Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 23 – Instead of focusing on real criminals and terrorists, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says, the Kremlin and its justice ministry are obsessed with labelling political opponents “terrorists,” an approach that means the real terrorists and their allies are now in a position to spark revolts in Russian penal instituitons.
According to the blogger, “the justice ministry is too carried away with its focus on internal enemies … and as a result, real criminals and not ones the regime has invented find themselves practically neglected,” inadequately supervised, and thus in a position to revolt (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/20177 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66C8BAB7C1F45).
Given that the justice ministry began to label as terrorists many who are anything but, Russian prisons began to fill up with people who are not terrorists or ordinary criminals but instead people in many cases with ideological positions that dispose them to oppose the state, El Murid points out.
The energy the penal system puts into supervising such people means that it isn’t in fact in complete control of those who may be real terrorists and who are prepared to act and even mobilize others to challenge the powers that be, and that in turn means that more prison revolts are likely in the coming months.
Prison revolts have become more common in Russia in recent years (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2024/08/23/1057650-krupneishie-bunti), and observers like El Murid increasingly view these actions as a harbinger of changes in the remaining parts of Russian society.
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