Political Prisoners

December 14, 2013

Prisoners_Inline

There was a short period of time in recent Russian history when a tiny hope emerged that there would be no more stories of people imprisoned for their political views: people falsely diagnosed with “continuous sluggish schizophrenia”, expelled from big cities to areas from which foreigners were completely banned. Then 1993 came and Boris Yeltsin gave the order to crash the parliamentary crisis with tanks and shooting. The violent resolution of the crisis led to more than 70 deaths and 172 injuries. It was an important stage in Russia’s path away from democracy. Then came the military assault on Chechnya, which had dared to proclaim independence. Yeltsin acted more and more like a self-proclaimed tzar and in 1996 picked up his successor, the almost invisible former FSB director, Vladimir Putin. Russia under Putin has become an authoritarian police state.

This year, European politicians began to apply the term “political prisoners” when describing the current political reality in Russia. This doesn’t mean that their usually very cautious attitude towards anything Russia-related has drastically changed. It is just an indication that it is getting harder and harder to keep their eyes closed towards the growing number of political prisoners in Russia, not to suggest that political prisoners in Russia are a new phenomenon.

When hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Moscow in December 2011 to express their indignation with the fraudulent results of the parliamentary elections, it wasn’t the beginning of a movement. Since July 2006 there have been regular protests, including Marches of Dissent, Days of Wreath and Strategy 31. There was also Occupy Abay on Chistye Prudy boulevard in Moscow with its singing, dancing and lectures.

Of all the political groups with high numbers of people imprisoned on politically motivated charges, The Other Russia, a non-registered party founded by Eduard Limonov, comes out on top. Their members were imprisoned en masse for holding political actions which some would regard as controversial but which were never violent. In 2004, forty-one young people went to the public reception office of the Russian President Vladimir Putin. They demanded that Putin leave power. Forty of them were imprisoned. They all spent one year in the infamous Moscow Butyrka prison. The incident became this century’s first mass trial in Russia – and a lot more were to follow. A few months earlier, another group of people held a peaceful takeover of three offices inside the Ministry of Health, protesting reforms which they claimed monetised social benefits, affecting the most vulnerable social groups in society. Although all three offices were vacant at the time of their occupation, seven young people were given sentences ranging from 2-3 years in a general-regime colony.

Currently, six people affiliated with Other Russia are serving sentences on politically motivated charges. The most cynical of these is the case of Taisia Osipova, the 28-year-old wife of Sergey Fomchenkov, one of the key people in this political group. In November 2010 Taisia was arrested in her native town of Smolensk on charges of illegal drug possession/distribution. From the start, the case has been characterised by two shocking details: the investigation failed to provide any significant proof of Taisia committing any crime and there is strong evidence that the whole case was fabricated by the Police Centre to Counteract Extremism, which now serves as the political police of Russia. Despite a lack of evidence, Taisia was found guilty of the “intention to commit crime” and sentenced to 8 years in a penal colony.

Taisia Osipova’s case, where politically motivated charges are brought, is not an isolated one. Vasily Popov, the leader of the Karelian branch of the Yabloko party, nearly shared the same fate. In February 2009, Popov was found guilty of extortion from a local businessman and libelling the head of regional government. Despite inadequate evidence, Popov was given a 4 year suspended sentence with 4 years of probation, halting his work as the chair of the Petrozavodsk (the regional capital) city council. The sources within Yabloko party told me that soon after the term of the punishment had expired, Popov was nearly trapped again when drugs were planted in his belongings. This provocation failed as Popov underwent a medical test proving he hadn’t taken drug-related substances.

Despite its status as an officially registered party, Yabloko has more and more political prisoners among its ranks. It is emblematic that all the cases of the party members persecuted on political grounds are taking place outside the Russian capital. This is one of the most dangerous features of the Russian political scene: it is rare for the problems of people outside Moscow and sometimes Saint Petersburg to become visible to the international community. In Yekaterinburg in March 2013, Maxim Petlin, the regional coordinator of the Yabloko and also a deputy of the city council, was sentenced to three years in prison. He was accused of demanding 3 million rubles from a property developer to end protests against demolishing a park and building a shopping centre in its place. That there was, once again, a lack of evidence and multiple perversions of justice during the trial of Maxim Petlin didn’t prevent the judge from pronouncing an unfair sentence.

The period between 2012-2013 gave rise to an unprecedented increase in the number of political trials. Putin’s authorities don’t see any limits in organising mass trials. In most cases the charges and the subsequent punishment are absolutely inadequate to what a person actually did or is suspected of having committed. There was nothing new in the tactics deployed by the prosecution against Pussy Riot in 2012. Two of whom – Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova – were convicted for “aggravated hooliganism” – a charge handed to many activists recently.

On 6 May 2012, “March of the Millions” was held in Moscow. Its violent dispersal by the special police force and subsequent numerous charges against its participants of alleged “riots” are regarded to be the culmination of the authorities’ clash against Russia’s civil society. As of now, 28 people have been charged. Three of them have already been given prison sentences, one more, Mikhail Kosenko, has been ruled to undergo forced psychiatric treatment. In Moscow, a show trial of 12 other participants is ongoing. Others charged are awaiting their trials. Several dozens have fled Russia seeking asylum. One of those, Alexander Dolmatov, committed suicide in a Dutch extradition center in January 2013, his asylum request having been refused.

In Murmansk we have seen baseless charges of piracy against the international crew of the “Arctic Sunrise” ship. On 18 September, Greenpeace took action at the Prirazlomnaya oil rig where Gazprom intends to become the first company to pump oil from Arctic waters. Over a day later the ship was illegally boarded by armed Russian special forces before being towed to Murmansk. Thirty activists, including 3 journalists, have been refused bail while an investigation into the action is underway. That the Greenpeace vessel was attacked while located in international waters makes Russia guilty of violations of international law.

These examples are not comprehensive. I have not mentioned the scientists serving sentences for appalling charges of “espionage” due to contact with their colleagues in other countries. There are stories of persecuted journalists: Mikhail Beketov, the editor-in-chief of a small town newspaper in Khimki, a Moscow satellite, was attacked in 2008. The assault left him heavily disabled. Mikhail Beketov died on 8 April 2013. Just recently, on 16 October 2013, Elena Tkach, a municipal deputy of Moscow was beaten during public hearings on the plans to construct another shopping mall in a historic part of Moscow, erasing two monuments in the process. Elena Tkach was thrown from the stage by a representative of the developers and taken to hospital unconscious.

The Russia of gulags and secret police was supposed to be a shameful aspect of our nation’s history, a lesson to be learnt and never repeated. Instead we see innumerable cases which show there is still a clear tendency that the authorities of Russia are acting in full confidence that they will get away with whatever injustices they perpetrate, before and into the future. When dissent is stifled, the only way to resist it is to do so in greater numbers, together.

By Oksana Chelysheva | @ochelysheva