Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 1 – Some governments
faced with the coronavirus pandemic are releasing elderly or sick prisoners to
home confinement in order to reduce pressure on the system and slow the spread
of the virus among the remaining prisoners, something especially likely in
crowded conditions, Zoya Svetova says.
But the journalist notes, Moscow is
not among the world capitals taking such far-sighted steps. Instead, it is
moving in exactly the opposite direction, turning the already nightmarish world
of Russian prisons and camps into a breeding ground for prisoner revolts (mbk-news.appspot.com/sences/esli-ne-razgruzit-gula/).
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court
stopped the consideration of all criminal cases as long as the coronavirus
pandemic continues, except for those that for some reason can’t be put off or
involving young people. That will increase the number of people held in
preliminary detention, eliminate the possibility of review and keep most
prisoners where they are.
This will include the more than
12,000 prisoners of pension age or above, few of whom have been sentenced for violent
crimes, and the even larger number who are suffering from diseases like
tuberculosis or the coronavirus, a number that will grow if such people aren’t
isolated from others.
Such prisoners should be immediately
released from jails and prison colonies “because the virus is already on the
inside.” Testing isn’t being done all promises to the contrary. After all, if
there aren’t enough tests available for the civilian population, the government
is hardly likely to ensure that they are available for prisoners.
Moreover, the Russian penal system
is becoming increasingly inaccessible to outsiders so few will be able to say
what is in fact happening. “In Moscow, for example, packages, visits with
relatives and meetings with lawyers have been forbidden.” And so these limited
channels of communication with the outside world have been blocked.
Self-isolation is hard for ordinary
people. “But a prison is isolation squared. Especially if it now occurs in a
super-secret fashion and no one knows exactly how long this will go on – for a
month, two, three, half a year?”
“I do not even want to think about
how relations between prisoners and guards will degrade,” Svetova says. “I do
not want to think how many suicides, how many violations of prisoners’ rights,
and how many crimes could occur in prisons during this period.” But they will certainly increase as will
corruption with wealthy prisoners buying their way out of the worst.
This will be particularly bad
because neither rights activists nor lawyers will be allowed to know what is
happening. The authorities should
realize that it is in their own interest to release some prisoners as a
petition by the Moscow Helsinki Group urges (change.org/p/российские-власти-призываем-к-максимально-широкой-амнистии-из-за-коронавируса).
Unfortunately,
she says, she does not think that “the accused and condemned are a priority for
the president. The condemned don’t vote and that means they aren’t of interest.
Only those in preliminary detention. But if you consider that in Russia there
are about 600,000 under arrest, and each has relatives, the size of the potential
electorate grows by orders of magnitude.”
The
Kremlin “ought to think about this.” It should also be thinking about something
else. “Together with the inmates in prisons and camps a whole army of employees
of the prison system are also at risk” as a result of its foolish policy. “Those,”
Svetova reminds, “are for the president ‘socially close.’”
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