Litter from the barracks

In Tatarstan, the commission for monitoring places of detention has been updated beyond recognition - either it was too public, or too observant

In our country, it has always been customary to observe the people in the cell exclusively through the peephole of the iron door. And the mission of the observer at the same time was entirely assigned to a gloomy man in baggy uniforms. And if so...

In our country, it has always been customary to observe the people in the cell exclusively through the peephole of the iron door.

And the mission of the observer at the same time was entirely assigned to a gloomy man in baggy uniforms. And if there were two or three of them in the corridor, then it was quite possible to consider them a monitoring commission.

But then the democracy made a dig under the walls with barbed wire, and public monitoring commissions (PMC) with human rights at the ready penetrated into the premises fenced off from the world.

One of these commissions, which worked in Tatarstan for two years, recently resigned its powers. But she did not fold her hands, which will be discussed a little later.

This PMC of five, headed by the head of the Kazan Human Rights Center Igor Sholokhov, was updated and expanded to fourteen units. At the same time, the Public Chamber of Tatarstan refused to recommend Sholokhov himself and three other current observers for a new term. As it turned out, the observers were also observed.

Even at the time of the formation of the new composition of the PMC, our newspaper suggested that the owners of detention centers, special detention centers and other equally hospitable institutions are not averse to putting independent social activists under their control. And so it happened: veterans of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and veterans of internal troops were approved in the PMC without delay, and human rights activists and their nominees were asked to relax and step aside.

Some heads of special institutions, whom the former PMC knocked out of the labor rhythm, can also relax. Was it easy for them to fight off public figures who have mandates for the right of unhindered access to these institutions?

In the temporary detention center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic, the members of the POC were once told that a threatening sanitary and epidemiological situation had been created here due to a break in the sewerage system, there was an unpleasant smell in the institution, and they decided to save the commission.

Under an equally far-fetched pretext, members of the POC were not allowed into the special detention center of the Kazan Internal Affairs Directorate and into the cells for administrative detainees of the Vakhitovsky District Department of Internal Affairs. Each of these cases had to go to court.

And the episode in the city of Almetievsk looked most ridiculous, where the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate did not let the public into the isolation ward with the words: “Did you bring money for repairs?” As it turned out after the visit, which was successful on the second attempt, the administrative detainees spend their time in basements and semi-basements with prickly walls, where there are no chairs, no tables, no beds (everyone sleeps on a common platform). There are not even washbasins there, and instead of a toilet there is a bucket. And the most striking impression was made on the members of the commission by spoons without handles. The handles here, it turns out, are specially cut off so that the detainees do not make sharpeners out of them. Well, these are those who care about sharpening for dinner ...

The PMC of the first draft visited 55 places of detention in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Penitentiary Service in two years (some of them more than once). Judging by the impressive list of identified shortcomings and violations, the commission, which had served its due date, was very meticulous and uncompromising. Will there be such a renewed commission, the composition of which is closer and closer to people in uniform?

“Despite the fact that the new PMC no longer has nominees from the Kazan Human Rights Center,” says the head of human rights activists, Igor Sholokhov, “we intend to continue to actively monitor the situation in closed institutions.

Igor Nikolayevich counts on interaction with two representatives of the human rights association AGORA, who are nevertheless approved in the commission, although the Public Chamber of Tatarstan did not support them.