A group of prominent Russian human rights advocates have penned a letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on the subject, asking him to take immediate action to put an end to the widespread use of torture in Russia’s detention facilities.

To the President of the Russian Federation
D.A. Medvedev

Message from members of public hearings dedicated to the problem of torture within law enforcement agencies and the penitentiary system

Respected Dmitri Anatolevich!

The prevalence of torture, physical and psychological, that happens in our country during both inquiries and investigations and also during detention has taken on a scale characteristic of a totalitarian society.

Medieval in nature, torture is used far and wide to obtain self-incriminating statements and statements incriminating others as well as for morally suppressing prisoners. Regardless of the changes in law and all reforms in law enforcement agencies, the practice of torture has been preserved and is even expanding.

We consider the current situation to be absolutely intolerable and feel that it demands joint action from both the state and civil society.

We are pinning our hopes on you, since it is precisely you who has repeatedly proclaimed that observing the principle of the supremacy of law is important and is the main guarantor of constitutional human rights and freedoms in our country.

We call upon you to issue a legislative initiative to change the Criminal Procedural Code of the Russian Federation so that it would preserve the testimony of accused persons given during preliminary investigations only in the case that it is later confirmed by the defendant in court. This would render the use of torture and forced testimony during inquiries and investigations pointless.

In addition, we call upon you to initiate changes to strip prison administrations of any motivation to use unlawful pressure against people in detention. With this goal in mind, limits on the actions of penal system operational staff should be introduced into the Penal Code of the Russian Federation. They should not have the authority to engage in illegal activities that are committed by persons outside of the given place of detention or which go beyond the punishment that the prisoner has been sentenced to. In this way, operatives will only work to prevent and put a stop to violations of the law that are planned or committed in these places of detention.

We call upon you to create a joint public and state commission to investigate incidents of torture and cruel and degrading treatment.

Such a commission should be created with the participation of representatives of state agencies and also the Presidential Council on the Development of Society and Human Rights, the Public Chamber of the RF, the Human Rights Ombudsman of the RF, a specialized committee of the State Duma of the RF, and specialized human rights organizations.

We members of the organizational committee for public hearings dedicated to the problem of torture in law enforcement agencies and the penitentiary system also feel it is very important to take part in the work of such a commission.

We are certain that, without your immediate interference, the problem of the expansion of the use of torture will definitively destroy the prestige of Russian justice and will undermind the faith of the Russian people in the law.

Hearing Organizational Committee:

L.M. Alexeyeva, representative of the Moscow Helsinki Group, representative of the head of the foundation In Defense of the Rights of Prisoners
V.V. Borshchev, member of the Moscow Helsinki Group
S.A. Kovalev, president of the Institute of Human Rights
L.A. Ponomarev, leader of For Human Rights
S.V. Belyak, lawyer
D.N. Dmitriev, lawyer

February 21, 2011
A.D. Sakharov Museum & Public Center

The letter was first published in the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online newspaper.

An open letter to Russian President D. A. Medvedev
Sergei Kovalev
April 3rd, 2009.
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Mr. President!

On the night from March 31st to April 1st, 2009, Lev Alexandrovich Ponomarev, a former deputy in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and later the RF [Russian Federation] State Duma, was brutally attacked.  [Ponomarev], a public figure and democrat widely renowned in the country and past its borders, has an outstanding and incontestable reputation in the human rights community.

There is no doubt in anyone’s minds that this reprisal has a patently political character.  Politically motivated violence and even murders have more often than not become a commonplace part of our day-to-day lives.  I won’t remind you of the long and shameful list of political reprisals –your assistants can easily make it available to you in full detail.

But what jumps to attention –when the political motives for a reprisal are unmistakable –is that the victim is always a critic or opponent of authorities.

Why is this, mister President, what do you think?

I won’t delve into the suspicions that the state intelligence agencies are directly involved in these reprisals.  Although the civil society not only has a right, but must in fact keep these kinds of suspicions in mind (our national history points at them a bit too stubbornly).  But this is a separate, extremely complex, and intentionally complicated issue.

In this, my appeal to you, mister President, I’ll suffice with a version of events much milder for your regime.  It is entirely possible that neo-fascist thugs beat Lev Ponomarev.  They certainly weren’t habitual criminals from the penal system: first of all, jailbirds are more than just cold to authorities, you’ll have to believe me.  Second of all, Lev Alexandrovich is widely known, even in prisons, as a very energetic (and at times successful) fighter against arbitrariness and abuse in the prison system.

And so, it is quite likely that it was fascists?  But here’s a question -why do they love your regime so much, mister President?  Doesn’t this disturb you?  Are we returning – and even quite quickly – to the unforgettable epoch of the “socially alien elements” and “social allies?” [a reference to the early Soviet penal system, which separated prisoners into classes based on their backgrounds].  We, of course, are the “socially alien elements,” whatever you may call us – liberals, the opposition, human rights activists, “dissidents,” independent civil activists.  This is natural.  I, for one wouldn’t think to part with the privilege of being alien to our current political elite. But these scum, who beat people in their courtyards and shoot them in their doorways, they’ve in fact already become embedded on your list of “social allies.”

I won’t bring up any of the evident examples of the cynical laissez-faire leniency toward the criminals.  There are many examples, they are well known, and I won’t clutter a short open letter with them.

They love you so much, because this leniency, without words, without the out-of-place candidness of the Stalin epoch, but with the complete clarity comprehensible to a malicious, dull bastard, clearly demonstrates a deep inner connection, a nearly full equality between your ethos and values with theirs.

What comes to mind, for instance, when one sees how the “Blagoveshchensk affair,” where the militsiya beat and tortured several hundred residents, was investigated (speaking of which, L. A. Ponomarev played perhaps the leading role in the effort to force authorities to seriously take on the investigation).  In any civilized nation, a much smaller incident of police abuse of power would shake-up the government, but our (that it so to say, and excuse me, your) [Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid] Nurgaliyev receives titles and awards and doesn’t turn a hair.

In what other country would a person accused in a brutal political murder, which was not refuted in court, be sworn in as a member of Parliament?

And here’s a case from the courts – two RF government (and naturally, very special) agents blew up a car in Qatar, killing a man and child.  They were tried, convicted, and at Russia’s request, extradited to serve their sentences at home.  In Moscow, the patriots were met with considerable esteem.  And I’d like to know where they’re serving their court-ordered sentences?  It seems to me that we’d more likely find them in the lists of those secretly awarded, than arrested.

Do our home-bred fascists have any reason to doubt that they are the “social allies?”  It stands to reason, by the way, that “Gods may do what cattle may not,” but they understand this perfectly well – they won’t carry polonium to London and won’t carry TNT to Qatar.

Few people can believe your solemn pathos, mister President, about freedom which is better than unfreedom.  Court cases would be more convincing, but everything seems to work backwards with them.  Despite the pathos of your speeches (or maybe together with the pathos), our political practice wakes disgusting tendencies in our society.  You can’t tell anymore, where the intelligence agencies are, and where it’s simply fascists.  And after that, the understanding of the Law becomes connected with hypocrisy.  This is catastrophically dangerous –it is criminal not to see where this leads.  And the authorities are always guilty in this.

Having disturbed you, I didn’t hope at all that my letter could change anything.  But, I think, however, that simple things should always be pronounced outright.

April 1-2, 2009.

translation by theotherrussia.org

Other public figures have called on both sides to stop the violence, and start negotiations. According to the latest media reports, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has ordered a halt of military operations, although fighting continued.

—

Declaration of human rights activists on the war in South Ossetia
08.10.2008

On August 8th, under the pretense of “defending Russian citizens” in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, Russia started an act of aggression against Georgia.

According to media reports, planes from Russia’s Air Force dropped bombs on Gori. Georgian public figures asserted that Russian planes bombed Poti, Senaki and Tskhinvali. Russian media reported that airborne troops had entered Tskhinvali.

The evening of August 8th, at a meeting of the Security Council of the UN, Russia’s representative to the US, Vitaly Churkin, openly acknowledged the bombardment of Georgian territory.

On the eve of the aggression, Russia intensified the propaganda war against Georgia. Pro-Kremlin media announced only the military operations from the Georgian side in the zone of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict, keeping silent on the shelling of Georgian towns from the side of the armed formations of the Eduard Kokoity regime. On August 8th, the internet-sites of Georgia’s organs of power and the Rustavi-2 television-channel were disabled.

On August 8th, the international “Memorial” society condemned the introduction of Georgian troops into Tskhinvali, which the Georgian leadership characterized as “Constitutional means for bringing peace and legal order.” But whatever may happen in Georgia, Russia does not have any right to use armed forces on foreign territory. The status of Russian peacekeepers in Georgia was defined by intergovernmental agreements. However, Russia lost the moral right to peacekeeping in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, when in circumvention of the leadership of sovereign Georgia, it openly allied itself to the authorities of these self-appointed formations. Now, having cast away all appearances, having introduced airborne units into Georgia, having bombed territory that wasn’t part of the former South-Ossetian autonomous oblast, Russia has entirely turned into a party in the armed conflict.

Russian President [Dmitri] Medvedev stated that he “was obligated to defend the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they may be.” However, the Resolution of the General Assembly of the UN of 12.14.1974, the “Definition of Aggression,” underscores: “No consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression.” It is particularly appropriate to recall that in 1938, Nazi Germany reasoned the seizure of the Sudetenland belonging to Czechoslovakia as a defense of the interests of the Germans living there.

Historical experience shows that the interference of our country in someone else’s affairs inevitably, and contrary to any claims of “assistance,” leads to innumerable misfortunes.

In 1979, the ruling establishment of the Soviet Union sent forces to sovereign Afghanistan under the pretext of “rendering brotherly assistance”; hundreds of thousands of residents of the country became victims of the Soviet military. Today, the ruling chekist-bureaucratic faction in Russia –the successor to the Soviet leadership –has perpetrated aggression against independent Georgia.

The incursion into Afghanistan led to many years of unceasing widespread violence and human rights abuses, as well as flare-ups of war again and again. The historical development of Afghanistan turned completely around: from a secular government it turned into a theocratic one. The actions of the Soviet leadership led to a sharp rise in the popularity of Islamic fundamentalism not only in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan and Arab countries as well. (Remember the alliance between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda).

If the international community does not stop Russian aggression, and if Georgia, realizing its lawful right to self-defense, cannot fend it off, Russia may capture not only the former South-Ossetian Autonomous Oblast, but other parts of Georgia as well. After all, many irresponsible Russian politicians are announcing claims to Crimea…

We call for the immediate stop of aggression against Georgia. We consider that Russia’s leadership, having set another bloody stain to the country’s reputation, finally made its presence in the Group of Eight unacceptable from a moral point of view.

We call on the General Assembly of the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other international institutes to assess the actions of Russia’s leadership against Georgia.

Sergei Kovalev, chairman of the Russian “Memorial” society, chairman of the A.D. Sakharov Fund.

Dmitri Belomestnov, journalist, Moscow

Stanislav Dmitrievsky (Nizhny Novgorod), chairman of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society

Tatyana Monakhova, human rights defender, Moscow

Yelena Maglevannaya, copy editor, Volgograd

Mikhail Kriger, chairman of the Anti-War Committee, Moscow

Ivan Simochkin, Oborona [Defense] Youth Movement, Moscow

Alexei Manannikov, President of the Siberian Inter-regional human rights foundation “Vienna-89”, Novosibirsk

Edward Glezin, Coordinator of the Russian “Oborona” Youth Movement, Moscow

Dmitri Shusharin, historian and journalists

Igor Drandin, RPDU [Russian People’s Democratic Union]

Vladimir Shaklein, Inter-regional Center for Human Rights – Ural division of the “For Human Rights” All-Russian Civic Organization

Vladimir Sirotin, national socialist

Larisa Volodimerovna, human rights defender, Holland

Lev Ponomarev, Executive Director, All-Russian Civic Organization “For Human Rights”

Vladimir Panteleev, political prisoner 1970-76, invalid of the 2nd group after political repression, chairman of the board of directors of the Nizhny Novgorod Society for Victims of the Communist Terror

Sergei Sorokin, chairman of the Movement Against Violence, Moscow

Felix Balonov, Doctor of Philosophy, St. Petersburg

Dmitri Vorobyevsky, editor of the Kramola newspaper, member of the Democratic Union, Voronezh

translation by theotherrussia.org