At least 41 inmates are confirmed to have been killed after a fire raged inside a prison in Indonesia's Banten province. Government officials said Wednesday that dozens of others had also been severely injured in the blaze, which may have been caused by an electrical fault.
Indonesian law and human rights minister, Yasonna Laoly, said the fire had broken out inside a block in Tangerang Prison early Wednesday. The minister said firefighters are still investigating the cause of the blaze. He added that his office will be working with relevant agencies to bolster preventative measures to avoid such a severe incident from happening again.
Officials said two of those that were killed in the blaze were foreign nations - one from Portugal and one from South Africa. Investigators found that the prison was operating beyond its capacity when the fire broke out. More than 100 people were being kept inside a block that was designed to hold only 38 people.
The prison, which was built to house only 600 people, had more than 2,000 inmates at the time of the incident. Officials said there were only 13 guards on duty. Experts said inmates in overcrowded facilities are vulnerable to incidents such as fire and epidemics.
A fire at a prison in Indonesia killed at least 41 people and injured eight more, the authorities said, adding to the sense of crisis facing the country’s overcrowded correctional system. The cause was still under investigation. https://t.co/x1pMYr9Mbd — The New York Times (@nytimes) September 8, 2021
Prisons in the country and other developing countries are notoriously overcrowded. Experts said the proliferation of such practices is common in countries that put more emphasis on incarcerations rather than rehabilitation. Most of the people behind bars in Indonesia are there on drug-related offenses.
Prison officials said the cells were locked at the time of the fire and guards were finding it difficult to open some of the cells as the fire raged uncontrollably. A representative of the ministry's prison department said all of those that were killed were inmates.
Tangerang General Hospital officials said some of the bodies that were brought in were nearly unidentifiable because of severe burns. Some of those that had survived the blaze are now in critical condition.
Jakarta police officials said the likely cause of the fire was an electrical short circuit. Prison officials claimed that the prison's electrical wiring had not been upgraded since the 1970s.
