Colonies must be open to public scrutiny!

Journalists are a fairly sensitive indicator of public interest. Therefore, I am very pleased that the mass media has finally turned its attention to the problem of prisoners’ rights, and the article by Svitlana Vyshnevskaya (‘Strizhavka convicts want to sue... a human rights activist’, ‘Misto’, No. 24, 27 June 2008, see http://www.misto.vn.ua/index.php?action=1&k=4377) is further evidence of this.
The appearance of such articles means that reports of mass beatings, suspicious deaths in prisons and pre-trial detention centres, and other – perhaps less widespread and less severe – violations of prisoners’ rights, which have appeared particularly frequently over the last eighteen months, have not gone unnoticed by society. This means that society is beginning to pay attention to how the state treats a significant portion of its citizens whom it holds in prisons and other closed institutions. This is an encouraging sign, and we should thank the journalist for covering this, until now, very unpopular topic.
I would only like to draw attention to some points in this article that create, if I may put it this way, a distorted perspective on the problem.
One must remember that one of the main tasks of any human rights organisation is to draw society’s attention to a problem. Therefore, it is entirely natural to hear criticism rather than praise from human rights organisations. To be surprised by this is like being surprised that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office do not write theatre reviews but instead report on crime rates.
Having read the article, one might conclude that peace and tranquillity reign in the correctional colonies, the administration loves and coddles the prisoners, the prisoners dote on the administration, and in the evenings, representatives of the administration and prisoners take etiquette classes together to apply the knowledge they have gained in their daily interactions. And it is only the troublesome human rights activists, such as Dmytro Groysman from the Vinnitsa Human Rights Group, who slander not only the Department but also the prisoners, preventing them from serving their sentences.
In reality, the situation in the Department is by no means so rosy. Almost every prisoner complains about rudeness and vulgarity from the administration. But events even more terrible do occur. And they are made public not only by the Vinnitsa Human Rights Group but also by other human rights organisations.
If one reads the article carefully, the fragment of the interview with Andriy Hel confirms the fact of a gross violation of human rights. Here is a quote:
‘Indeed, on 1 and 5 June, two suicides were committed in the colony. These are abnormal occurrences. I am not justifying the administration of the institution, which was negligent and failed to prevent this. But one must also take into account that in Colony No. 81, prisoners are held who are serving sentences for the second, fifth, or even tenth time. They are characterised by a state of anxiety and frustration; that is, the suicides were caused by external factors, but even more so by internal factors — their mental state.’
Despite the ‘soft’ phrasing, this statement refers to nothing less than a violation by the administration of the right to life, guaranteed by Article 28 of the Constitution and Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights. And no references to ‘internal factors’ can justify the behaviour of an administration that ‘failed to oversee’, because it was precisely the administration that should have taken these ‘internal factors’ into account. I believe that behaviour by an administration that violates the right to life, even if it is not proven that the actions of the administration themselves pushed the person to suicide, should cause concern to society.
Another point that must be taken into account when checking events in any correctional colony is that the words of prisoners spoken in the presence of the administration are extremely unreliable evidence. I do not wish to offend those prisoners whose words are published in this article; they may very well have been telling the truth. I use the word ‘unreliable’ in a very narrow legal sense: ‘that which, without additional evidence, cannot be taken into consideration.’ It so happens that journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists come into the zone and leave, but the colony administration remains — sometimes for many years — together with that prisoner. And it is entirely within the power of the administration not to let a journalist or human rights activist (and sometimes a lawyer) in to see that prisoner tomorrow. Therefore, one must possess desperate, bordering on insane, courage to complain about the administration in the presence of its representative.
In the course of my work, I have encountered hundreds of statements from prisoners writing about how well they are treated and how they ‘have no complaints against the administration.’ But only a great desire to whitewash a colony’s administration could lead one to believe these statements, written in the operational department of the colony and transmitted through the special section. And, as a rule, through other sources, it turns out that the statements were written under dictation and under the threat of extreme violence. This was the case after the mass beating of prisoners in Iziaslav Colony No. 58 in 2001 and 2002; the same occurred after the mass beating of prisoners in Iziaslav Colony No. 31 in 2007. The ‘genuine truth’ of such statements takes on its original meaning (‘genuine truth’ in Ancient Rus’ was extracted from a defendant locked in interrogation by beating them with ‘podlinniki’ — special long sticks).
Are human rights activists mistaken when they publish unverified or poorly verified information? Sometimes they are mistaken, but not as often as it might seem. A report by the Vinnitsa Human Rights Group led to the fact that the administration's ‘negligence’ was effectively confirmed, which, from the point of view of human rights, constitutes a violation of the right to life. Verification of a report by the same Vinnitsa Human Rights Group about events in Temnivska Correctional Colony No. 100 led to the discovery of a prisoner who had marks on his wrists from handcuffs ‘fastened’ on the upper third of his forearms. According to the head of the Kharkiv Department of the service, the use of special equipment was unlawful, and those responsible were punished. Reports of the mass beating of prisoners in Iziaslav Colony No. 31 are confirmed by dozens of testimonies.
Therefore, there are results from such reports, although, I repeat, not everything in these reports is confirmed. And although only one victim of the administration’s unlawful actions was discovered during the inspection at Colony No. 100, I am still not convinced that the events of 7 June 2008, which the Vinnitsa Human Rights Group reported, did not take place in the colony. I have quite serious grounds for my doubts: I and the lawyer Iryna Yakovets were denied entry to the colony for more than 2 hours; some prisoners did not want to speak with us, giving us to understand that the office where we were sitting was being bugged; some prisoners directly stated that a ‘conversation’ had been held with them before our meeting, warning them not to chatter excessively. Under such conditions, I cannot be certain that ‘everything was clean’ there. But I also cannot prove that anything happened. Thus, the colony administration remains under constant suspicion. And this is the case in 99 percent of the situations that occur in the Department.
The reason for this is simple: the Department does everything to ensure that no information about violations in the colonies leaks beyond its walls. Journalists might be interested in how many complaints against the administration are received, for example, by the Commissioner for Human Rights or the prosecutor’s office — I mean complaints filed in accordance with the law. It would be very interesting to compare this number with the number of complaints sent circumventing the established order, filed by the relatives of prisoners. The figures would be a reliable indicator of the efforts the Department for the Execution of Punishments exerts to keep any aspect of the life of prisoners in correctional colonies a secret.
The Department exerts fierce resistance to any attempt to monitor compliance with prisoners' rights. Any organisation can easily get into a colony to distribute humanitarian aid, perform a concert, or provide other assistance to the Department in fulfilling its tasks. But for a human rights organisation that wants to fulfil its task — to check how matters stand regarding compliance with prisoners’ rights — access is practically closed.
How is one to verify information under such circumstances? No adequate methods exist. One is left with two choices: either unconditionally believe the colony administration, which is very difficult for any sane person to do in the current conditions and is very dangerous from the point of view of public health; or use information that is sometimes almost impossible to verify in order to encourage the Department to be more open.
The concern for the peace of mind of prisoners’ relatives is very appealing. But in reality, the majority of alarming reports come precisely from the relatives. Therefore, the closed nature of the colonies only exacerbates the anxiety of the relatives, who are already in a state of constant tension, knowing about the state of affairs in the colonies not by hearsay. The Department’s concern for the peace of mind of relatives looked especially touching when, after the events in January 2007 in Iziaslav Colony No. 31, about 40 prisoners were sent off on transport and for several weeks their relatives did not know where they were or what was happening to them.
The openness of the colonies is necessary both for society and for the Department itself. Only transparency can create a more or less realistic picture of the state of affairs in the colonies. If the Department continues to resist all forms of public oversight, society will have, instead of a truthful picture, a mixture of the Department’s glossy reports and frightening, not always accurate, reports from prisoners transmitted through roundabout ways. As a result, everyone will lose.

Arkady Bushchenko,
lawyer,
Chairman of the Board,
Ukrainian Helsinki
Human Rights Union