Putin's Torture Colonies
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Putin's Torture Colonies Ihe protest began after OMON [riot po a dog lunging from the leash." 'T\lice] had been brought to correctional The prison gantlet is just the welcome mat. X (colony No. 5 (Amur Oblast, Skovorod- At IK-1, a prisoner with a broken leg named ino Rayon, village Takhtamygda) and started Zurab Baroyan made the mistake of testifying massive beatings of the prisoners. People in to conditions at the colony to qstaffrepresenta camouflage and masks were beating with ba tive of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the tons inmates taken outside undressed in the Russian Federation. "After this," Mr.Baroyan re freezing cold— As a protest, 39 prisoners im ported, the commandant of the colony "threat mediately cut their veins open. enedto rotme in the dungeon. They did not com "Next day, on 17January, the 'special opera plete treating me in the hospital. The leg festers tion' was repeated in an even more humiliating [and] pus runs from the bandage... The fester and massive form. At that time, about 700 in ing has crossed over to the second leg." mates cut their veins open " Not surprisingly, suicide attempts at these ^ The description here comes coloniesare common. One convict, namedMish- is GLOBAL from a report received by the chikin,sought to commit suicide by swallowing VIEW Moscow-based Foundation for "a wire and nails tied together crosswise." As By Bret Defense of Rights of Prisoners. punishment, he was denied medical assistance § Stephens The time reference is to for 12 days. Another convict, named Fargiyev, 2008—that is, last month. This was held in handcuffs for 52 days after stabbing is not Alexander Solzhenitsyn's himself; he never fully recovered motor func Russia. It's Vladimir Putin's. And correctional tion in his hands. colony No, 5, located not far from the Manchu- Even the smallest of prisoner infractions rian border, does not even make the list of the can be metwithsavage reprisals. In onecase, au worst penal colonies in the country. thorities noticed the smell of cigarette smoke That distinction belongs to the newly re in a so-called "penalty isolator" cell where vived institution of Pytochnye kohnii, or tor seven convicts were being held. "A fire engine ture colonies. After all.but disappearing in the was called in— The entire cell, including the 1990s under the liberal regime of Boris Yeltsin, convicts and their personal things, was flooded there are now about 50 pytochnye kolonii with cold water." The convicts were left in wet among the roughly 700 colonies that house the •clothes in 50 degree Fahrenheit temperatures bulk of Russia's convict population, according for a week. to FDRP cofounder Lev Ponomarev. And while As a legal matter, the torture colonies don't they cannot be compared to the Soviet Gulag in evenexist, and Mr. Ponomarevdoubts therehas terms of scope or the percentage of prisoners everbeenanexplicit directive from Mr. Putinor who are innocent of any real crime, they are fast dering the kind of treatment they mete. Rather, approaching it in terms of sheer cruelty. for the most part the standards of punishment The cruelty to prisoners often begins prior are determined at the whim of colony comman to their actual sentencing. "When people are dants, oftenin areas where the traditions ofthe transported from prisons to courts to attend Gulag never went away. their hearings, they are jammed in a tiny room That doesn't excuse the o wheretheycan barelystand. There's no toilet; if Kremlin, however. Under they have to relieve themselves, it has to be Yeltsin, the prison system 3 right there," says Mr. Ponomarev. "Then they had operated under a sun 2 are put on trucks. It's extremely cold in winter, shine policy, as part of a extremely hot in summer, no ventilation, no largereffort to distance Rus o heating. These are basically metal containers. sia from its Soviet past. "But They have to be there for hours. Healthy people when Putin came to power, a are held together with people with tuberculo new tone was set," Mr. Pono sis, creatinga breedinggroundfor the disease." marev says. "The sadists Once sentenced, prisoners are transported who had previously been in packed train wagons to distant correctional Lev Ponomarev •behaving' simply stopped colonies that, under Russian law, range from rel behaving." atively lax "general regime" colonies to Now reportsof torturearesystematicallyig "strict," "special," and (most terrifying of all) nored or suppressed while regional govern "medical" colonies. Arrival in the camps is par ments refuse to act on evidence ofabuse. Com ticularlyharrowing. According to prisonertesti mandants at "general regime" colonies can al w monies collected by Mr. Ponomarev, in the win ways threatenmisbehaving convicts with trans ter of 2005 convicts from one torture colony in fer to a torture colony—auseful way of keeping Karelia, near the Finnish border, were shipped them in line. The Kremlin,.too, benefits from Ch to the IK-1 torture colony near the village of the implied threat. "The correct word for this is Q Yagul, in the Udmurt Republic, about 500 miles Gulag, even if it's on a smallerscale," warns Mr. east of Moscow. Ponomarev. "This is the reappearance oftotali "The receipt ofconvicts 'through the corri tarianism in the state. Unless we eradicate it, it dor' takes place in the following manner," Mr. will spread throughout the entire country." Ponomarev reports. "From the [truck] in Readers interested in a closerlookatwhat is which a newly arrived stage [of prisoners] is described above may do a YouTube search for brought... employees of the colony line up, "Yekaterinaburg Prison Camp." The short equipped with special means—rubber trun video, apparently filmed by a prison guard and cheons and dog handlers with work dogs delivered anonymously to Mr. Ponomarev's or During the time of the run, each employee ganization, is a modern-day version of "One hits the prisoner running by with a trun Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." It isn't easy cheon. The convicts run with luggage, to watch. But it is an invaluable window on which significantly complicates the run. At what Russia has becomein theAge ofPutin, Per those [places] where employees with dogs son of the Year. are found, the run of the convict is slowed by Write to [email protected]. • THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL TUESDAY AUGUST 28,2007 Russia Arrests10 in Killing Of Writer andPutin Critic l^' r MurkyStatement Hints atan OfficialRole ByC. J. CHIVERS cions Ihat it had been involved, MOSCOW, Aug. 27 — Russia's and ultimately to destabilize the prosecutoi" general said Monday Russian stale. That now-official '•"m ^ llmt 10 people had been arrested theory is markedly different from in the contract kilting of Anna one broadly accepted by her I#' Politkovskaya, the prominent peers, who have said she was journalist and Kremlin critic. killed in retaliation for her work Those arrested included a Che or to prevent additional articles chen crime boss and career offi from being published, cers from Russia's police and in Among those arrested, the telligence services, he said. prosecutor said, were a police The announcement, at once major and three former police of tantalizing and murky, pointed to ficers, who were working with a a possible official role in a crime criminal gang led by a Chechen. ihat drew international condem- Also arrested, he said, was a for /J nation. But it raised more ques mer officer in the F.S.B., the prin tions than it answered and was cipal successor to the K.G.B. denounced by Ms. Politkov- Mr. Chaika added that the kill skaya's former editor as a white ing had been ordered from wash intended to deflect blame abroad, although he refused to MIK(fAlL K1 IMI S':M V j'Hf SlCt SI I\t Pkf k\ i' ( from those who had ordered the identify the man suspected of be President Vladimir V. Putin greeted Nikolai P. Patrushev, the security director, yesterday. Yuri Y. journalist's death. ing the mastermind or disclose Chaika, center, the top prosecutor, separately announced arrests in Anna Politkovskaya s killing. The controversy arose because his whereabouts, and provided llie prosecutor, Yuri Y. Chaika, no evidence to support the claim. suggested that the motive for kill The prosecutor would not release foreign involvement. "We did not Gazeta, often at odds with the au the surveillance of Ms, Politkov ing had not been to silence Ms. the names of any of the suspects. get any information of that kind," thorities, said this year that they skaya and then to kill her. He said Pulilkovskaya, whose effoi'ts to His description of the motive he said. were cooperating closely with the gi'oup responsible for the kill uncover corruption and brutality aligned neatly with Mr. Putin's Ms. Politkovskaya. 48,had spe prosecutors while conducting ing had committed "several con under President Vladimir V. first public statements about the cialized in human rights issues their own parallel investigation, tract murders not only in Russia Putin had brought her interna killing last year and with a pat and in uncovering crimes related Ms. Poliikov.skaya's former but also on the territory of tional acclaim but scorn from offi tern of government contentions to the war in Chechnya, a theme colleagues also had said that in Ukraine and Latvia," cials here. that foreigners were trying to un that few Russian journalists still the interest of not interfering He added that some of Ms. Rather, the prosecutor said, the dermine Russia and the Kremlin, pursue. with the work of the law en Politkovskaya's killers had been forcement agencies, they would killing was intended to discredit and (0 tarnish their reputations.