Emergency in penal institution No. 77

31.03.2008

All Sunday and Monday, employees of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group received phone calls from convicts held in Colony No. 77 and their relatives about events in this institution.
In institution No. 77, those who committed a crime for the first time are held; it is located in Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia region. The institution has approximately 1,500 convicts, 9 detachments, and a special detachment for convicts suffering from tuberculosis.
Last week, the leadership of the institution changed. Yurii Zavhorodnii was appointed head, and Valerii Mezhuiev as first deputy. They had already worked in the same positions before and were dismissed two or three years ago.
On the night from Saturday to Sunday, convict Andrii Kryvonis, the senior duty orderly of the quarantine, was brutally beaten. He died from the beatings. Kryvonis was sleeping alone in a separate room. Convicts claim that they were not involved in this beating. The colony administration, on the contrary, is convinced that Kryvonis was beaten and beaten to death by the convicts themselves. The investigation began early in the morning. All convicts who were in the enhanced supervision section were transferred to detachments. In the afternoon, 15 special forces soldiers in masks and with full combat gear were brought into the colony. They took 2-3 convicts from 6 detachments in turn, beat them, and in the evening, they took everyone away to an unknown destination; the belongings of the convicts remained in the colony. In total, 15 convicts were taken away. The names of 14 are known:
1. Ananiev Roman
2. Andrianov Oleh
3. Bondarenko Serhii.
4. Zhloba Ihor.
5. Kalinychenko Maksym.
6. Koshelnyi Denys.
7. Moskalenko Oleksandr.
8. Osypchuk Oleksandr.
9. Papenko Dmytro.
10. Pohorelov Serhii.
11. Predalnyi Vitalii.
12. Skolytochenko Borys.
13. Streltsov Oleksii.
14. Tyniakov Denys.
By what principle they were selected is unclear. It is claimed, for example, that Osypchuk and Papenko were assistants to the administration, worked as orderlies, brigade leaders, so why were they taken away? Some of the removed convicts recently had penalties for violating the regime, some did not.
Today it became clear that at least part of the removed convicts are in the Zaporizhzhia pre-trial detention centre (SIZO). According to one of them, the special forces supposedly beat them thoroughly, not leaving marks, but one person for some reason was beaten very severely – Roman Ananiev.
The head of PI No. 77, Zavhorodnii, explains the removal of the convicts by the necessity of checking whether they have contracted tuberculosis, because the apparatus available in the colony is broken. This explanation is very doubtful: with the presence of a special detachment for tuberculosis patients, it is hard to believe that to detect tuberculosis, convicts need to be taken to a SIZO.
The special forces remained in the colony. At approximately 3 p.m., the special forces soldiers began to brutally beat four convicts – Oleksandr Malofieiev, Volodymyr Dmytrenko, Oleh Bulat, and Oleh Reviakin, demanding testimony from them as to exactly who beat Kryvonis. Unable to withstand the beating, Oleksandr Malofieiev, as the convicts say, “opened himself up” – he cut his veins and abdomen. That is the kind of investigation it is.
We cannot verify the stated facts. The fact of the removal of several convicts can be considered reliable. We hope that the prosecutor's office and/or the parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights will provide answers to the questions regarding the legality of the investigation into the murder of Kryvonis, the grounds for the removal of the convicts, whether they were beaten by special forces, and why this fever of constant complaints about illegal violence and the complete impossibility of appealing the actions of the administration has engulfed the entire Ukrainian criminal-executive system. In those same days, we were informed about the beating of prisoners and attempted suicide as a result of horrible beatings in PI No. 84 (Tsuman, Volyn region) and PI No. 100 (Temnivka, Kharkiv region), and a few days earlier – in PI No. 55 (Sofiivka, Zaporizhzhia region). We are certain: if the system were more open, and it were possible to meet with convicts and try to understand their problems, there would be significantly fewer conflicts.

Yevhen Zakharov