Putin's "torture colonies"

[eskachig]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120285342959463383.html


Putin's Torture Colonies
By BRET STEPHENS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
February 13, 2008

"The protest began after OMON [riot police] had been brought to correctional colony No. 5 (Amur Oblast, Skovorodino Rayon, village Takhtamygda) and started massive beatings of the prisoners. People in camouflage and masks were beating with batons inmates taken outside undressed in the freezing cold....As a protest, 39 prisoners immediately cut their veins open.

"Next day, on 17 January, the 'special operation' was repeated in an even more humiliating and massive form. At that time, about 700 inmates cut their veins open...."

The description here comes from a report received by the Moscow-based Foundation for Defense of Rights of Prisoners. The time reference is to 2008 -- that is, last month. This is not Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Russia. It's Vladimir Putin's. And correctional colony No. 5, located not far from the Manchurian border, does not even make the list of the worst penal colonies in the country.

That distinction belongs to the newly revived institution of Pytochnye kolonii, or torture colonies. After all but disappearing in the 1990s under the liberal regime of Boris Yeltsin, there are now about 50 pytochnye kolonii among the roughly 700 colonies that house the bulk of Russia's convict population, according to FDRP cofounder Lev Ponomarev. And while they cannot be compared to the Soviet Gulag in terms of scope or the percentage of prisoners who are innocent of any real crime, they are fast approaching it in terms of sheer cruelty.

The cruelty to prisoners often begins prior to their actual sentencing. "When people are transported from prisons to courts to attend their hearings, they are jammed in a tiny room where they can barely stand. There's no toilet; if they have to relieve themselves, it has to be right there," says Mr. Ponomarev. "Then they are put on trucks. It's extremely cold in winter, extremely hot in summer, no ventilation, no heating. These are basically metal containers. They have to be there for hours. Healthy people are held together with people with tuberculosis, creating a breeding ground for the disease."

Once sentenced, prisoners are transported in packed train wagons to distant correctional colonies that, under Russian law, range from relatively lax "general regime" colonies to "strict," "special," and (most terrifying of all) "medical" colonies. Arrival in the camps is particularly harrowing. According to prisoner testimonies collected by Mr. Ponomarev, in the winter of 2005 convicts from one torture colony in Karelia, near the Finnish border, were shipped to the IK-1 torture colony near the village of Yagul, in the Udmurt Republic, about 500 miles east of Moscow.

"The receipt of convicts 'through the corridor' takes place in the following manner," Mr. Ponomarev reports. "From the [truck] in which a newly arrived stage [of prisoners] is brought...employees of the colony line up, equipped with special means -- rubber truncheons and dog handlers with work dogs....During the time of the run, each employee hits the prisoner running by with a truncheon....The convicts run with luggage, which significantly complicates the run. At those [places] where employees with dogs are found, the run of the convict is slowed by a dog lunging from the leash."

The prison gantlet is just the welcome mat. At IK-1, a prisoner with a broken leg named Zurab Baroyan made the mistake of testifying to conditions at the colony to a staff representative of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Russian Federation. "After this," Mr. Baroyan reported, the commandant of the colony "threatened to rot me in the dungeon. They did not complete treating me in the hospital. The leg festers [and] pus runs from the bandage...The festering has crossed over to the second leg."

Not surprisingly, suicide attempts at these colonies are common. One convict, named Mishchikin, sought to commit suicide by swallowing "a wire and nails tied together crosswise." As punishment, he was denied medical assistance for 12 days. Another convict, named Fargiyev, was held in handcuffs for 52 days after stabbing himself; he never fully recovered motor function in his hands.

As a legal matter, the torture colonies don't even exist, and Mr. Ponomarev doubts there has ever been an explicit directive from Mr. Putin ordering the kind of treatment they mete. Rather, for the most part the standards of punishment are determined at the whim of colony commandants, often in areas where the traditions of the Gulag never went away.

That doesn't excuse the Kremlin, however. Under Yeltsin, the prison system had operated under a sunshine policy, as part of a larger effort to distance Russia from its Soviet past. "But when Putin came to power, a new tone was set," Mr. Ponomarev says. "The sadists who had previously been 'behaving' simply stopped behaving."

Now reports of torture are systematically ignored or suppressed while regional governments refuse to act on evidence of abuse. Commandants at "general regime" colonies can always threaten misbehaving convicts with transfer to a torture colony -- a useful way of keeping them in line. The Kremlin, too, benefits from the implied threat. "The correct word for this is Gulag, even if it's on a smaller scale," warns Mr. Ponomarev. "This is the reappearance of totalitarianism in the state. Unless we eradicate it, it will spread throughout the entire country."

Readers interested in a closer look at what is described above may do a YouTube search for "Yekaterinaburg Prison Camp." The short video, apparently filmed by a prison guard and delivered anonymously to Mr. Ponomarev's organization, is a modern-day version of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." It isn't easy to watch. But it is an invaluable window on what Russia has become in the Age of Putin, Person of the Year.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com.

Graphic warning.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kOmCdMcZz80

I don't even know what to say. This is beyond words. In general these people are actual criminals with relatively few political prisoners. But nonetheless this is not a sign of improvements in Russia.

[Frutzel]

If you find that shocking than dude....let's hope you won't see something about Guantanamo! It's disgusting but things like that happen all the time.....not only in Russia but in the whole world!

[eskachig]

If you find that shocking than dude....let's hope you won't see something about Guantanamo! It's disgusting but things like that happen all the time.....not only in Russia but in the whole world!I'm pretty confident that doesn't take place at Guantanamo. The big difference is that a lot of the Gitmo have never been charged with a crime, but I don't think they are abused in this kind of systematic fashion.

This is a preventative action.

[VPR]

i have a question - how do videos like these end up on the internet?


now the analysis -

there are about 3.5 million crimes every year in Russia, i read that on the russian news website, not sure if it includes all the possible crimes or some specific ones

the number is staggering, people in jail are not good people, perhaps this kind if treatment will persuade them to change simply of fear of getting into prison once again, because there are many criminals that repeat their offenses over and over

perhaps this is a solution, perhaps not

[asch]

article is full of BS.
1. author must familiarize himself to roles of milicia (police) and OMON. it can help him not to become so surprised with introduction of OMON to prisoners.
2. "strict" colonies is not for ordinary prisoners. recidive murderers, rapists, highly motivated thief groups, organized crime. there is no sheeps in wolf's hide, vice versa.
3. FDRP is a pretty mighty organization, yet highly corrupted. expensive cars and ****. and those money come right from penal system.

[Invisigoth]

Yeah, so if you are a bad person that justifies you being ill-treated, tortured and maimed. I've heard that before but unfortunately that's not how justice works.

[asch]

Yeah, so if you are a bad person that justifies you being ill-treated, tortured and maimed. I've heard that before but unfortunately that's not how justice works.

my point is whole situation is not connected to our current leadership. it's system (corrupt, yup) as it works.
p.s. Yeltsyn times was much-much harder. despite author ramblings.

[VPR]

Yeah, so if you are a bad person that justifies you being ill-treated, tortured and maimed. I've heard that before but unfortunately that's not how justice works.

why not? he could be a killer, now he gets a fair treatment

[avedis]

graphic video....no blood or killing

http://www.nothingtoxic.com/media/1203048215/Why_You_Never_Want_to_be_in_a_Russian_Jail

[Miles.]

So its "Russia's 'torture colonies.'"


*Whew.* Glad we got that cleared up.

:roll:

[FutureGrunt]

Well, hmm, if it is a riot police then maybe there is a REASON for them to be there? Looks like they were strip searching prisoners, actually, can anybody clarify that? Riots in prisons are no joke, most of the people got absolutely nothing to lose.

[Xaito]

Well, hmm, if it is a riot police then maybe there is a REASON for them to be there? Looks like they were strip searching prisoners, actually, can anybody clarify that? Riots in prisons are no joke, most of the people got absolutely nothing to lose.

could be - nothing is said in the video.

[eskachig]

Well, hmm, if it is a riot police then maybe there is a REASON for them to be there? Looks like they were strip searching prisoners, actually, can anybody clarify that? Riots in prisons are no joke, most of the people got absolutely nothing to lose.They were beating unresisting people. This isn't about a riot, and as I said, this was a preventative action.

my point is whole situation is not connected to our current leadership. it's system (corrupt, yup) as it works.
p.s. Yeltsyn times was much-much harder. despite author ramblings.I have a hard time believing that Kremlin is unaware of this sort of treatment.

[Createdeemcee]

Man too bad its gone, sounded worth watching.

:roll:

Avedis cleared it all up. Absolutely Brutal!

[Dercius]

Seems that they were searching for weapons, drugs or whatever. Perhaps there was a mutiny before. As there is no info or context behind this video I dont know what is all those beatings about. Anyway, dont know why people gets so surprised, because this happens in every country around the world, even in the states.

[Miles.]

That being assumed, the people in that video were not resisting (fighting back).

One of the cocksucking riot police was twirling his baton. Is he twirling it to search for drugs, or because he's a sadistic piece of ****?

[Dominique]

If you find that shocking than dude....let's hope you won't see something about Guantanamo! It's disgusting but things like that happen all the time.....not only in Russia but in the whole world!

Well we all "know" how horrible the conditions at GITMO are. You ever been to GITMO there speedy? Or are you basing your comments off of the many internet rumors and BS propaganda you read on the net?

[markjh]

If you find that shocking than dude....let's hope you won't see something about Guantanamo! It's disgusting but things like that happen all the time.....not only in Russia but in the whole world!

Ah the pointless America-Bashing again :cantbeli:


Guantanamo better than Belgian prisons: OSCE expert
Inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison are treated better than in Belgian jails, an expert for Europe's biggest security organisation said after a visit to the controversial US detention centre.

But Alain Grignard, the deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit, said holding people for many years without telling them what would happen to them is in itself "mental torture".

"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," Mr Grignard said.

He served as expert on a visit to Guantanamo Bay last week by a group of lawmakers from the assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE).

Australian David Hicks has been detained at Guantanamo for more than four years.

Mr Grignard's comments came less than a month after a United Nations' report said that Guantanamo prison detainees faced treatment amounting to torture.

Many of the 500 inmates in the prison at the US naval base in Cuba have been held for four years without trial. The prisoners were mainly detained in Afghanistan and are held as part of President George W Bush's "war on terror".

Mr Grignard says prisoners' rights to practise their religion, food, clothes and medical care were better than in Belgian prisons.

"I know no Belgian prison where each inmate receives its Muslim kit," Mr Grignard said.

He says that while Guantanamo was not "idyllic", he had noticed dramatic improvements each time he visited the facility during the past two years.

The head of the OSCE lawmakers in the delegation said she was happy with the medical facilities at the camp, adding she believed they had been improved recently.

Anne-Marie Lizin, the chairwoman of the Belgian Senate, said she saw no point in calling for immediate closure of the detention camp.

"There needs to be a timetable for closure," she said.

UN investigators last month demanded that the US Government close the prison without further delay, alleging a host of violations of human rights and torture.

They did not visit the site because they were not allowed to conduct interviews with the prisoners.

Ms Lizin said the OSCE parliamentary delegation was also unable to talk to prisoners but had discussed the situation with the International Red Cross, which has access to them.

The OSCE plans to prepare a report by the end of May, touching on the delegation's concerns, including the legal situation of detainees.

The United States is a member of the 55-country OSCE.

-*******
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200603/s1585574.htm

[GodlessAmerica!]

Putin's Torture Colonies
By BRET STEPHENS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
February 13, 2008

"The protest began after OMON [riot police] had been brought to correctional colony No. 5 (Amur Oblast, Skovorodino Rayon, village Takhtamygda) and started massive beatings of the prisoners. People in camouflage and masks were beating with batons inmates taken outside undressed in the freezing cold....As a protest, 39 prisoners immediately cut their veins open.

"Next day, on 17 January, the 'special operation' was repeated in an even more humiliating and massive form. At that time, about 700 inmates cut their veins open...."

The description here comes from a report received by the Moscow-based Foundation for Defense of Rights of Prisoners. The time reference is to 2008 -- that is, last month. This is not Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Russia. It's Vladimir Putin's. And correctional colony No. 5, located not far from the Manchurian border, does not even make the list of the worst penal colonies in the country.

That distinction belongs to the newly revived institution of Pytochnye kolonii, or torture colonies. After all but disappearing in the 1990s under the liberal regime of Boris Yeltsin, there are now about 50 pytochnye kolonii among the roughly 700 colonies that house the bulk of Russia's convict population, according to FDRP cofounder Lev Ponomarev. And while they cannot be compared to the Soviet Gulag in terms of scope or the percentage of prisoners who are innocent of any real crime, they are fast approaching it in terms of sheer cruelty.

The cruelty to prisoners often begins prior to their actual sentencing. "When people are transported from prisons to courts to attend their hearings, they are jammed in a tiny room where they can barely stand. There's no toilet; if they have to relieve themselves, it has to be right there," says Mr. Ponomarev. "Then they are put on trucks. It's extremely cold in winter, extremely hot in summer, no ventilation, no heating. These are basically metal containers. They have to be there for hours. Healthy people are held together with people with tuberculosis, creating a breeding ground for the disease."

Once sentenced, prisoners are transported in packed train wagons to distant correctional colonies that, under Russian law, range from relatively lax "general regime" colonies to "strict," "special," and (most terrifying of all) "medical" colonies. Arrival in the camps is particularly harrowing. According to prisoner testimonies collected by Mr. Ponomarev, in the winter of 2005 convicts from one torture colony in Karelia, near the Finnish border, were shipped to the IK-1 torture colony near the village of Yagul, in the Udmurt Republic, about 500 miles east of Moscow.

"The receipt of convicts 'through the corridor' takes place in the following manner," Mr. Ponomarev reports. "From the [truck] in which a newly arrived stage [of prisoners] is brought...employees of the colony line up, equipped with special means -- rubber truncheons and dog handlers with work dogs....During the time of the run, each employee hits the prisoner running by with a truncheon....The convicts run with luggage, which significantly complicates the run. At those [places] where employees with dogs are found, the run of the convict is slowed by a dog lunging from the leash."

The prison gantlet is just the welcome mat. At IK-1, a prisoner with a broken leg named Zurab Baroyan made the mistake of testifying to conditions at the colony to a staff representative of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Russian Federation. "After this," Mr. Baroyan reported, the commandant of the colony "threatened to rot me in the dungeon. They did not complete treating me in the hospital. The leg festers [and] pus runs from the bandage...The festering has crossed over to the second leg."

Not surprisingly, suicide attempts at these colonies are common. One convict, named Mishchikin, sought to commit suicide by swallowing "a wire and nails tied together crosswise." As punishment, he was denied medical assistance for 12 days. Another convict, named Fargiyev, was held in handcuffs for 52 days after stabbing himself; he never fully recovered motor function in his hands.

As a legal matter, the torture colonies don't even exist, and Mr. Ponomarev doubts there has ever been an explicit directive from Mr. Putin ordering the kind of treatment they mete. Rather, for the most part the standards of punishment are determined at the whim of colony commandants, often in areas where the traditions of the Gulag never went away.

That doesn't excuse the Kremlin, however. Under Yeltsin, the prison system had operated under a sunshine policy, as part of a larger effort to distance Russia from its Soviet past. "But when Putin came to power, a new tone was set," Mr. Ponomarev says. "The sadists who had previously been 'behaving' simply stopped behaving."

Now reports of torture are systematically ignored or suppressed while regional governments refuse to act on evidence of abuse. Commandants at "general regime" colonies can always threaten misbehaving convicts with transfer to a torture colony -- a useful way of keeping them in line. The Kremlin, too, benefits from the implied threat. "The correct word for this is Gulag, even if it's on a smaller scale," warns Mr. Ponomarev. "This is the reappearance of totalitarianism in the state. Unless we eradicate it, it will spread throughout the entire country."

Readers interested in a closer look at what is described above may do a YouTube search for "Yekaterinaburg Prison Camp." The short video, apparently filmed by a prison guard and delivered anonymously to Mr. Ponomarev's organization, is a modern-day version of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." It isn't easy to watch. But it is an invaluable window on what Russia has become in the Age of Putin, Person of the Year.



Moral:
Mother of God! When will it all end? How long world community is going to indifferently watch the torture of Russia? Isnt it time to extend helpful hand to Russian people and relieve them from man-eater Putin?

[GodlessAmerica!]

graphic video....no blood or killing

http://www.nothingtoxic.com/media/1203048215/Why_You_Never_Want_to_be_in_a_Russian_Jail (http://www.nothingtoxic.com/media/1203048215/Why_You_Never_Want_to_be_in_a_Russian_Jail)

There was uprising in this prison.

[Frutzel]

Well we all "know" how horrible the conditions at GITMO are. You ever been to GITMO there speedy? Or are you basing your comments off of the many internet rumors and BS propaganda you read on the net?


Noooooo I'm not trying to bash USA :hug:
Humans are the most brutal animals on earth and things like that happen more often as we all know! There were enough prison scandals in the world.......so plz spare me your surprised comments about this video.

[Afro-European]

What has this to do with Putin? Is he responsible for the correctional system of Russia?

[Afro-European]

Those 2 cases are in no way similar.
The mofos in Guantanamo are terrorists hence deserve the treatment they have.I wish the US could speed up the process to get them convicted and executed.



If you find that shocking than dude....let's hope you won't see something about Guantanamo! It's disgusting but things like that happen all the time.....not only in Russia but in the whole world!

[Xaito]

Noooooo I'm not trying to bash USA :hug:
Humans are the most brutal animals on earth and things like that happen more often as we all know! There were enough prison scandals in the world.......so plz spare me your surprised comments about this video.

x2 - not really surprising - there have been known cases of hazing in the military so is anybody really surprised about the fact that some prisoners aren't treated better?

I have mixed feelings about this vid.
On the one hand I think its wrong on the other I'm sure it can be more effective then the humane treatment - especially when dealing with felons who might not be kept in line by other means.
A big problem is that there's always the possibility that somebody innocent is imprisoned - but at least this kind of treatment isn't as ultimate as death penalty I guess.

edit:

The mofos in Guantanamo are terrorists hence deserve the treatment they have.I wish the US could speed up the process to get them convicted and executed.
The mofos in Guantanamo aren't convicted - so they don't deserve anything but a trial first - the punishment comes afterwards.

[Frutzel]

x2 - not really surprising - there have been known cases of hazing in the military so is anybody really surprised the fact that some prisoners aren't treated better.

I have mixed feelings about this vid.
On the one hand I think its wrong on the other I'm sure it can be more effective then the humane treatment - especially when dealing with felons who might not be kept in line by other means.
A big problem is that there's always the possibility that somebody innocent is imprisoned - but at leasts this kind of treatment isn't as ultimate as death penalty I guess.

edit:

The mofos in Guantanamo aren't convicted - so they don't deserve anything but a trial first - the punishment comes afterwads.

Finally somebody who understands what I was trying to saywoot

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

Bottom line is I think anyone would be scared stiff to spend even 1 night in a Russian prison, ever...not now, not under Yeltsin, certainly not under the USSR, not under the Tsar...

[dava]

The mofos in Guantanamo are terrorists hence deserve the treatment they have.I wish the US could speed up the process to get them convicted and executed.

There are enough cases of 'Oops sorry, you looked like a terrorist'. Now sign this document you enjoyed being here for 5+ years and we ll let you go'
Facilities may be topnotch, the reasons why people are there are not.
There were cases in afghanistan where people could point out terrorists to the US army in return for hard cash. Needless to say that some guys saw a quick profit in this and pointed out innocents who were the next day on their way to Gitmo.

[Stonewall71]

Americans do not have any moral authority to acuse anyone in this world , since Abu Grhaib and Guantanamo!

[Dercius]

The mofos in Guantanamo aren't convicted - so they don't deserve anything but a trial first - the punishment comes afterwads

x2.

Im sure those dudes in the video at least had a trial (fair or notrofl).

[Hollis]

WE went from Putin's to now it is the USA.