The less fortunate of Vaas' prisoners, these prisoners to the right of the area where you start off in the game's first mission were most likely unwanted when ransomed off and, even worse, unwanted by the slave traders.
It's also possible that these guys were Rakyat dissidents captured by Hoyt and made an example of.
Thus, they met their cruel fate at the end of a noose, and hang in the camp as some pirate's sick idea of decor.
But the pirates have it all wrong. Everybody knows that Feng Shui dictates the corpses go to the left of the room, not the right.
