Life in prison
The prisons in Malawi are overcrowded, filthy and plagued by disease.
LILONGWE, Malawi — When Maula prison was first constructed in this east African nation more than 50 years ago, the facility was designed to hold just 800 inmates.But in the years since then, the prison population has exploded. Today, Maula houses 2,650 inmates — many of them Ethiopian migrants, seemingly detained indefinitely in harsh and unsanitary conditions.
Located in Malawi's capital Lilongwe, the prison is plagued by overcrowding, malnutrition, poor sanitation and outbreaks of disease such as scabies, skin infections and viral infections including tuberculosis, hepatitis, malaria and HIV.
Maula isn't an isolated case. About 150 miles southeast, in the city of Blantyre, lies Chichiri Prison, another large Malawi prison where inmates face many of the same issues of overcrowding, malnutrition and unsanitary conditions.
The prisons are so overcrowded that inmates huddle together on cement floors, with as little as five square feet per person.
Prisoners in the kitchen prepare about 200 pounds of beans and more than a half ton of Nsima — a Malawi staple made from cornmeal paste — each day. But with such severe overcrowding, the food is still just enough to feed prisoners once a day. The nutrition is so poor that, in a single month, Doctors Without Borders "had to treat 18 inmates for moderate to severe malnutrition."
A crackdown on Ethiopian migrants, who are crossing through the country en route to South Africa, has further burdened a prison system already suffering from inadequate resources. In July, almost 200 Ethiopian migrants were held in Maula prison — all of them housed in a single cell designed for no more than 60 people.
Zayine Dana is a 27-year-old man from Ethiopia who entered Malawi in April, 2014. He had left Ethiopia because of the food crisis and general poverty. He wanted to go to South Africa to look for a job. His friends, who were already in South Africa, sent him money for the journey. He left Ethiopia by bus and went through Kenya, Tanzania and then onward to Malawi where he was arrested for illegally entering the country. After his arrest, he was sentenced to 9 months in prison and shipped to Maula. Although his sentence was supposed to have ended in June, he was still being held in July.
Tasfaya Lanago is an 18-year-old who left Ethiopia in search of a better life. He arrived in Malawi in December, 2014 but was arrested for illegally entering the country and sentenced to 6 months in prison. He appealed to the decision and asked to be repatriated back to Ethiopia but to no avail.During his time in prison, he has developed sores because he has been forced to sleep on the concrete floor next to the pot that is used as a toilet. In general, he says, the conditions in Maula are rough: there's a lack of hygiene and not enough food.
Since June, Doctors Without Borders has established a permanent presence in the prison, with medical teams working to help the inmates at risk of contracting deadly infections, such as HIV or TB.
Many of the migrant prisoners have remained detained, even after completing their sentences. At least 160 of the detained Ethiopian migrants in Maula Prison had finished their sentences by mid-June, but remained imprisoned.But even for those who are released, returning home is not an option."We can't go back," one man says. "If we go back to Ethiopia, what could we do there? We can't work anymore. We have become too sick for any kind of work."