Public Oversight in the Chelyabinsk Region

Ural Human Rights Group
Ural Democratic Foundation

Public Oversight Commissions as a tool for the prevention of torture and cruel treatment of people in places of involuntary detention.
(Analysis of the current situation, recommendations for improvement)

Introduction

Public Oversight Commissions for the implementation of public oversight of human rights in places of involuntary detention (ONK) appeared in Russia following the adoption of the law “On Public Oversight of Human Rights in Places of Involuntary Detention and Assistance to Persons in Places of Involuntary Detention” (Federal Law of 10 June 2008, No. 76-FZ). In practice, ONKs were established in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation in 2009. The first convocation of the ONK served for two years (2009–2010). The current ONKs hold authority until 2013.
The qualitative composition of ONKs in the regions is approximately the same: the majority are represented by former employees of law enforcement and security agencies — military personnel, prosecutors, police officers, and staff of the penal system. This is because there are extremely few genuine human rights organisations in Russia that understand what human rights and human rights advocacy are; or that are familiar with places of involuntary detention (colonies, prisons, pre-trial detention centres (SIZO) of the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Federal Security Service — FSIN and FSB; temporary detention facilities (IVS), special reception centres, and sobering-up stations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs — MVD; guardhouses and penal units of the Ministry of Defence — MO and the FSB Border Service; and special schools of the Ministry of Education).
The second reason for the fact that the qualitative composition of the ONK consists mainly of former law enforcement personnel is that Russian public consciousness has long been in a state of “winter hibernation”; the absolute majority of people are indifferent not only to the plight of others but also to their own fate. Therefore, very few follow even political events in the country, let alone show interest in or track the introduction of new laws. Thus, many people do not even know that the opportunity for public oversight of human rights compliance in places of involuntary detention has emerged — and this is unknown not only to individual citizens but also to the majority of public associations in the country.
The authorities took advantage of this situation: they quickly, through regional Public Chambers, drew up the necessary document packages for veterans of law enforcement agencies (in most cases with fairly gross violations of the aforementioned Law on Public Oversight, which the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, which issues mandates to ONK members, turned a blind eye to), thus forming ONKs in their respective regions or territories. Hence the results of the activities of the first ONK compositions. The most interesting aspect of this situation is that, in forming the first ONKs in this way, the local authorities were not guided so much by malice as by “stern necessity”: uninformed and indifferent “civic activists” did nothing to join the ONK, while the regional Public Chambers were pressured from above — report back and provide candidates — so they hastily gathered whoever they could (and veterans of the security services are always close at hand). The second reason for this state of affairs was the aforementioned circumstance: there are, essentially, no human rights organisations in Russia that have “been carrying out their activities for at least five years from the date of their creation, and whose statutory goal or field of activity is the protection or assistance in the protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen” (the requirement of Law No. 76). At least in the subjects of the Federation, there are not enough of them to form a full-fledged ONK, because according to the law, one organisation can propose no more than two candidates — so they accept documents from organisations very far removed from human rights work. Moreover, we believe that this legal requirement is not only not essential but even unnecessary — everything depends on the personality of the ONK member: the “title” of “human rights defender” also does not guarantee the candidate the proper level of professional training and the necessary moral qualities for the specified work.

The First Results of ONK Work

One can become acquainted with the activities of ONKs in various regions of Russia in considerable detail on the website of the Association of Independent Observers, www.onk-ru. In our report, however, we will speak in more detail about the results of the activities of the ONK of the Chelyabinsk Region — from the moment of its inception to the present day.
The composition of the first ONK was as described above: the overwhelming number of members were veterans of law enforcement agencies, and the rest were random people. Absolutely all members of the first convocation of the ONK had never engaged in human rights protection. The ONK was headed by a former administrative functionary. For this reason, this ONK did not engage in any activity monitoring the observance of human rights in places of involuntary detention: visits to places of confinement were of a “guided tour” nature; ONK members listened to upbeat reports from institutional heads that everything was fine with them, prisoners’ rights were not being violated, and living conditions in the institution were excellent. In colonies (FSIN institutions where people serve long sentences in the form of deprivation of liberty), for example, the commission was met by an orchestra of prisoners in concert uniforms, and the colony administration, after the ONK members’ tour of the facility, presented them with a pre-printed inspection report, which only remained to be signed. It goes without saying that the content of the report was always the same: everything is fine, no violations of convicts’ rights have been recorded.
By conducting such “inspections,” the ONK, understandably, noticed neither the beaten prisoners in colonies, SIZOs, and IVS; nor the windows in IVS cells that blocked out daylight (while “eyelash” bars on windows in cells have been banned for ten years by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights — see the ECHR case “Kalashnikov v. Russian Federation”); nor the restrictive measures on the filing of complaints by prisoners regarding cruel treatment by institution staff, nor many other things.
During personal appointments with ONK members, the institution administrations would send specially prepared prisoners from the so-called “activists” — members of the discipline and order sections who cooperated with the administration in exchange for leniency in their detention regime. At these appointments, these prisoners, naturally, did not complain about the conditions of detention but instead asked questions about their criminal cases, asking for help in sorting them out and reducing their sentence term according to the verdict. It must be noted that the consideration of questions of justice and the legality of prisoners’ sentences is simply not an ONK function, but the members of the first ONK convocation did not take this into account and engaged with such questions received from prisoners. (Let us note in parentheses that in both years, not a single one of these questions was resolved, which is understandable: neither the ONK as a whole nor its individual members had the competence or professional training to resolve these issues). Besides this, colony administrations also resorted to other tricks — for example (according to stories from released convicts), healthy prisoners from those same discipline and order sections were placed into colony hospitals to praise the medical service in the colony when questioned by ONK members.
Thus, the authorities fully succeeded in completely hollowed out the meaning of the work of the public oversight commission in the Chelyabinsk Region and, judging by information in various media, including the aforementioned website of the Association of Independent Observers, in other regions as well. Therefore, the first convocation of the Chelyabinsk Region ONK did not achieve any, even in the slightest, significant results in changing the situation regarding human rights in places of involuntary detention. This is confirmed by the fact that our organisations (the Ural Human Rights Group, the “Helping Hand” Foundation — now the Ural Democratic Foundation) continued to receive numerous complaints from prisoners, to which we responded without seeking help from the ONK, understanding that it was ineffective. We managed to help specific prisoners who had suffered from cruel treatment by institution staff; however, the resolution of systemic issues regarding the prevention of torture was outside our competence. It was this circumstance that prompted our desire to join the next convocation of the ONK ourselves, which we did: in January 2011, three participants from our organisations were issued mandates as members of the ONK for the Chelyabinsk Region.

We shall trace the results of the ONK’s work in other regions of Russia using materials from that same website of the Association of Independent Observers.
Firstly, as a positive point, one should note the very fact of this website’s appearance.
This site is very useful to any ONK member, wherever they may be, as it contains much needed information, starting from legal acts on public oversight, methodological guidelines for conducting inspections, and ending with information about inspections conducted across the country.
The second thing we can see from the information posted on the site and from our own experience is the awakening of interest among public organisations in the institute of public oversight of places of deprivation of liberty. This can be traced by the increased number of candidates for membership in oversight commissions (see also the website of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, www.oprf.ru). At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the authorities did not abandon the tactic of filling the ONK with the greatest possible number of members loyal to them — former employees of law enforcement agencies. But this time, it seems to us, the authorities acted consciously. And again, in putting forward their candidates, they, as mentioned earlier, did not particularly care about following the requirements of Law No. 76, paragraph 2, Article 10 of which states that “the right to nominate candidates for the composition of a public oversight commission belongs to an all-Russian, interregional, or regional public association, which has state registration, has been carrying out its activities for at least five years from the day of its creation, and whose statutory goal or direction of activity is the protection or assistance in the protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen” — the candidates for ONK members in the overwhelming majority of cases are nominated by associations completely far removed from the protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen, and the Public Chamber of Russia, which approves the candidates, turns a blind eye to this. Therefore, the second convocation of public oversight commissions did not go far in qualitative terms from the first.
The third thing we can notice by reading information from the site is the same ineffectiveness in the work of ONKs in other regions of Russia as that of the first convocation of the Chelyabinsk Region ONK.
If one takes at random for review the report of an ONK from any region of Russia, one can see that the oversight commissions find the bulk of prisoner rights violations in the violation of either nutrition standards, or in the insufficient provision of prisoners with clothing, etc., whereas, in our view, the main troubles of prisoners lie elsewhere: cruel treatment of them (beatings, torture) and the impossibility of complaining about this to competent authorities or the public. Therefore, we see the task of public oversight of places of citizen detention as eradicating torture and the beating of citizens in these places and ensuring them a real opportunity to appeal against the actions of the administration regarding their cruel treatment.
Based on our own experience of human rights activity in this direction and an analysis of the existing situation regarding the work of public oversight commissions, we dare to offer some advice for the ONKs of the Russian Federation.

Recommendations for Improving the Effectiveness of Public Oversight

1. Planning inspections of places of confinement
The Law on Public Oversight obliges the ONK to notify the territorial executive authority, under whose jurisdiction the institution planned for visitation falls, about the date of the visit. The question is — when exactly to do this: a month, a day, or an hour before the visit? Among a large number of ONK members and human rights defenders, there is an opinion that a real inspection of an institution is impossible when the administration of the institution is notified in advance — they say, they will hide all the evidence. This is not so. By and large, it makes absolutely no difference how long before the planned visit the institution’s administration is notified: in any case, both the institution’s staff and the prisoners will remain the same. Will they hide the most troublesome inmates, the truth-seekers? You can hide them even in the ten minutes it takes you to walk through the institution’s doors. Will they manage to clean everywhere, will they bake bread from good flour? It is enough to go to the bakery and simply see in the warehouse what kind of flour is stored, and from conversations with prisoners, find out what the bread was like yesterday and a week ago.
Therefore, we recommend not to bother your head about the lack of surprise in an inspection, but to plan a visit to a particular institution based on your own convenience and the information you have about that institution.

2. Obtaining information about the institution
Information about the institution is the foundation of your successful work when inspecting it.
Human rights organisations that have been working with the penal system for many years have no problem obtaining information about colonies or pre-trial detention centres — consider that they have been in practically all of them, and they receive letters from each of them. The situation is worse with guardhouses, special schools, and IVS. But what should those do who have not been engaged in human rights work but have now become members of an oversight commission?
There are several options.
Firstly, if there are human rights organisations in your region that deal with prisons, reach out to them.
Secondly, gather information yourself. And it is best to do this not in the institution itself that you intend to visit, but to learn information about it by talking to prisoners who are in another place.
Let us assume you are inspecting an IVS. Who is in the temporary detention facility? — defendants. They are in the IVS for no more than 10 days (although this term, established by law, is not observed everywhere — by the way, do not forget to check this point), and then they go to a SIZO. If you ask a prisoner in the IVS whether the IVS staff are violating his rights, 99 out of 100 will answer that they are not, that everything is fine for him there. The prisoner is afraid that you will leave, and the police will unleash hell on him for complaining about them. He is not afraid in vain; there are grounds (and experience) to be afraid. But ask him which SIZO he arrived from, which specific cell in that pre-trial detention centre he was in, and whether he has any complaints about that centre. Right there, he will tell you a lot about the SIZO: how they feed, how they treat, where which bunkers are, and much else besides. And you record everything, and when you go to the SIZO, you will check it. Ask about other IVS: he sits in a SIZO cell with people from different districts (i.e., from different IVS), and at the transit point, he meets a large number of people, and everywhere inmates vividly share information with each other about where they feed well, where they beat, where they do not let you sleep. Thus, you will glean a lot of information about those places that you have yet to visit for an inspection. And you will understand that it makes no difference whether you warned about your visit early or late: what you already know about the institution cannot be hidden.
Thus, before visiting the institution, you learn a lot about it, the main thing being what and where to check. Especially use conversations with prisoners who are not behind bars for the first time: firstly, they are not so cowardly, and secondly, they can tell you not only about SIZOs and IVSs, but also about colonies.
As for gathering information about other places of involuntary detention falling under other departments, the algorithm of actions for gathering information remains the same, only you will be gathering it from Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers, Commissions on Minors’ Affairs, educational colonies, and other specialised places.

3. Conducting the inspection
You set out for an inspection exclusively after the relevant territorial authority, under whose jurisdiction the inspected institution falls, has been notified of your visit. It is advisable to have with you a copy of the notification that your ONK sent to them. (Some oversight commissions send notifications of an inspection directly to the institution being inspected, which, of course, can be done — there are usually no complaints that the main directorate was not notified — but we recommend not departing from the requirements of the law and notifying exactly the territorial body — the GUFSIN, the Regional Directorate of the FSB, etc. — and not the institution itself.) And, mandatory, have the telephone numbers of higher-ranking superiors with you to contact them if an obstacle to entering the institution suddenly arises.
Upon arrival at the institution, first of all, introduce yourself to its head and immediately ask if the prisoners are informed of your arrival. If not, suggest that information about your inspection be given immediately via loudspeaker (afterwards, check with the prisoners whether such information was provided).
The attitude towards you is almost always polite and accommodating — you should behave the same way. Unfortunately, there is still another attitude of ONK members towards the administration of the institution being inspected: an initial call for a scandal — saying, we are human rights defenders, we know how you treat people here, now we will expose you all! We dare to assure you: with such an attitude, you will not expose anyone to anything, and you will not notice the violations of prisoners’ rights that exist in the institution: the administration will simply pull the wool over your eyes. If, however, you have prepared well for the inspection (i.e., gathered enough information about the institution), are strong-willed, and principled, then no one and nothing will prevent you from performing your mission well.

First of all, do not waste time on a tour. If you are inspecting an FSIN institution, then by agreeing to a tour, you doom yourself in advance to the fact that the lion’s share of your time will be spent on the empty contemplation of neatly made beds, clean towels in the dining room washbasins, and the servile expressions on the faces of “activists” pushed toward you for conversations.
Therefore, start with the main thing: familiarise yourself with the procedure for submitting and sending prisoners’ complaints about conditions of detention — from beginning to end. Let the institution staff tell you how exactly a prisoner can complain about the violation of his rights by employees. And check all the logs in which these complaints are recorded. Check the deadlines during which complaints are held in one service or another of the institution. Record in detail everything you see and hear. Pay special attention to the last stage — sending the complaint from the institution: you will notice that practically everywhere, there is no postal mark indicating that it has been accepted for dispatch. In other words, when a prisoner asks: “Did my complaint leave?”, the administration, without blinking an eye, will answer: “Yes,” and show the incoming number in the special section log, where prisoners’ letters are registered. They did everything correctly: they registered the complaint, assigned it an incoming number, and then no one prevents the administration from sending the complaint nowhere, because the post office does not make a mark on the receipt of the envelope, and one can always confidently say: “In that bag of letters that we gave to the post office that day, your letter was included.” So note this fact in your report. Note that you are not evaluating the actions of the administration — you are simply noting a fact that has occurred. You will evaluate this fact at the ONK meeting when you discuss your visits to the institutions. (But it is quite likely that the ONK will not make any assessments at the meeting — your information will simply be “taken note of,” i.e., no consequences for the prisoners of the institution you inspected in terms of improving their situation will follow. Therefore, start acting independently, on behalf of the organisation that nominated you: send your recommendations to the department whose institution you inspected, attract the attention of the media, etc. — if, of course, you want to change the situation. No one can forbid you from doing this.)

Having clarified from the administration the procedure for sending complaints about conditions of detention (we draw your attention — primarily these complaints: about conditions of detention, as there are almost no questions about other correspondence), familiarise yourself with these conditions. This is where the information about the institution that you gathered in advance will come in handy. And if you have specific places that need to be looked at, go straight there — verify your information. And be prepared for the fact that it may not be confirmed. This happens quite often, because the information obtained by you during conversations with prisoners (including those who came to you after release) may be based on rumours, on lies due to a desire to annoy the prison staff, or on fear, which, as is well known, has big eyes. However, the confirmation of the most incredible assumptions is by no means rare. So go there, look at what you have information about. And do not hesitate to ask questions, the main one of which will be: “And what document regulates the existence of such a procedure that is maintained here by you?” You need to ask this to force the institution’s administration to present to prisoners only those requirements that are dictated by the rule of law and nothing more; to prohibit them only that which is prohibited by law. We draw your attention — by law. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the institution administration will refer to standards established by departmental instruction or departmental order. Almost always, this order will have a “For Official Use” (DSP) stamp, which, as if it gives it all the more the status of something unshakeable.
Carefully and in detail, write down the numbers and names of all documents that the institution’s representatives will name to you. After the tour, look at all these documents (they cannot refuse to give them to you) — you now have to conduct an analysis: do the norms of the departmental instructions and orders comply with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and other documents guaranteeing human rights. It is clear that you are not the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation or the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), but the meaning of your oversight is to check whether human rights are being observed in places of confinement. So you are checking. And you may well find that they are not being observed. And the reason for this is initial errors in the departmental regulatory acts by which the institution’s staff are guided.
And then meet with every prisoner about whom you have information (received a letter from him, heard about him from others, etc.). If the administration suddenly says that such a prisoner is not in the institution, do not be lazy and demand a list of all prisoners and check whether a prisoner with such a name is indeed absent. If the administration says that the prisoner cannot be brought to you (he is ill, at work...), then ask to be escorted to him in the place where he is currently.

After that, organise a personal reception of prisoners. In different Rules for visits by members of public oversight commissions to places of involuntary detention (Rules of the FSIN, FSB, MVD...), there are different standards for such receptions: some allow receiving face-to-face, some only in the presence of an institution employee. We recommend that you organise personal receptions exactly like this: face-to-face.
There are two interesting points here.
Firstly, prisoners come to the reception with different questions, most of which have nothing to do with the mission of the ONK: convicts complain about the verdict, the judges, the investigators — they track the violation of their rights precisely at the stage of criminal proceedings. This is the trouble of personal receptions — explaining to people that the task of your visit here is different. Nevertheless, you can provide assistance to those who have applied by giving them the addresses of public organisations that deal with helping prisoners, including help with criminal cases.
Secondly, it happens that the administration sends impostor complainants to you: you have information that prisoner Ivanov would like to meet with you — you say to those accompanying you: “Please bring prisoner Ivanov.” They bring you one: here is Ivanov. But this is not him at all, but “activist” Petrov, dressed in Ivanov’s robe, who will confidently tell you that he has no complaints against the administration. Therefore, do not be lazy and demand the prisoners’ personal files so as not to fall into a trap. Especially if you have little experience in this matter, the institution being inspected is unfamiliar to you, and you do not know the prisoner himself. In accordance with the Law, ONK members have the right to demand any document relating to the ONK’s mission. By the way, in the personal file, you can find confirmation or refutation of information received from the prisoner himself: terms of stay in the punitive cell (SHIZO), penalties received, explanatory notes, etc.
As for those who came to you “on business,” i.e., with a complaint about the conditions of detention, then you must be very attentive, well understand exactly what they are complaining about, and write down the essence of the complaint in detail.
If you have been brought a complaint in written form, especially if you have been brought an envelope with a complaint with a request to send it, then you accept this complaint and explain to the person who applied that you will undoubtedly send it, while also undoubtedly adhering to the established procedure for sending: registration in the special section of the institution, etc. Your task will be to monitor the receipt of this shipment by the post office. Do not take any complaints illegally from prisoners; do not give in to their pleading requests: you came here to control compliance with the law, so be kind enough not to violate the law yourself.
If during a personal reception you receive information requiring on-site verification (a visit to one place or another in the institution), do not be lazy and check: whether right now, interrupting the reception, or after it — depending on what circumstances require.
In principle, your inspection ends here.

4. Drafting the Inspection Report
The inspection report is a serious document, since all your further actions to rectify the situation in the institution or in the system of places of involuntary detention of the given department will be based exclusively on it. Your Report will serve as the basis for the ONK’s decision based on the results of the institution’s oversight.
We recommend the Inspection Report form we have developed, presented in Appendix 1.
We understand that there is no limit to perfection, and that prisoners possess the full spectrum of rights granted to them by Russian and international legislation and that ideally, one needs to check the observance of them all by administrations of places of involuntary detention, but nevertheless, we suggest that ONK members, during inspections, focus their main attention on two fundamental (at present in Russia) moments of the life of citizens in confinement: cruel treatment of them (beatings, torture of various kinds) and the impossibility of appealing against the actions of the administration regarding conditions of detention. Based on this premise, the form of the Inspection Report was drawn up. At the same time, it, of course, allows for the recording of absolutely any violations of human rights in places of involuntary detention.

First of all, ONK members must understand that drafting the Inspection Report is exclusively their prerogative — from beginning to end.
Unfortunately, a nearly unshakeable practice has developed where representatives of the institution are included in the ONK commission for inspecting the institution, who, along with ONK members, sign this Report, make comments in it, and often write this Report themselves. This situation should not be, in any way. And this requirement is fundamental.
There can and should be no signings of the Report by representatives of the institution’s administration. A representative of the institution places their signature for only one purpose: to testify that they have received the Inspection Report. They do not enter any objections, additions, etc., into the report. A full copy of the Report is made on the photocopier (i.e., the Report with all its appendices), this copy is received by the institution representative, which is certified by their signature on your copy of the Report.
How, then, to draft an Inspection Report?
It seems to us to be a fairly simple matter (since you remember that the Report is a recording of what was seen; the ONK will draw conclusions from this Report at its meeting). You have a form, and therefore your task is simply to fill it out when visiting the institution.
After you have finished the tour of the institution (visited those places you deemed necessary to visit), spoken with the prisoners, and conducted a personal reception, you return to the office of the person who accompanied you (most often this will be the head of the institution’s office) and discuss with the administration those questions that arose during the inspection, including prisoners’ complaints. You write down all the administration’s answers in detail in the report. Very often, minor problems that, nevertheless, greatly annoy prisoners can be resolved during this conversation. To resolve — does not mean to guarantee the correction of the situation: the administration in such cases promises you almost the stars from the sky. That is why you write down in detail in the Report all its promises (and, most importantly, the deadlines for eliminating the shortcomings), so that after the indicated time has passed, you can arrive here again with this report and check — have you been deceived? Is everything well with those who complained? (Regarding tracking the fate of those who complained, more will be said below.)
During the tour of the institution, you filled in the columns of the Report; during the final conversation, you added the missing information — that is all. Sign the Report (reminding you again: only ONK members do this), have a copy made, obtain the signature of the institution’s administration representative that a copy of the Report has been received by the institution, and you can say goodbye. Do not pay attention to your fatigue, do not rush, and do not “get into the situation” of the administration, which is also tired from the inspection and “in a hurry to proceed to its official duties.” You, in fact, need no one when touring the institution except for the accompanying employee, who ensures your safety and shows the way. And the final conversation is just an attempt to quickly eliminate identified violations. If you are tired yourself and in a hurry to finish the inspection — do not start it. A superficial “bogus” inspection does huge harm both to the prisoners and to the reputation of the ONK.
There are situations when a request comes from a representative of the inspected institution to sign their version of the Report. In principle, there is nothing terrible about this. You can meet them halfway here, under one indispensable condition: very carefully monitor that all the remarks identified by you during the inspection are included there. List in the Report only those subdivisions that were subjected to inspection, and especially pay attention to the final phrase, like: “During the tour of the institution, no violations of rights were identified,” which they will most likely try to sneak past you. Formulate the conclusion as follows: “During the tour of the above-listed subdivisions, no other violations of the rights of citizens held in them were identified.” Do not be shy about insisting on possibly multiple reprints of the Report. At the same time, it is necessary to draft your own Report, and it is mandatory to leave it in the institution under signature. And their version is nothing more than their internal document, drawn up by them for the convenience of reporting to higher authorities.
So, you leave the premises of the institution, having left YOUR report with its representatives.
At the same time, your work on inspecting this institution is far from finished — ahead of you lies a meeting of the oversight commission.

5. ONK Meetings
ONK meetings are a double-edged sword. On one hand, there seems to be no point in these meetings at all: according to the law on public oversight of places of involuntary detention, all ONK members are absolutely equal in their rights. In other words, no approval of an institution inspection Report is required; an ONK member has the right to make independent statements to the media, send the inspection Report in which they participated to whoever they deem necessary, etc. Why does he need an ONK meeting in such a case? (And an ONK member can also go to any institution for an inspection without asking anyone — it is enough to find a partner.)
But there is also that very second edge of the sword: the established public opinion and the power of a collegial decision.
It is clear that the qualitative composition of the ONK that exists at the present moment in Russia does not promote the advancement of international standards for the protection of human rights in places of confinement, the prevention of prisoner torture, and cruel treatment of them. The rare human rights defenders who have made it into the ONK do not constitute the majority of their composition, so their desire to turn the ONK into an effective instrument for the prevention and eradication of torture in places of confinement constantly encounters resistance from other members of the commission, especially its leadership (the commission chair, his deputies...). At the same time, the resistance of other participants is not necessarily caused by their desire to shield the administration of the institutions — very often such behavior of theirs is dictated by the simple mentality of these people, their adherence to the bureaucratic spirit of work, and an extremely low level of qualification.
To overcome this situation, we suggest that all ONK members familiarise themselves with our version of the Rules of Procedure for oversight commissions, presented in Appendix 2 to this report.
The basic idea of this regulation is simple: no one in an oversight commission has management powers — only organisational functions. Moreover, this idea stems not only from our ideas about the effectiveness of this commission’s work but also from the provisions of Law No. 76-FZ, paragraph 1, Article 4 of which states: “Public oversight and assistance to persons located in places of involuntary detention are carried out on the basis of principles of voluntariness, equality, and legality.” In other words, any position in the ONK is not a sweet opportunity to give orders, to forbid, or to permit, but an additional burden: preparing and sending out notices of inspections, printing decisions, keeping minutes of meetings, etc.
At the first meetings of the ONK, when we informed the commission chair that we intended to visit certain institutions and asked him to notify the relevant directorates, he tried to stop us: “Tell me, why are you intending to go there, and I will decide — whether you go there or not.” It is so that there would be no such statements that we drew up our own Rules of Procedure for the ONK, which would, at a normative level, exclude situations of limiting the activities of ONK members.
This Regulation sets out all the functions of the ONK and allows, as it seems to us, each ONK member not only to freely carry out their mission but also to strengthen its effectiveness with the power of collective action.

According to the provisions of the Law, the ONK can make decisions on one situation or another identified based on the results of inspections, and communicate these decisions to the attention of various bodies (the departments being inspected, the prosecutor’s office, the authorities...). It seems to us that the decisions of the ONK, the meaning of which consists not only in bringing to the attention of competent authorities cases of violations of prisoners’ rights but also in developing recommendations for them to rectify the situation, can be very effective in the cause of preventing torture and cruel treatment of prisoners. This is what ONK meetings are needed for. It is these goals that the ONK Regulation we developed serves.
Different members of the oversight commission visit places of confinement, and when they gather together at their meetings, after the reports of each of them, a general picture of the state of affairs regarding human rights in one system or another of places of involuntary detention emerges. Undoubtedly, the quality and objectivity of the picture appearing at the meeting, as mentioned above, primarily depends on the quality and objectivity of the inspection of the institutions by ONK members. (When we arrived with an inspection at one of the detention centres of the Chelyabinsk Region and entered the cells, we immediately drew attention to the steel sheets on the windows, which effectively blocked access for natural light into the cells. We immediately said this to the detention centre leadership and, of course, noted this fact in the Report. Imagine our surprise when the detention centre leadership declared to us that the ONK chair had already visited them twice for inspections and had never once expressed any remarks regarding the actual absence of natural lighting in the cells - !) Understanding that such a situation (some see, others do not) is quite possible, we try at ONK meetings to reach an agreement with other members of the commission on the unification of our inspections; for this, we have developed the Inspection Report form.
The best thing, ideally, would be complete mutual understanding among ONK members and a desire to work in the same harness in the name of achieving the same goals. But life is life, and the real situation with public oversight of places of confinement is what it is. Therefore, based on the realities, we offer our recommendations. And to ONK members who have an active position but encounter resistance in its implementation, we remind them that there is a way out of this situation as well — take advantage of the recommendations in the first paragraph of this chapter.

6. Cooperation with the Commissioner for Human Rights
The ombudsman institute has not existed in Russia for a long time, but in any case, it is significantly longer than the institute of public oversight. For all the fundamental divergences of these entities, the main one of which is that ombudsmen are a structure of state power, and the ONK is a public instance embodying an element of civil society, these institutes share matching tasks and goals; therefore, their cooperation is not only possible but also extremely desirable and necessary for the protection of the rights of citizens located in places of involuntary detention.
It is worth noting immediately that in Russia there are two structures of ombudsmen that are quite independent of each other: the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation (currently Lukin V.N.) and the Commissioners for Human Rights of the subjects of the federation. The independence of these structures from each other is caused by the fact that the presence of a Commissioner for Human Rights in a subject of the federation (the adoption of a law on the Commissioner) is the prerogative of the legislative power of the subject itself, which is why Commissioners for Human Rights are currently not present in all subjects of the Russian Federation (see the website of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation, http://ombudsmanrf.org). By virtue of this, we recommend that all ONKs cooperate with all offices of commissioners for human rights — both of the entire Russian Federation and of their subject of the federation. Besides this, it is desirable to establish connections with the Commissioners for Children’s Rights, who have appeared quite recently, created according to the same scheme: the Commissioner for Russia and the Commissioner for the subject of the federation.
In what form can the cooperation between the ONK and the Commissioners for Human Rights (Children’s Rights) be carried out?
First of all, in the direction of sending the Commissioner summary reports on the results of inspections of places of involuntary detention. Although the staffs of the Commissioners’ offices are quite numerous and special positions (or entire departments) are provided in them for work with places of involuntary detention, Commissioners constantly experience a deficit of information about the current state of affairs in colonies, pre-trial detention centres, etc. The ONK, on the contrary (given a conscientious attitude to their duty), are overloaded with information about this, because they work in a mode of monitoring places of involuntary detention. This is firstly.
Secondly, the possibilities for influencing the situation for the ONK and the Commissioner for Human Rights are sharply different. Despite the fact that the Law on the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation (or an analogous law in a subject of the federation) is of a frankly declarative nature, while the Law on Public Oversight of Human Rights in Places of Involuntary Detention gives quite a lot of powers to ONK members, the realities of life are such that all departments within whose structure the mentioned places are located are quite reverent toward the remarks, and especially toward the submissions to the prosecutor’s office, of the Commissioner for Human Rights. ONKs must maximally use this situation and ceaselessly supply the Commissioner with the materials of their inspections. At the same time, together with the inspection materials, suggest to the Commissioner their own ways of solving identified problems to facilitate his work on interacting with other state structures. All this is necessary so that the Commissioner has a serious basis for compiling his submissions to the prosecutor’s office and other bodies competent in resolving the issues raised by the ONK. The submissions of the Commissioner are indeed that path (one of the paths) which ONKs should use to execute their mission of preventing torture and cruel treatment of citizens in the places of the latter’s involuntary detention.
Thirdly, one needs to practice joint press conferences on issues of public oversight with the office of the Commissioners for Human Rights. See more on this below.
Fourthly, we strongly recommend joint inspections of institutions with the Commissioner or representatives of his office. How are such inspections useful? First of all, a joint inspection strengthens the effectiveness of the work and the effect exerted both on the administration of the institutions and on the citizens involuntarily held in the institution. Furthermore, joint work enriches both the one and the other — after all, we repeat, both institutes for the protection of citizens’ rights are young, the people included in them most often do not have experience of inspections, and one can only learn to do something by participating in the deed — through mistakes and the accumulation of experience. Therefore, experienced people found in these structures must transfer their experience as quickly as possible and to as large a number of colleagues as possible. Joint inspections just facilitate this.
Our personal experience of interaction with the Commissioner for Human Rights and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights of the Chelyabinsk Region speaks of the extraordinary benefit of joint actions to protect the rights of citizens located in places of involuntary detention.
And, fifthly, one can suggest that the Commissioner keep a Registry of Safety for prisoners who have applied to the ONK with complaints about conditions of detention, the Regulations for which we have developed (see Appendix 3). What is this Registry? It is a list of individuals who have complained about the institution administration to ONK members when they visit the institution. It is no secret to anyone that institution administrations not only, to put it mildly, do not like complainants but also persecute them quite cruelly for complaints. It is for this very reason that the majority of prisoners refuse to converse (whether in the presence of administration representatives or face-to-face) with ONK members on the subject of the violation of their rights. Those who nevertheless dare to do this are almost always subjected to repressions after the commission’s departure. Therefore, the protection of these people is necessary. Thus, it is proposed to enter their names in a special list and have the Commissioner (or those organisations to whom he entrusts this) periodically check how these prisoners are being treated in the institution. It seems (based on our previous work experience) that this measure is quite effective.

7. Using the Media
As strange as it may sound in modern Russia, the media do indeed possess quite a large influence on the decision-making of the authorities. Speaking thus, we mean not the supreme power (on which the media have no influence), but the regional power, which is very much concerned about its image in the eyes of the supreme power, since, in the conditions of the absence of democratic institutions in the country, its prosperity depends not on the opinion of voters but on the goodwill of higher-ranking superiors. Higher-ranking superiors do not like it when negative information about one region or another begins to accumulate in the media space. And the image of the region is created by the work of one state structure or another located on its territory, even if they are under federal subordination. Institutions of the penal system, guardhouses, temporary detention centres — the very subjects of ONK oversight — are part of departments under federal subordination and management. But their work in a direct and very significant way (since the activity of these institutes always arouses lively interest in the population) influences the image of the region. This circumstance is what the ONK needs to take into account, to use it for the execution of its mission of preventing torture and cruel treatment of citizens in places of their involuntary detention.
It must be noted here immediately that the media themselves are always eager to cover the work of penal-type institutions, therefore one does not have to persuade them for long to give information that comes into the possession of the ONK.
It would seem that everything is developing so wonderfully; take it and work hand in hand with the media. However, it is not all that simple.
The ONK should constantly keep in mind that practically all journalists (unlike ONK members) are not concerned about solving one problem or another about which they are releasing a report — the news itself is important to them, especially if it carries a sensational tint or is triggered by a news hook. Therefore, not every one of their reports (far from every one) about prison life carries a positive charge capable of positively changing the situation with human rights observance in places of confinement. Therefore, the probability of harm from a media report about a prison is much higher than the probability of bringing benefit.
Based on this, one needs to carefully prepare one’s appeal to the media before calling journalists to cover one aspect or another of the ONK’s activities.
First of all, it is mandatory to prepare and distribute to all journalists present at the coverage of the event press releases about the event. It is no secret that the majority of journalists are quite lazy and are accustomed to shooting a cliché image of an event, taking a short interview at the beginning of a press conference (“recording a sync”), escaping after recording the necessary video footage of the press conference itself, without having understood the essence of the problem at all. Therefore, you must hand each one a sheet with information written in clear, simple, and understandable language, quotes from which he will put on air. In an ideal version, it would, of course, be good to review the finished material before publication, but this is quite difficult to do if you are not acquainted with the journalists. From this, the requirements for the quality of the ONK press release rise sharply.
One can give journalists Inspection Reports of institutions, but in this case, you must be sure of the journalist’s professionalism and his decency, therefore it is hardly worth taking such a risk, for your goal is to help people whose rights are being violated, and not to aggravate their position.
Another touch: before turning to the media, one must definitely try to solve the problem within the department (or even within the institution). One should appeal to journalists either as a last resort, when by no other methods does it seem possible to change the situation, or for the simple reason of notifying as large a number of citizens as possible about your existence: who you are, why you are here, what and whom you can help, what successes you have achieved.
If the ONK follows these simple tips, then communication with the mass media can very much help it change the situation with torture in Russian places of involuntary detention.
In our activities, we have had to resort to the help of the media more than once, and in the overwhelming number of cases, this help was effective. Although we also have experience of negative impressions and negative consequences from the coverage of events of which we were the authors or participants. This experience led us to the conclusions which we presented as recommendations above.

8. Attracting international institutes for the protection of human rights
At the present moment in Russia, the most effective means of protecting their rights for citizens is an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). There are cases where violated rights were restored thanks only to the very fact of filing a complaint with the ECHR. This, of course, is great — the appearance of such a means of protection. For the ONK, however, the path of appeal to the ECHR is closed, since only the victims themselves can appeal there with a complaint (including about torture or cruel treatment).
Nevertheless, for the execution of its mission, the ONK can use another means of international protection — an appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Currently, it is Juan E. Mendez, to whom one can send a message to the electronic address [email protected]
The Special Rapporteur for the Russian authorities, it seems, does not represent any threat, since for many years now, guided by his status (the procedure for admission to the country), the Russian authorities simply do not let him into the RF. But, as we have already said, in the Russian regions, where, in fact, the ONKs work, the actual facts of the manifestation of interest in one specific case or another (or phenomenon) by an international organisation have real power. And the UN Special Rapporteur is a very high organisation for a provincial official. A request sent from there practically always causes a state of fright in any regional boss, which allows for a fairly quick resolution of a problem that had hitherto seemed simply insurmountable.
Our experience of communicating with the Special Rapporteur is still not great, so we cannot give him any evaluation. But we see a perspective in the possibility of using this international institute for the protection of human rights in the work of the ONK, of which we are members.
There exist other international tools that the ONK can use in its work, for example, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), but we do not yet have experience of working with them, so we cannot analyse anything here.

Identified Violations of Human Rights in Places of Involuntary Detention in the Chelyabinsk Region
The first inspections of places of involuntary detention, conducted by us in the status of ONK members (as employees of human rights organisations, we have been visiting places of deprivation of liberty for a long time — since 1996), gave us the following information about the violation of human rights in colonies (belonging to the FSIN), pre-trial detention centres (FSIN), temporary detention centres (MVD):
1. Beatings of prisoners (torture) are encountered in every FSIN institution. Prisoners are beaten both by institution staff (operational workers, regime service workers, guards, detachment heads) and by other prisoners from the so-called “activists” — prisoners who cooperate with the institution’s administration in exchange for concessions in conditions of detention. “Activists” beat other prisoners with the knowledge or on the instructions of administration employees.
Beatings begin immediately upon the arrival of a prisoner transport at the colony (“breaking the transport”). After unloading from the vehicle, colony staff pounce on the prisoners and begin to beat those who have arrived. This is done for intimidation, to show “who is the master of the house.” Transport arrivals are not beaten in very rare cases. Further, the beatings are continued by prisoners who are in the clandestine service of the institution’s administration.
In the first room where the transport is received, “activists” immediately approach the newly arrived and offer the arrival to write a letter to relatives with a request for providing “humanitarian aid” to the colony. At the same time, either the address of the colony itself or the address of some employee is named as the addressee. Those who do not agree are beaten.
The beatings do not end there. In the bathhouse, where all newly arrived are sent, prisoners are given a rag: “Wash the floor!”. Those who do not agree are beaten.
We have received complaints about cases of beatings upon refusal to wear a tattered robe upon arrival at the colony or in a pre-trial detention centre upon refusal to wear a robe when placed in a punishment cell. (Both demands of the administration are a violation of the law.)

Torture continues thereafter as well. In the quarantine, where prisoners end up for the first time, the daily routine is such that prisoners spend practically all their time outside (in any weather), where they are constantly marching or standing on the asphalt for hours. Being allowed to go to the toilet is permitted 2 or 3 times (to relieve oneself), for “number two” — only once after lights out.
Such an attitude towards those arriving at the colony, in the opinion of the staff, is necessary to subdue any aspirations of the prisoner towards any resistance to the administration or towards standing up for his own dignity.
When a prisoner, having passed through the inevitable beatings at the beginning of his confinement in the colony, gets into a detachment, his misfortunes do not end: for any expressing of his position or, God forbid, his own opinion differing from that of the administration, the prisoner is taken to the duty unit, where, most often, the stretch-torture is applied to him — i.e., they are placed against a wall with legs spread as wide as possible and in such a stance are held for hours.
Everything that is described above, we heard from prisoners in every colony that we visited if we had face-to-face conversations with the prisoners. At the same time, not one of them would agree to openly testify about the torture they had told us about if we had initiated a prosecutorial check based on his story.
However, the prisoners’ stories about torture are confirmed by facts of criminal prosecution of employees of the GUFSIN for the Chelyabinsk Region, which happen from time to time. Right at this moment, a trial is taking place of 18 employees of the GUFSIN, accused of murdering four prisoners, which happened just during the “breaking of the transport” in IK-1.
2. Obstruction of the filing of complaints about conditions of detention is just as mass a violation of prisoners’ rights as the torture applied to them.
In GUFSIN institutions, the following procedure for filing complaints (any, including those about conditions of detention) exists: a prisoner files a complaint in written and open form to the detachment head. The detachment head familiarises himself with the complaint, talks to the prisoner (the conversation is most often of a one-sided character: the prisoner is simply offered to abandon the complaint), after which the detachment head passes the complaint to the special section of the colony, where operational workers (special staff of the institution, whose task, among other things, is to control the situation in the institution regarding the prevention of riots and other disturbances) familiarise themselves with it without fail. The operational worker calls the complainant to himself and also demands from him the abandonment of the complaint. If the prisoner shows firmness, the torture in the form of the aforementioned stretching is practically always applied to him, or he is sent to a punitive isolation cell (SHIZO). At the same time, the special section enters the complaint for registration in the log, and the prisoner (if he insists) is informed of the registration number of this complaint. Further, he is informed that the envelope with the complaint has been turned in to the post office. On this, the life of the complaint ends, because the colony administration does not turn the complaint in to any post office: according to the existing procedure, postal workers do not fix postal shipments (in this case, an envelope with a letter) in any way, and therefore the colony administration can always say to the prisoner: we threw your letter into the mailbox, and now present all complaints to the post office. It is impossible to find the ends here. For this reason, complaints about conditions of detention practically never leave FSIN institutions.
This is how absolutely all prisoners with whom we spoke describe the situation with complaints, and this is several hundred people from a dozen and a half colonies.
3. Restrictions on meetings with relatives are also of a mass character. Moreover, in institutions of the penal system, this is caused by the fact that the administration of the institutions at any moment can invent (or provoke) a case of a prisoner violating the internal rules and send him to the SHIZO for this, which entails the cancellation of the planned meeting; while in temporary detention centres belonging to the MVD, the restrictions on meetings are caused by the fact that there are no rooms for meetings in the IVS, which makes it impossible to hold meetings.
4. Torture conditions of detention in IVS and SIZO are a very widely spread phenomenon. In the cells of these institutions, situations of overcrowding compared to the norm are very often encountered. Moreover, the number of prisoners held in a cell can exceed its capacity by 3, 4, 5 times! Prisoners in such conditions find it hard to breathe (there is simply not enough oxygen), humidity in the cells can reach 100%, which causes a person to begin rotting alive; various infectious diseases spread lightning-fast in such an environment. The situation is aggravated by either insufficient natural lighting in the cell or its complete absence (in half of the IVSs we have visited so far, there are simply no windows in the cells!). In some cells, there are also no tables or benches — prisoners eat right on the floor where they also sleep. At the same time, they are also deprived of walks, because not all IVSs have walking courtyards.
Torture conditions of detention not only deprive prisoners of health but also significantly violate their right to a defence, because in such conditions, one cannot prepare for court in any normal way.

The listed violations of human rights, cases of torture and cruel, degrading, human-dignity-insulting treatment, of course, do not exhaust the whole spectrum of violations. We only chose the most egregious of them to show that there will be work for public oversight commissions in Russia for many years to come. Understanding this, we, nevertheless, do not fall into pessimism, because both our previous experience of working in a human rights organisation and our current one — working in the status of ONK members — fills us with optimism: we are succeeding, using the techniques indicated above, in changing the situation for the better, forcing sluggish state structures not only to listen to our opinion but also to take real measures to rectify the negative moments to which we point.
We are confident that a constant and purposeful struggle for the prevention and non-admission of torture and cruel, degrading treatment of citizens in places of involuntary detention will bring the necessary fruits, especially if we feel the support of those countries and peoples that have moved further along the path of democracy than we have.


Nikolai Shchur,
head of the Ural Human Rights Group and
the Ural Democratic Foundation
member of the ONK for the Chelyabinsk Region

Chelyabinsk
19 April 2011