias más recientes en Colombia.

Uno de los objetivos de Patricia es incrementar las denuncias de detenciones arbitrarias y que la gente aprenda cuáles son los límites de la Policía, que conozcan sus derechos para defender su libertad, y que sepan que existen estrategias legales que han de ser aplicadas cuando las detenciones son ilegales. Después de su Proyecto, cuyo fin principal es detener el abuso y las restricciones al derecho de libertad personal de las víctimas jóvenes en Medellín, su idea es seguir trabajando con abogados para proveer servicios a estas personas víctimas de la  detención arbitraria, desde el primer momento del arresto hasta el final del proceso.

International Bridges to Justice agradece su trabajo en hacer respetar el derecho a la libertad de expresión, en contra de las detenciones arbitrarias llevadas a cabo en el ejercicio del mismo. Gracias a activistas como ella, nos acercamos al fin de la injusticia en el mundo.

For English version, click here.

2011 JusticeMaker Adriana Patricia Castaño Román

Adriana Patricia Castaño is one of the winners of the 2011 JusticeMakers competition organized by International Bridges to Justice. She has worked as a defender for years, particularly in the field of the rights of youth in the city of Medellin (Colombia). She has been an activist for the Red Juvenil of Medellin since 1996, and previously a participant in youth groups in the north-west of Medellin, in community activities, and in grass-roots organizations working for social change.

Patricia has been organizing trainings for criminal defense lawyers to improve integral legal skills. She has also done outreach to students and young groups. With her JusticeMakers project, she has seen that many individuals do not have a clear knowledge about current legislation, which allows police officers to take advantage of their authority without getting any resistance from the population in general. Although this kind of detention happens in all the neighborhoods of the city, there are some critical areas where detentions are common and aimed at a particular type of public, such as young people who do not fit the stereotype of the everyday society.

Medellin is one of the cities in the country with the most decrees that limit the mobilization, aimed to reduce the social protests. The police, in their effort to “clean up the city”, have already succeeded in displacing young people in many  areas. The right to personal freedom against arbitrary detentions is a major in Colombia. It is an everyday violation of human rights that does not seem to be treated because the victims represent the “marginal” sector of the capitalist society.

In the city of Medellin, where Patricia has implemented her project, suspicion is enough for the police to admistratively detain someone. Often, the “suspect” is a young person who by his or her physical appearance, does not fit in the “normal pattern” set by the society (youth who have piercings, tattoos or interact with certain social groups). Individuals from low socio-economic sectors of the population are also targeted, as well as those that do artistic activities in the street (singers, street vendors). These detentions are unconstitutional movements of administrative detentions and violate fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, equality, freedom of conscience and freedom of movement.

The creation of a big team formed by lawyers, with the acceptance of the citizens, helps the project to have high expectations to continue working and last in time because freedom is constantly at risk in the authoritarian systems. They also published a blog on the internet that contains the recent arbitrary detentions in Colombia.

One of Patricia’s goals is to increase the reports against arbitrary detentions and that people learn what the limits of the police are their rights to defend their freedom, and that there are legal strategies to be applied when detentions are illegal. After her Project, of which the main aim was to stop abuse and restrictions to the right to personal freedom of young victims in Medellin, her goal is to keep working with lawyers to provide services to these victims of arbitrary detention, from the first stage of their arrest to the completion of prosecution.