Johnson's Russia List
#6280
30 May 2002
#11
Amnesty International 2002 report
Russia section
Covering events from January - December 2001
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Russian Federation
Head of state: Vladimir Putin
Head of government: Mikhail Kasyanov
Capital: Moscow
Population: 144.7 million
Official language: Russian
Death penalty: abolitionist in practice
2001 treaty ratifications/signatures: Optional Protocol to the UN Women's
Convention; Optional Protocol to the UN Children's Convention on the
involvement of children in armed conflict
Russian and Chechen armed forces committed serious human rights violations
and breached international humanitarian law during 2001 in the continuing
conflict in the Chechen Republic (Chechnya). An estimated 160,000 internally
displaced people, the majority women and children, remained in overcrowded
refugee camps in Chechnya and neighbouring Ingushetia with inadequate shelter
and sanitation. Council of Europe delegates visiting the region in December
stated that conditions for refugees in Chechnya were ''terrible'' and getting
worse. Human rights abuses reported included arbitrary detention; torture,
including rape; ill-treatment; ''disappearances''; extrajudicial executions;
and the use of unofficial secret detention centres that often amounted to
little more than pits in the ground. Criminal investigations by Russian
federal authorities into human rights violations by military and police
forces in Chechnya were inadequate and ineffective; few of those responsible
for grave violations were known to have been brought to trial in 2001.
Elsewhere in the Russian Federation there were continuing reports of torture
and ill-treatment in police custody and of cruel, inhuman and degrading
prison conditions. Refugees and asylum-seekers were at risk of being sent
back to countries where they could face human rights violations.
Conscientious objectors to military service faced forcible conscription and
imprisonment.
Background
In November, the Duma (parliament) approved a new Code of Criminal Procedure
which sanctioned the introduction of jury trials from January 2003 in all
regional courts for trials involving serious offences such as murder and
rape. A 1999 ruling by the Constitutional Court had banned the imposition of
death sentences until the jury trial system had been introduced throughout
the Federation; jury trials at the time were available in only nine of the
Federation's 89 regions. Despite the President's outspoken opposition to the
death penalty, the introduction of jury trials in regional courts raised
questions of whether this moratorium on executions would continue.
President Putin condemned the attacks in the USA on 11 September and sought
to justify Russian policy in Chechnya by reiterating assertions that Chechen
armed groups were linked to Osama bin Laden.
The Chechnya conflict
Both sides to the conflict in Chechnya continued to commit serious human
rights abuses and to breach international humanitarian law. Violations
committed by Russian forces during 2001 included arbitrary detention in
secret detention centres and pits in the ground, torture and ill-treatment,
''disappearances'', and extrajudicial executions. Chechen forces attacked
civilians working in the local administration in Chechnya, failed to take
steps to minimize civilian casualties during attacks and ill-treated and
unlawfully killed captured Russian soldiers.
In January, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted in
favour of ratifying the credentials of the new Russian delegation, which in
effect restored the voting rights of the Russian delegation (suspended in
April 2000), despite continuing reports of serious and widespread violations
of human rights and international humanitarian law.
On 20 February, Russian forces detained Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist
investigating reports of torture, including the rape of detainees in Russian
custody in Chechnya, for not having official permission to work in the
region. She alleged that while in detention she was questioned about her work
and that her life was threatened. She was released without charge on 22
February.
Prisoners of conscience
On 24 May, Russian forces detained Dik Altemirov, former Minister for Tourism
and Sport in the Chechen government and a former Vice-President of the
Chechen Republic, for two days on suspicion of involvement in Chechen armed
groups. Dik Altemirov had advocated Chechen independence by peaceful means
and supported the work of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE) Assistance Group in Grozny.
Impunity
The Russian federal authorities failed to investigate adequately widespread
reports of human rights violations in Chechnya.
In February, at least 51 bodies were found in Dachny village. However, no
autopsies were performed and the authorities rushed to bury bodies that had
not been identified, rather than preserve them for the purposes of further
investigations.
In April the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution condemning
the continuing abuses of human rights and breaches of humanitarian law and
called on all parties to the conflict to take measures to protect civilians
and aimed at ensuring accountability. Russian officials rejected the
resolution, terming it ''biased'', while officials from the Russian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs stated that the Russian government did not feel obliged to
implement the Commission's recommendations. The Commission also reiterated
its request that the relevant thematic special rapporteurs and special
mechanisms visit Chechnya without delay, and urged the government to respond
favourably to their requests for visits.
Arbitrary arrests and 'disappearances'
Russian forces continued to arbitrarily detain civilians during raids on
towns and villages in Chechnya. Detainees were reportedly ill-treated or
tortured while held incommunicado. Bribes were so commonly extorted from
relatives to secure detainees' release that the act of detention itself often
appeared to be motivated by financial gain. Hundreds of people
''disappeared'' after being taken into custody; the mutilated bodies of some
were later found, along with the bodies of other unidentified individuals, in
more than a dozen dumping grounds and mass graves throughout Chechnya.
In June Russian soldiers in the village of Mayrtup, Kurchaloy district,
arbitrarily detained between 20 and 30 men, including Said-Khasan Salamov and
Said Magomed Bakhaev. According to reports, soldiers took eight of the group
to the outskirts of the village, beat them and unleashed trained attack dogs
on them. Four of the men were later transferred to a Russian military base
and two others were released five days later. Said Magomed Bakhaev was last
seen, unconscious and badly beaten, being taken to a Russian military base.
The fate and whereabouts of Said Magomed Bakhaev and Said-Khasan Salamov
remained unknown at the end of 2001.
Torture and ill-treatment
There were widespread reports of torture and ill-treatment during military
raids.
In June, Russian soldiers surrounded the village of Chernorechye, detained
about 200 men, including boys as young as 14, and took them to a disused
medical centre near the Grozny water reservoir. The detainees alleged that
the soldiers blindfolded and beat them on the way to the medical centre and
threatened to kill them. At the medical centre, interrogators reportedly
burned the detainees with cigarettes and subjected them to electric shocks.
By the end of the year, no prosecutions were known to have taken place in
connection with this or any other allegation of torture of detainees by
Russian forces in Chechnya.
Abuses by Chechen fighters
There were reports of human rights abuses against civilians by Chechen
fighters, including hostage-taking and the unlawful killing of members of
Russian armed forces taken prisoner. Chechen fighters engaged in frequent
armed attacks against civilian members of the pro-Moscow Chechen
administration, resulting in dozens of fatalities and serious injuries.
Prisoner of conscience
On 25 December Grigory Pasko was sentenced to four years in a labour camp for
intending to distribute information that ''would harm the battle readiness of
the Pacific Fleet''. The re-trial of Grigory Pasko on treason charges, which
began in July, was held behind closed doors before the Military Court of the
Pacific Fleet. Grigory Pasko, a journalist and naval captain, had been
arrested in 1997 after exposing the Russian navy's illegal dumping of nuclear
waste; he was accused of passing classified documents to Japanese news media.
The retrial was ordered by the Military Collegium of Russia's Supreme Court
following Grigory Pasko's release under a general amnesty in 1999.
Freedom of expression
In December, a Belgorod court convicted Olga Kitova, an investigative
journalist at the newspaper Belgorodskaya Pravda and a member of the Belgorod
parliament, on charges of slander and insulting or threatening an official.
The trial followed the publication of articles she had written in which she
alleged official corruption surrounding a rape case. In the articles, she
alleged that law enforcement officials had falsified a rape charge against
six students. The family of the victim brought the prosecution.
Olga Kitova was first detained in March, reportedly for failing to respond to
a summons for questioning on charges of interfering in a criminal
investigation, slander and defamation. She alleged that police officers who
took her to the local procurator's office beat her. Hospital doctors treated
her later that day for high blood pressure, bruises and other injuries to her
head and arms.
Olga Kitova was again arrested in May and additionally charged with insulting
and using force against, or threatening, an official. She was immediately
hospitalized until 8 June. Her trial on charges of slander and insulting and
using force against, or threatening, an official began in October after the
Belgorod parliament voted to strip her of her parliamentary immunity. On 20
December she was given a suspended sentence of two and a half years, banned
from seeking public office for three years, fined and ordered to pay moral
damages to the family of the rape victim.
Conscientious objectors
Although the right to conscientious objection is enshrined in the
Constitution, in practice courts continued to imprison objectors. There was
no law authorizing alternative civilian service and courts were often
inconsistent in their support for applications from men seeking a civilian
alternative to compulsory military service.
Ilya Baryshnikov, a 19-year-old metal worker from the Nizhegorodskoy region,
had attempted to enlist for alternative service in October 2000. His
application had been refused in December 2000, and in February 2001 a
criminal case was opened against him for refusing to serve. In March, a local
court sentenced him to six months in a labour colony.
In August, Jehovah's Witness Maxim Tambovtsev from Pavlovsk, Voronezh region,
successfully appealed to the Pavlovsk district court against a call-up by the
conscription commission on grounds of conscientious objection. The court
ordered the commission to provide him with an alternative civilian service.
In September, the conscription commission appealed against this decision to
the Voronezh regional court which sent the case back for further
investigation. In November, the Pavlovsk court repeated its earlier verdict,
supporting Maxim Tambovtsev. The conscription commission appealed against
this decision to the Voronezh court and a decision was pending at the end of
the year.
Torture and ill-treatment
Police reportedly continued to torture and ill-treat detainees in their
custody in order to extract confessions. Detainees were also said to have
been tortured during pre-trial detention.
In April, police in Elista, the capital of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia,
allegedly beat Nadezhda Ubushaeva, a former schoolteacher. Nadezhda Ubushaeva
and her family had gone to the main square to protest peacefully outside the
parliament building against their forcible eviction from their apartment
earlier that day. She alleged that approximately five police officers, led by
a police colonel, arrived and dragged her to a police car, beating her with a
hard instrument. On 13 April, doctors recorded injuries to Nadezhda
Ubushaeva's hips, shoulders and face consistent with these allegations. She
was held in the police station for about two hours. No investigation was
known to have been initiated into these allegations.
Conditions in detention
There was no improvement in conditions in penitentiaries and pre-trial
detention centres. Up to a million people were held in overcrowded conditions
that often constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. An estimated
five million people enter and leave the prison system annually. Medical care
was generally inadequate; according to reports, 10,000 inmates die annually.
Over 100,000 inmates were believed to suffer from tuberculosis, and HIV
infection was also reportedly widespread. In April the Russian human rights
commissioner stated in his annual report that conditions in the penal system
were ''horrible'', describing pre-trial detention centres as ''hotbeds of
epidemics''. He criticized the imposition of lengthy prison sentences for
relatively minor offences, citing a case where a man received a four-year
prison sentence for stealing two chickens.
President Vladimir Putin refused to grant clemency to prisoners to help
alleviate overcrowding in prisons. However, in November, the Duma approved an
amnesty for child offenders and women convicted of petty crimes, which it was
estimated would cover some 10,000 children and 14,000 women. The amnesty
applied to those who were under 18 years of age when the offence was
committed, first-time offenders, those sentenced to less than six years'
imprisonment, and those who have served over half of their sentence. Pregnant
women, single mothers, women prisoners with disabilities, widows and women
over the age of 50 were also eligible under the amnesty provisions.
Children
Children were often held in conditions that amounted to cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment. Child offenders were particularly vulnerable in a
criminal justice system which serves to punish rather than rehabilitate
children found to have infringed the criminal law; there was no separate
justice system for children.
In June, Ministry of Justice officials announced that over 17,000 children
were serving prison terms in 64 special colonies for adolescents; 10 colonies
had recently opened in former army and Interior Ministry troops' barracks
that were transferred to the Ministry of Justice's jurisdiction.
Refoulement
Legal provisions for asylum-seekers remained inadequate. Many asylum-seekers
were subjected to refoulement (forcible return) to countries where they were
at risk of grave human rights violations, before their claims for asylum had
been fully considered.
On 29 March an Iranian asylum-seeker, who had been arrested on 21 February at
Moscow's Sheremetevo airport, was forcibly returned to Iran, where it was
believed he risked imprisonment and ill-treatment. The deportation was
carried out despite a pending court procedure on his asylum claim. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the state agency responsible for ensuring
compliance with international obligations, reportedly tried in vain to
prevent the deportation.
AI country reports/visits
Reports
Russian Federation (Chechnya): The Council of Europe must act to stop further
abuses (AI Index: EUR 46/003/2001)
Russian Federation (Chechnya): Only an international investigation will end
impunity - the UN Commission on Human Rights must act now (AI Index: EUR
46/007/2001)
Russian Federation: FSB vs. environmental activist Grigory Pasko - punishment
without a crime (AI Index: EUR 46/009/2001)
Visits
AI delegates visited the Russian Federation, including Moscow and the
Republics of Kalmykia, Tatarstan, and Ingushetia, in February, July,
September, October, November and December.
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