A/64/215 are kept for several months in a dark cell, shackled and handcuffed, and may only be visited by one family member before they are executed. In Abkhazia, Georgia, the Special Rapporteur found a woman in an overcrowded cell who had already spent several years on death row without being able to leave her bed because she was paralysed. In Togo, the Special Rapporteur discovered three detainees with serious mental disabilities who were simply left unattended in a dark cell. In Chinese “re-education through labour” camps, Falun Gong practitioners and other “asocial individuals” are kept for years without any judicial proceedings and are subjected to various psychological and physical “re-education” measures that can only be regarded as brainwashing. In the Al-Jafr prison in Jordan, which was closed after the Special Rapporteur visited; in Bogambara prison in Kandy, Sri Lanka; in the juvenile prison of Kutoarjo in Indonesia; and in the children’s temporary isolation and adaptation centres of Karaganda in Kazakhstan, as in many other places of detention around the world, corporal punishment constitutes a routine sanction for any violation of the institution’s rules and is often applied as a reprisal against detainees who complain about inhuman conditions. In the infamous Libertad prison in Uruguay, hundreds of convicts and pretrial detainees spent several months or even years in tiny metal boxes called “las latas” (tin cans) in conditions so appalling that it is difficult to describe them. The sewerage system was not functioning; detainees used the water in the toilets for drinking and plastic bags which they later threw outside their cells for defecation; during the summer the heat in these metal boxes might reach 60° C; there was little ventilation, and detainees had to sit in shifts in front of tiny openings to breathe; they had to cut themselves in order to get attention and medical assistance; the noise and smell were unbearable and must be regarded as inhuman, even for the prison guards working there. 45. The Special Rapporteur could cite many more examples of inhuman and degrading conditions of detention to which many detainees in a large number of countries around the world are subjected. When he asks them about their worst experiences, they usually do not refer primarily to practices of torture during police custody but to the fact that they feel powerless, that they do not have enough to eat, that they do not receive medical treatment even for serious diseases, that the possibilities of being visited by their families are heavily restricted and that they are subjected to inter-prisoner violence, discrimination and exploitation, as well as to corporal punishment and other forms of inhuman and degrading treatment by prison guards. 46. The fact that detainees are locked away from society also means that society is prevented from knowing the truth about life behind bars. Many detainees feel that society has forgotten them and that nobody is interested in their fate. In fact, most people have never seen a place of detention from inside and are not really interested to know what is going on in closed institutions. To justify their lack of empathy with detainees, they hold that “since these people are behind bars, they must have done something wrong and deserve to be treated that way”. The Special Rapporteur is time and again asked why he seems to be more concerned with the human rights of criminals than with the human rights of victims of crime. 09-43792 11