Amnesty International Report 2002 - Russian Federation
- Document source:
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Date:
28 May 2002
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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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