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Slavery under contract
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Debates and speculations over the military system were resumed with renewed force last weekend. On April 1 spring conscription campaign began. The day before some youth organizations held a meeting against general conscription. At the time their members of “Youth Russia” (supported by Kremlin) pelted their coevals with chicken legs to demonstrate their protest against transition to contract service. The reform is being carried out, but not in a way it ought to be.
On April 2 one more case of AWOL was reported. A young man deserted from the base of the Main intelligence service. He has been forced to make a contract. Soldiers in his unit had to give away all their salary, to plunder the civilians. Here is an article of Ludmila Vakhnina, a famous human rights defender who has been dealing with the problem for a long time.
How many enthusiasm and eloquence were spent on demand of transition to contract service! And now at last the government has adopted plan of transition to contract service ("mostly") and military units which are formed only from contract soldiers have appeared. The Ministry of Defense ordered military headquarters to raise units with professional servicemen. There is just one snag: only fully professional unit can receive funds for barracks reconstruction and other needs. All the changes must be executed in time determined in the Targeted Federal Program (of transition on contract recruitment).
But for some reason young men didn’t flock in Military Registration and Enlistment Offices and aren’t eager to serve for 7-8 thousands in a month. There is a provision of law “On Military Service” (Article 34, 1-3) which affords to make a contract with conscripts who already serve more than half a year, and all ways of treatment with conscript soldiers are well-known.
In Permian Territory a military unit No 32755 became famous for making soldiers to conclude contracts forcedly. The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Kurgan region learned about that from a father of a soldier L. who deserted after he had been forced to make a contract. The Committee reported about this case to Permian department of the International Historical Enlightment, Human Right and Humanitarian Society “Memorial”. Soldiers in the unit were drawn up in ranks and left for hours; they were suffering from frost in winter and from heat in summer. Those who agreed to make a contract could leave a rank and go to barracks. Behind the rank senior soldiers (“dedi”) stood and beat the others. Members of the “Memorial” succeeded in gathering multiple testimonies of it.
Similar case has occurred in a settlement Totskoe (the Orenburg Area). Soldiers were drawn up naked on the cold, some were kept in cellar for several days. In Volgograd region one conscript didn’t want to make a contract, so he was trashed by army officers and only when his mother arrived he was admitted to a hospital. He had multiple hematomas and his nose broken. When his mother demanded explanations of what had happened, an officer said, that her son had been a bad soldier, had not carried out orders and broken discipline, then she was demanded to leave territory of the unit and later she and other members of the family were blackmailed on the telephone. She was said that her son could be imprisoned.
But there is another way: a soldier can be simply declared a contract military without mere formalities. Mikhail K. and 40 more other soldiers were commissioned to a contract unit based in Bikin (Khabarovsk Territory). A company commander claimed that all contracts have been already made and announced all the newcomers to be contract servicemen. Mikhail managed to see a folder with this documents only once from afar.
Some soldiers were promised that they would serve only two years, as if they were on compulsory service (according to the law one year of contract service is equal to six months of mandatory service), so they made contracts ''free willingly''. But when the time of two-year contract expires it turns out that a soldier is entrapped - there was no possibility to be discharged. Sometimes an application on cancellation of a contract is destroyed and a soldier could be beaten. Sometimes soldiers were intimidated; they were said, that the rest of the term they had to serve as conscripts.
In Kaliningrad Region in a marine battalion the commander wrote such guarantee on every contract and set his signature and the seal of his unit. In a year soldiers learned that this inscription has no legal effect and they had to serve one year more. They brought a claim before a court of the Baltic military garrison. Officers acknowledged that they had promised soldiers a discharge in a year; they explained that this battalion could not be formed from conscripts because it was a “constant readiness unit”. i.e. it could be sent to a flashpoint within 24 hours. “They are good professionals” - that was officer’s argument of why such guarantees had been provided. In the end contracts of the seven marines were dissolved.
Sometimes officers demand money for discharge. Sergey K. had to leave his papers to the commander who promised to prepare and send them. He asked a small consideration for it. Then Sergey and his family called to the unit during 4 months but in vain. In the end Sergey learned that the authority had initiate court-martial proceedings against him and that he is accused of desertion. It is notable that all the time Sergey was supposed to get a salary, but certainly he didn’t receive any ruble.
That is certainly not a rare case when a young man simply lives without any papers during a year, avoids patrols and then receives his papers. As for salary, he even doesn’t hint at it.
So, there are multiple ghost names among contract servicemen, perhaps, even more that real. Extortion in army is now an everyday occurrence. In the unit No 32755 human rights activists learned that service members had to give at least a half of their salaries to officers. Now even a junior lieutenant whose official income is rather modest can afford to buy an expensive foreign car.
The so-called “dedi” (literally - grandfathers) also don’t miss opportunities to receive something, but often they are only dummies; officers’ crimes are represented to be results of bullying.
In September 2005 a contract service member S. went to AWOL. He arrived in the military Office of Public Prosecutor the Military and explained that a senior lieutenant P., second in command for character building had blackmailed him. S. received in June 2004 9000 rubles. According to him, a master sergeant D. demanded on depositing him the salary and gave it to a senior sergeant P. S. didn’t receive his money back. Moreover, a senior recruit has taken away 2000 from him “to purchase a car for the company”.
The lieutenant P. demanded 300-400 rubles from every recruit monthly, “for needs of the company”. He even didn’t make any secret from the fact that he was about to buy a BMW 7 Series for this money. In autumn 2004 he took 1000 from S. allegedly for preparing his trip to Chechnya.
Leave is also a good ground for blackmailing. Roman G. was forced to make a contract and went to Chechnya. He received only a part of his salary. Then Roman G. needed to go away for treatment. He paid 17 000 for all his papers to be prepared.
Although the problem of AWOL/desertion or even suicides in army is not new, it tends to increase in magnitude greatly. Different human rights organizations receive multiple telegrams reading as follows: “Help me to save my son. He is afraid to return to his unit for the menace of assault, humiliating treatment, etc. I’m afraid that he can commit a suicide”.
Nothing has changed with the professionalization of army - humiliating treatment, bullying, beating, blackmailing.
That is a typical letter from a “professional” soldier:
“I made a mistake when decided to conclude a contract. Officers told to me, that there would be professional education. All my salary I had to give up to senior soldiers (grandfathers), I was forced to keep silence. Treatment in our company was similar to one in prison. Once an officer struck me with a spade on my head. A was let to the hospital only in several days, when I had high temperature and my wound swelled out.”
Dmitry T. is not able to perform military service at all. He has got two serious brain injures, he doesn’t understand from the first time what people say, he is barely literate, but he has been dragooned without any medical examination. As many other boys he has made a contract. He did not receive any money. He went to AWOL and lived at the railway station in Khabarovsk. Human rights defenders succeeded in hospitalization him but his discharge is still an open question.
Such a soldier brings no benefit to the unit, but a profit to a commander.
According to Ida Kuklina, Doctor of Political Science, a member of the Council of the Union of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, “increase of quantity of contract soldiers doesn’t change the present system, but integrates in it. It may well be that by 2010 our army will be lot more retrograde. Contract soldiers will be at the same level that conscripts. Military reform in Russia needs civilian control rather than money” (Human Rights Defender, 2, 2003, p. 72) .
Well, serious law amendments designed to defense soldiers and prevent different forms of abuse are required. It is just lack of civil rights of soldiers that is the ground of the current situation.
All the information was rendered by:
Valentina Afanasyeva, the Pskov branch of the Soldiers' Mothers' Council:
Valentina Babynina, the regional civil organization of soldiers’ mothers “For Our Sons”, Krymsk, the Krasnodar Territory;
Maria Bontsler, the Soldiers' Mothers' Committee of the Kaliningrad Region;
Yelena Burmitskaya, South Siberia Human Rights Center, Novokuznetsk;
Lubov Garlivanova Committee of Soldier's Mothers of Astrakhan Region;
Lyudmila Zinchenko Soldiers’ Mother’s Association of Chelyabinsk Region;
Yelena Kalinina, Kirovsk Regional Human Rights Center, Kirov;
Irina Kizilova, Permian regional department of “Memorial”, Perm;
Tatyana Mikhailova, Committee of Soldier's Mothers of Orel Region, Livny;
Nina Ponomareva, Mother's Rights" human rights organization, Volgograd;
Valentina Reshetkina, Committee of Soldier's Mothers of Khabarovsk Regional;
Lyudmila Vakhnina, Human Rights Society “Memorial”, coalition “For Democratic Alternative Civil Service”.