Vera Vasilieva Laments “Merciless, Heartless Treatment of Alexey Pichugin and other Political Prisoners in Russia”
In a new piece for Radio Liberty, journalist Vera Vasilieva laments the “merciless, heartless treatment” of Alexey Pichugin and other political prisoners in Russia “by a system that, facing no real resistance from civil society, assumes anything goes:”
A Sense of Darkness. In Russia, Anything Goes
October 24, 2018
For a while now, I’ve had this physical sensation of darkness thickening all around. And I’m not talking about the approaching winter; I’m talking about political prisoners. The fact that we have political prisoners in Russia is not news –journalists aren’t trumpeting about it, and it’s become commonplace. After a lull in the 1990s, people were once again thrown behind bars for political reasons as Putin’s era was dawning.
Recently, we’ve been seeing a new and very alarming trend. Yes, political prisoners have always been pressured, but it was psychological pressure for the most part; at least they weren’t harmed physically (even though I doubt it was for humanitarian reasons; I think it was more in order to avoid too much noise, because, however inadequate, political prisoners do get attention). But these days it’s as if a taboo has been lifted, and the abuse that rank-and-file prisoners have come to know well (those with no one to speak for them) has now spread to political prisoners too.
I’d say it all started in 2016 with Ildar Dadin, the first convict in Russia to get a prison sentence for violating mass event regulations. He was beaten, hung up handcuffed, his head was dipped in the toilet, and he was threatened with murder. Then there was Sergei Mokhnatkin, the civil activist convicted of using force against police officers. In July of this year, he recounted being tortured with gas in Arkhangelsk Region’s Federal Correctional Facility No. 21. Then, in October, he was denied an exam at an oncological hospital where he asked to go due to pain in his leg and back. The exam was already scheduled, but at the last minute the car with the ailing prisoner was turned around. Prison authorities accused Mokhnatkinof “inappropriate behavior,” which he denies. But even if his behavior was inappropriate, can a political prisoner’s difficult personality serve as grounds for denying medical help for a possibly life-threatening condition?
According to Memorial Human Rights Centre, two political prisoners sentenced to life are unlawfully held at Federal Correctional Facility No. 6 in Sol-Iletzk, Orenburg Region: Rasul Kudayev, convicted of the 2005 attack on Nalchik, and Alexei Pichugin. Pichugin, the former staffer of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s oil company, is the only Yukos case convict still behind bars. He’s been in prison longer than any political prisoner in modern era – 15 years and counting. The European Court of Human rights found both Pichugin’s verdicts issued by Moscow City Court unjust. He was arrested in order to get him to falsely testify against company leadership – Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin. Had Pichuginmade a deal with investigators and with his conscience (and during his long incarceration he received countless offers of such a deal), he would have been free long ago.
According to Novaya Gazeta, starting in summer 2018, Federal CorrectionalFacility No. 6 bars prisoners from receiving mail containing books and periodicals, and prisoners’ relatives may no longer subscribe the prisoners to newspapers and magazines. No exceptions. The prison administration doesn’t allow letters containing even small newspaper clippings with no text, such as nature photos.Why this restriction had to be put in place is unknown (there are no such rules at other Russian penitentiaries), but this is apparently how [this maximum-security prison] achieves maximal informational isolation and intellectual starvation.
Seeing no real resistance from civil society, the system assumed that anything goes.
We saw how Oleg Sentsov ran into a brick wall and, after 145 days, stopped his hunger strike – not because he achieved his goal, but on doctor’s orders. A while back (when Sentsov was still on his hunger strike), there were rumors that he mightbe swapped for Russian citizens held in the US – Konstantin Yaroshenko, Victor But and Maria Butina. I actually believed the rumors at the time, even though through his hunger strike Sentsov sought not to save himself, but to free his fellow sufferers, the Ukrainian political prisoners. But now it’s clear: despite voices of support from celebrities and politicians, and despite the very real dangers of a hunger strike, there will be no concessions, however small, to the political prisoner (at least for now).
Another example is the clearly sham Novoye Velichiye criminal case in which defendants – very young people, essentially children, whom Memorial alsoacknowledged as political prisoners – were thrown behind bars. And then there are the beatings and arrests of lawyers, and the fact that political prisoners haven’t been amnestied for quite a while …
This list can go on and on. Behind the list are not just the unbearable pain and tragedy of Mokhnatkin, Pichugin, Sentsov and others. The bigger picture is much more frightening, and can affect anyone at any time. This is merciless, heartless treatment of a person by a system that, facing no real resistance from civil society, assumes that anything goes. The fact that a decision was made to torture political prisoners means the authorities don’t feel accountable to, or controlled by, law andsociety. A while back, Russian leadership was eager to join the civilized world, but now, after Crimea, MN-17 and Novichok, it looks like Russian officials don’t careanymore what Russia looks like to the outside world. In years past, they said (even if bending the truth a little) that Russian prison conditions meet European standards. These days, they say “we don’t need the European Court. Instead ofhuman rights, we give patriotism top billing, and so there’s no need to maintain even a semblance of civility, even an appearance of lawfulness.”
And that corrupts power more and more.
Vera Vasilieva is a journalist, Radio Liberty’s project Freedom and Memorial project leader and recipient of Moscow Helsinki Group’s human rights advocacyprize for 2018
Source: Vera Vasilieva, A Sense of Darkness. In Russia, Anything Goes., Radio Liberty, October 24, 2018, translated from Russian original.
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