Amnesty International Report 2000 - Russian Federation

Head of state: Vladimir Putin (Acting President) (replaced Boris Yeltsin in December)
Head of government: Vladimir Putin (replaced Sergey Stepashin in August, who replaced Evgeny Primakov in May)
Capital: Moscow
Population: 147.2 million
Official language: Russian
Death penalty: retentionist

There were serious and widespread human rights violations, both during peacetime and in the context of the renewed conflict in the Chechen Republic (Chechnya). Throughout the Russian Federation torture and ill-treatment in police custody, in prisons and in the armed forces continued; prison conditions were cruel, inhuman or degrading; prisoners of conscience were detained; refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people were not given adequate protection; and conscientious objectors to military service continued to face imprisonment. In Chechnya civilians were the victims of indiscriminate killings, direct attacks, torture and extrajudicial execution by Russian federal forces; there were few, if any, investigations into these violations, and no prosecutions of those responsible were known to have taken place in 1999.

Background

1999 was dominated by political and economic instability, a general disregard for the rule of law and large-scale corruption at all levels of government. Massive unemployment and dysfunctional industries left thousands of people without a salary for several months. Political chaos and the lack of consistent political leadership led to a strengthening of Russian nationalism. In August Vladimir Putin was appointed as Prime Minister, the fifth in two years. In December President Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation; presidential elections were scheduled for March 2000.

The Chechen conflict

Bombings in Moscow and two other Russian cities in September, which killed at least 292 people, were followed by a Russian military offensive in Chechnya and an intensified campaign of intimidation against Chechens in Moscow and elsewhere. Although no group claimed responsibility for the bombings, the Russian authorities blamed Islamic groups from Chechnya. The apparent disregard for international humanitarian law by Russian forces, and the discriminatory manner in which Chechens were targeted by the authorities in Moscow and elsewhere, suggested that the government was involved in a campaign to punish an entire ethnic group.

Abuses in armed conflict

No journalists or independent monitors were officially allowed by the Russian border guards through the only open border crossing between Chechnya and Ingushetia. However, eyewitnesses and victims reported that Russian forces directly attacked civilian targets including hospitals, medical personnel and vehicles clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem, causing high civilian casualties. Russian forces were also allegedly responsible for indiscriminate attacks. A number of incidents were reported in which civilian convoys carrying people fleeing the conflict, especially those travelling on the main road out of Chechnya towards Ingushetia, were subjected to bombing from the air or artillery shelling.

• On 21 October a series of explosions in the central market, a mosque and the only working maternity hospital in Grozny reportedly left at least 137 civilians dead and about 400 wounded in what appeared to be an indiscriminate attack by Russian forces. The dead included 13 mothers and 15 new-born babies.

According to reports women and men were separated from each other and their identity documents were checked by Russian troops at the border crossing with Ingushetia. A number of men were reportedly detained following such checks. They were usually held for a short time at the checkpoint before being taken to undisclosed detention facilities, or so-called "filtration camps". The whereabouts of many of those believed held in "filtration camps" remained unknown at the end of the year.

There were allegations of human rights abuses by Chechen armed groups. Abuses reported included that Chechen armed groups were preventing people from leaving their villages, using civilians as "human shields", attacking villages which refused to allow them in, and killing prisoners of war.

Internally displaced people

Some 200,000 people fled the fighting in Chechnya, about 168,000 of whom sought refuge in neighbouring Ingushetia. However, there were reports that a large number of the civilians attempting to seek safety outside the areas affected by the conflict were prevented from doing so, placing their lives at risk.

• According to reports at least 40 civilians fleeing Grozny, the Chechen capital, were killed by Russian special detachment (" spetsnaz ") troops on 3 December. According to seven survivors interviewed in a hospital in Ingushetia, a convoy of seven cars and a bus, all marked with white flags, heading towards the border with Ingushetia was stopped at a Russian checkpoint near the village of Goity, a few kilometres south of Grozny. Russian troops wearing masks and camouflage uniforms checked the cars and then opened fire at point-blank range. The bus caught fire and more than 40 passengers were killed.

Persecution of Chechens

Chechens and other people from the Caucasus reported that they were arbitrarily detained, ill-treated and tortured in Moscow and other parts of the Russian Federation. There were allegations that in some cases police fabricated criminal charges against them and planted drugs or weapons on them.

In September law enforcement officials and local authorities in Moscow and other big cities launched what appeared to be a massive intimidation campaign mainly targeting Chechens. The so-called propiska (residence permit) system, although legally abolished in 1991 in national law, continued to be enforced by the authorities in Moscow, St Petersburg and other large cities. Migrants, internally displaced people or asylum-seekers who did not have residence permits were subjected to arbitrary detention and forcible expulsion by law enforcement officials. Verifying possession of a residence permit or registration appeared to be used by the authorities as a pretext to stop any person who appeared to be from the Caucasus and detain them. Reports suggested that in Moscow in September alone up to 20,000 non-Muscovites were rounded up by police and some 10,000 expelled from the city. There were reports that Moscow law enforcement officials, including those working with the passport and visa department, had received verbal orders to detain and refuse registration to ethnic Chechens. There were a number of reports of torture and ill-treatment of Chechens and other people from the Caucasus by police.

• Rezvan (not his real name), an ethnic Chechen and a resident of Ingushetia, had been undergoing medical treatment for two months at a Moscow hospital. In September he left the hospital to spend a weekend with relatives. Police officers arrived at the relatives' apartment and took Rezvan and a male relative to Police Department No. 38, where the two men were put into different cells. Police officers reportedly confiscated and destroyed all Rezvan's medicines. Rezvan was then handcuffed with his arms behind his back and hung from the ceiling by the handcuffs, while reportedly being beaten by two police officers. Following his release, a medical examination concluded that two of Rezvan's ribs were broken, but the doctors refused to give him a medical certificate because he was not registered in Moscow.

Prisoners of conscience

Prisoners of conscience continued to be detained and to face trials.

• Grigory Pasko, a journalist and Russian naval captain, was released on 20 July after the Russian Pacific Fleet military court in Vladivostok found that there was insufficient evidence to support the charges against him of espionage and revealing state secrets. However, he was found guilty of "abuse of office" and sentenced to three years' imprisonment; he was immediately released under the provisions of an amnesty law adopted in June. There were concerns about the fairness of his trial, which took place in closed session in January. Grigory Pasko had been detained in November 1997 for reporting on the navy's illegal dumping of nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan in 1993. He was subsequently held in prolonged solitary confinement and denied proper medical treatment despite fears that he may have contracted tuberculosis.
• In July former prisoner of conscience Aleksandr Nikitin was indicted for the eighth time for espionage and revealing state secrets, charges which carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years. He had initially been arrested in February 1996 after writing articles on the risks of radioactive pollution from Russia's North Fleet. In February 1999 the Supreme Court had upheld the ruling of the St Petersburg City Court that the previous indictment, almost identical to the one issued in July, was unclear and based on evidence unacceptable to the court. He was acquitted in December by the St Petersburg City Court which ruled that his activities did not amount to a crime.

Conscientious objectors

There was still no civilian alternative to military service. Young men who claimed conscientious objection to military service based on their religious beliefs and membership of banned organizations, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, were often not considered to be legitimate conscientious objectors by the courts. Conscientious objectors continued to face imprisonment.

Torture and ill-treatment

Torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement officers to extract confessions continued to be reported. Detainees were threatened with death; beaten, sometimes to the point of losing consciousness; tied in painful positions; scalded with boiling water; almost asphyxiated by having plastic bags placed over their heads or by being forced to wear gas masks with the supply of oxygen repeatedly cut or restricted; and denied food and medical care. The authorities failed to investigate most allegations and there were serious delays and deficiencies in those investigations which did take place.

Armed forces

Reports of ill-treatment and torture in the armed forces continued to be received. Efforts by Major General Vasiliy Kulakov, appointed in 1998 to oversee action to eradicate bullying in the army, appeared to have little impact on the number of reports of torture and ill-treatment or on the high rate of suicide among conscripts.

• In April AI was informed that a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the death of Dmitry Kaloshin had been opened by the Office of the Procurator of Volgograd Region. A preliminary investigation into the case, carried out by the Procurator of the Dzerzhinskiy District in Volgograd, had not resulted in charges. Dmitry Kaloshin, who was found dead on 16 November 1996, had allegedly suffered a catalogue of abuse and ill-treatment by superior officers.

Conditions of detention

Conditions in penitentiaries and pre-trial detention centres, which held more than a million people, did not improve and continued to amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Hundreds of thousands of people awaiting trial continued to be held in grossly overcrowded conditions. Thousands had to sleep in shifts, often without bedding. Many cells were filthy and pest-ridden, with inadequate light and ventilation. Food and medical treatment were often inadequate. Tuberculosis and skin diseases were widespread. In June a new law designed to grant amnesty to around 100,000 detainees and prisoners was adopted, but it was not clear how many people were freed under the amnesty. It was reported that the law would apply only to up to 18,000 of the 350,000 detainees in pre-trial detention, where the conditions were known to be the worst.

Children's rights

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reviewed Russia's report in September. It expressed concern at the continuing and widespread practice of torture and ill-treatment of juveniles in police custody and the harsh conditions of detention for juveniles awaiting trial. The Committee also raised concerns about the use of child soldiers, and the alleged extrajudicial execution, "disappearance", arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment of juveniles during the previous Chechen conflict. The Committee also recommended revision of the provisions for the imposition of the death penalty and corporal punishment on children by Chechen Shari'a courts.

Politically motivated killings

Three men were convicted in the Republic of Kalmykia in November in connection with the murder in June 1998 of Larisa Yudina, a journalist and editor of an opposition newspaper in Kalmykia. Two of the men, who included a former aide of Kalmykian President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, were sentenced to 21 years in prison; the third was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for concealing information about the murder. Before her death, Larisa Yudina had been repeatedly warned to stop her critical reporting on President Ilyumzhinov, whom she accused of corruption. The names of those who ordered the killing remained unknown.

In October Latvian police detained a Russian former officer of the special police forces in connection with the assassination of Russian reform politician and member of parliament Galina Starovoitova. She had been shot outside her home in St Petersburg in November 1998 in what appeared to be a politically motivated killing.

Death penalty

In February a ruling of the Constitutional Court banned all ordinary court judges from imposing death sentences until the jury trial system had been introduced throughout the Russian Federation; jury trials were available in only nine of the Federation's 89 regions. The ruling constituted the de facto abolition of the death penalty. However, despite the undertaking given to the Council of Europe in 1996, the authorities failed to fully abolish the death penalty. In June President Yeltsin commuted the sentences of all the more than 700 people under sentence of death.

Executions continued to be carried out in Chechnya under the provisions of the Chechen Shari'a Criminal Code. In June Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov revealed that 11 people were executed during the first six months of 1999. According to reports, two more people were executed in Grozny on 11 March, after being sentenced to death by the Supreme Shari'a Court; the executions of Lema Bakayev and Grigory Kryuchkovskiy were shown repeatedly on television in Grozny.

Asylum-seekers

Legal provisions for asylum-seekers remained inadequate. Many people were at risk of refoulement (forcible return) to countries where they could face grave human rights violations.

• In July Bakhadir Ruzmetov was returned to Uzbekistan. He was believed to have been suspected of involvement in explosions in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, in February. There was concern that Bakhadir Ruzmetov would be at risk of torture and ill-treatment in detention and that he could face execution after an unfair trial; six death sentences were handed down by a Uzbek court in June for involvement in the bombings after a trial characterized by human rights observers as "biassed and shoddy".

AI country reports and visits

Reports

• Russian Federation: Grigory Pasko – prisoner of conscience (AI Index: EUR 46/007/99)
• Russian Federation: Chechen Republic – Humanity is indivisible – Open letter to the United Nations from the Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI Index: EUR 46/038/99)
• Russian Federation: Chechnya – For the Motherland (AI Index: EUR 46/046/99)

Visits

In June AI delegates attended a conference in Moscow focusing on the abolition of the death penalty. In July and November AI visited the country to research violations of children's and women's rights within the criminal justice system, and to interview people affected by the Chechen conflict.