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Survey: Torture Unchecked In Russia

By Galina Stolyarova

Staff Writer

One in five residents of St. Petersburg say they have been tortured or physically abused by the police or other law enforcement officers at least once in their lives, a new survey has revealed.

The troubling statistic emerged in a new report by a group of experts from the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Committee Against Torture, a non-governmental organization based in Nizhny Novgorod with branches in six regions of Russia including Chechnya.

The report, which aimed to establish the scale and range of torture used by Russia’s law enforcement authorities, was presented to local media on Monday in the St. Petersburg headquarters of Memorial, a human rights group.

Researchers questioned more than 5,500 people in six regions of Russia, including St. Petersburg, Pskov, Nizhny Novgorod, Chita and the Komi Republic, and interviewed panels of experts in each region.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents in St. Petersburg said they believe torture is used systematically by the country’s law enforcement agencies, which for the purposes of the survey included the regular police, FSB personel, OMON special forces personel, staff at public prosecutors’ offices, staff at drunk tanks and the traffic police.

This view is shared by 35.4 percent of repondents in Nizhny Novgorod, 30.9 percent of respondents in Komi Republic, 26.5 percent of respondents in Pskov and 20.8 percent of respondents in Chita.

Between 38 percent and 50 percent of the poll’s participants in the six regions said the problem of torture in Russia gets no coverage at all in the country’s media.

In Chita and Komi researchers also ran the poll among prisoners.

Thirty-nine percent of prisoners in Komi said they were tortured during pre-trial detention, including 10 percent of respondents who indicated repeated torture. In Chita, 61 percent of inmates reported being tortured. Every fifth respondent reported systematic torture.

Inmates were not asked if they have been tortured in prison to protect them from possible retaliation from prison authorities or other prisoners.

The researchers said they decided against conducting the study in Chechnya.

“Fear rules the republic, and not a single sane respondent would admit to any knowledge of torture going on,” said lawyer Igor Kalyapin, head of the Committee Against Torture. “People are so scared there that an honest answer would bring even more suffering. We are continuing our work in Chechnya — and we are aware of the level of hostilities. This is precisely why we know for a fact it makes no sense to even try to collect credible statistics there.”

Kalyapin said one torture method that had first been tried on Chechen men has now spread to the rest of the country.

“Because of the extreme humiliation this torture involves, there is a zero chance of people reporting it and complaining about it,” he said.

“They undress the man, handcuff him, suspend from the ceiling and stick a police truncheon in his rectum. They film the process and then threaten to show it around. Very few people are strong enough to take [a complaint about this] to court, which makes it easy for the assailants to escape punishment.”

The range of torture methods that the survey’s authors say is used in Russia includes several common techniques, including running electricity through various body parts, suffocation, suspension, waterboarding, binding, deprivation of water and food, and severe beatings.

Sociologist Valentin Golbert said the survey revealed no typical victim of torture in Russia.

“People suffer from torture regardless of their age, social class, ethnic origins or professional occupation,” he said. “We have testimonies from children, pensioners, students of physics from the respected Moscow University and even police officers themselves, who have endured torture. Coercion is the main motive behind using physical cruelty, and you are at risk if you are a suspect.”

One police officer interviewed by the researchers in Nizhny Novgorod on condition of anonymity threw some light on the exessive use of force on suspects.

“Yes, I do beat them,” the officer said. “It would take me about two weeks to solve a crime using the methods they taught me at the police academy, whereas a colleague, who knows nothing about the job would get a confession overnight by beating the hell out of any suspect. And because the bosses demand conviction statistics, no one cares who is put behind the bars, as long as some semblance of bureaucratic procedure is adhered to.”

Experts said it is essential to stop the practice of demanding statistical targets and introduce new control policies to ensure professional standards and prevent the use of torture methods.

The definition of the word torture in Russia’s Criminal Code is different from the phrasing used by the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

In international law, “torture” means “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for obtaining information or a confession, punishing them for an act they have committed or are suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing them.”

By contrast, in the Russian penal code torture is merely a form of inflicting pain.

The UN committee has twice advised Russia to amend its law and introduce a definition consistent with the international legal practice as well as incorporate a separate article on the use of torture by law enforcement agencies, but nothing has been changed.

In its report, issued in November 2006, the UN Committee Against Torture urged Russia to amend its legislation and ensure the country conformed to international standards.

The Committee’s experts expressed particular concern about Russia’s “laws and practices obstructing access to lawyers and relatives of suspects” and “the numerous, ongoing and consistent allegations of acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment at the hands of law enforcement personnel.”

“The Russian Federation should establish effective and independent oversight mechanisms to ensure prompt, impartial and effective investigations into all allegations, and legal prosecution or punishment of those found guilty,” the report said.

Kalyapin said that even when police officers are investigated in abuse cases, they tend to be brought before the courts on lesser charges.

“Most officers who get sentenced for carrying out torture, are charged with ‘exceeding professional duties’,” he said.

The findings of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Nizhny Novgorod-based Committee Against Torture were released amid growing concern about levels of violence in Russian society.

Russia has the world’s third highest level of homicides per capita, after Columbia and South Africa, and it suffers from one of the world’s highest suicide rates.

“Brutal hazing in the army, the police use of physical force on opposition protesters, killings of investigative journalists and the high rate of domestic violence are all part of the picture,” said Yakov Gilinsky, a leading crime analyst with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and head researcher on the new torture survey.

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