The U,S, State Department has issued its report on human rights throughout the world. The New York Analysis of Policy and Government has reviewed the segments covering China, Russia, and Venezuela. Today’s review covers Russia.
The Russian Federation has a highly centralized, authoritarian political system dominated by President Vladimir Putin. The bicameral Federal Assembly consists of a directly elected lower house (State Duma) and an appointed upper house (Federation Council), both of which lack independence from the executive. The 2016 State Duma elections and the 2018 presidential election were marked by accusations of government interference and manipulation of the electoral process, including the exclusion of meaningful opposition candidates.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Investigative Committee, the Office of the Prosecutor General, and the National Guard are responsible for law enforcement. The FSB is responsible for state security, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism as well as for fighting organized crime and corruption. The national police force, under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, is responsible for combating all crime. The National Guard assists the FSB Border Guard Service in securing borders, administers gun control, combats terrorism and organized crime, protects public order, and guards important state facilities. The National Guard also participates in armed defense of the country’s territory in coordination with Ministry of Defense forces. Except in rare cases, security forces generally reported to civilian authorities. National-level civilian authorities, however, had, at best, limited control over security forces in the Republic of Chechnya, which were accountable only to the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
The country’s occupation and purported annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula continued to affect the human rights situation there significantly and negatively. The Russian government continued to arm, train, lead, and fight alongside Russia-led forces in eastern Ukraine. Credible observers attributed thousands of civilian deaths and injuries, as well as numerous abuses, to Russia-led forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region (see the Country Reports on Human RightsPractices for Ukraine). Authorities also conducted politically motivated arrests, detentions, and trials of Ukrainian citizens in Russia, many of whom claimed to have been tortured.
Significant human rights issues included: extrajudicial killings, including of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Chechnya by local government authorities; enforced disappearances; pervasive torture by government law enforcement personnel that sometimes resulted in death and occasionally involved sexual violence or punitive psychiatric incarceration; harsh and life-threatening conditions in prisons; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners; severe arbitrary interference with privacy; severe suppression of freedom of expression and media, including the use of “antiextremism” and other laws to prosecute peaceful dissent; violence against journalists; blocking and filtering of internet content and banning of online anonymity; severe suppression of the right of peaceful assembly; severe suppression of freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable foreign organizations”; severe restrictions of religious freedom; refoulement of refugees; severe limits on participation in the political process, including restrictions on opposition candidates’ ability to seek public office and conduct political campaigns, and on the ability of civil society to monitor election processes; widespread corruption at all levels and in all branches of government; coerced abortion and sterilization; trafficking in persons; and crimes involving violence or threats of violence against persons with disabilities, LGBTI persons, and members of ethnic minorities.
The government failed to take adequate steps to prosecute or punish most officials who committed abuses, resulting in a climate of impunity.
Section 1. Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from:
A. ARBITRARY DEPRIVATION OF LIFE AND OTHER UNLAWFUL OR POLITICALLY MOTIVATED KILLINGS
There were numerous reports the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.
Credible nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and independent media outlets published reports indicating that in December 2018-January 2019, local authorities in the Republic of Chechnya renewed a campaign of violence against individuals perceived to be members of the LGBTI community. According to the NGO Russian LGBT Network, local Chechen authorities illegally detained and tortured at least 40 individuals (see section 1.c.), including two who reportedly died in custody from torture. According to human rights organizations, as of year’s end, authorities failed to investigate the allegations or reports of extrajudicial killings and mass torture of LGBTI persons in Chechnya from 2017 and continued to deny that there were any LGBTI persons in Chechnya.
On May 24, Maksim Lapunov, a survivor of the 2017 “antigay purge” in Chechnya who came forward publicly and offered to cooperate with investigative bodies, filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), claiming that federal authorities failed to investigate his case properly.
On July 23, the human rights NGOs Memorial Human Rights Center and Committee against Torture, as well as the investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, published new information about a summary execution of 27 men alleged to have taken place in 2017 at the A.A. Kadyrov patrol police unit headquarters in Grozny, Chechnya. According to the new information, at least 14 eyewitnesses, who were detained at the unit at the same time as the 27 victims but were tortured rather than killed, were able to corroborate that the victims were in police custody at the time of their alleged killings. Local authorities continued to deny that the 27 men were ever in custody and maintained that they left the country to join ISIS in Syria. The 14 witnesses described the involvement of several high-ranking Chechen officials, including unit head Aslan Iraskhanov, in the killings and subsequent cover-up. The NGOs detailed continuing pressure on the families of the 27 victims not to file police reports about the disappearance of their family members. On September 16, relatives of eight of the 27 victims filed a complaint with the ECHR.
There were reports that police beat or otherwise abused persons, in some cases resulting in their death. For example, according to press reports, on April 11, Moscow police officers severely beat Sulli Yunusilau, a 46-year-old man from Dagestan. Yunusilau died in a hospital a week later from his injuries. On April 24, authorities charged three officers with assault and abuse of authority. As of December the investigation continued; one suspect was under house arrest while the other two were in pretrial detention.
There were multiple reports that, in some prison colonies, authorities systematically tortured inmates (see section 1.c.), in some cases resulting in death or suicide. According to media reports, on March 12, Ayub Tuntuyev, a former bodyguard to former president of Chechnya Akhmad Kadyrov, was found dead in Penal Colony Number 6 (IK-6) in the Vladimir region. Since his placement in the colony, Tuntuyev had complained repeatedly about abuse by prison officials, including severe beatings and torture by electric shock. In 2016 he filed a complaint about the abuse with the ECHR. While prison authorities maintained that Tuntuyev committed suicide, his relatives reported that his body was bruised and that his lungs and kidneys had been removed; they told journalists that they did not believe he committed suicide. On March 25, the Investigative Committee concluded that there was no sign that Tuntuyev had been beaten and as of November there were no indications of any further investigation into the case.
Physical abuse and hazing, which in some cases resulted in death or suicide, continued to be a problem in the armed forces. On February 10, Stepan Tsymbal, a 19-year-old conscript, died at the Pogonovo military base in the Voronezh region. His family reported that his unit initially informed them that he had died naturally of a heart attack, although his arms and legs had been taped together and a plastic bag was wrapped around his head. According to the human rights organization Zona Prava, Tsymbal’s commanding officer beat him and accused him of stealing vodka on the day he died, threatening that Tsymbal would face consequences if the vodka did not reappear by the evening. Medical examiners concluded that Tsymbal committed suicide that night. His relatives cast doubt on these findings and insisted that investigators considered that his death was not self-inflicted. On March 19, the Investigative Committee charged Tsymbal’s commanding officer with “exceeding authority” and “incitement to suicide.”
On February 5, the deputy chairman of the Investigative Committee told the Kommersant newspaper that there were new developments in the investigation of the 2015 killing of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, but it was premature to make them public. Human rights activists and the Nemtsov family continued to believe that authorities were intentionally ignoring the question of who ordered and organized the killing and noted that these persons were still at large.
On August 23, in a case related to the 2011 death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow pretrial detention center, the ECHR ruled that authorities had provided “manifestly inadequate” medical treatment that “unreasonably put his life in danger,” that Magnitsky had been abused by guards, and that he had been unjustly held for too long in pretrial detention.
There were reports that the government or its proxies committed, or attempted to commit, extrajudicial killings of its opponents in other countries. For example, on December 3, German federal prosecutors announced they had concluded that Russian intelligence was behind the August 23 killing in Berlin of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, an ethnic Chechen from Georgia. Khangoshvili had fled to Germany in 2016 and was fatally shot at point blank range in a park by a man who was arrested after fleeing the scene by bicycle; Khangoshvili had survived several earlier attempts on his life in other countries. The independent investigative news website Bellingcat identified the man arrested as Vadim Krasikov, who had reportedly committed a killing in Moscow with similar methods. Bellingcat pointed to multiple indications that the killer was acting with the support or at the direction of Russian authorities, including the fact that he was reportedly traveling on a passport issued by the Russian government under a pseudonym. On December 12, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov admitted that Russia had made several requests to Germany to extradite Khangoshvili based on his purported involvement in terrorist acts.
The country played a significant military role in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, where human rights organizations attributed thousands of civilian deaths and other abuses to Russia-led forces. Russian occupation authorities in Crimea also committed widespread abuses.
Since 2015 the country’s forces have conducted military operations, including airstrikes, in the conflict in Syria. According to human rights organizations, the country’s forces took actions, such as bombing urban areas that intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure .
The news website Caucasian Knot reported that violent confrontations with security forces resulted in at least 31 deaths in the North Caucasus during the first half of the year. Kabardino-Balkaria was the most affected region with 10 deaths in the first half of the year, followed by Dagestan, where nine persons were killed.
B. DISAPPEARANCE
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There were reports that police committed enforced disappearances and abductions during the year. In one case according to press reports, on May 5, police in the village of Chulpanovo in the Republic of Tatarstan arrested a 47-year-old local resident, Idris Sadykov, purportedly on suspicion of robbing a grocery store. Police initially brought Sadykov to a police station, but later that evening police transported him to the home of the father of two police officers, Dinar and Lenar Gafiyatov, where he was held incommunicado for 20 days, severely beaten, abused, starved, and forced to engage in agricultural work. After his sister filed a missing persons complaint, Sadykov was dropped off on the side of a road and threatened that if he told anyone what had occurred, the officers would frame him for a crime that would lead to lengthy imprisonment. On July 11, the Investigative Committee of Tatarstan opened an investigation, but as of December no charges had been announced. As of September an internal police investigation into the officers’ conduct reportedly continued.
Security forces were allegedly complicit in the kidnapping and disappearance of individuals from Central Asia, whose forcible return was apparently sought by their governments.
There were continued reports of abductions related to alleged counterterrorism efforts in the North Caucasus. For example, Memorial reported in October that Ramzan Shaikhayev had disappeared on September 9 while visiting his ailing father in Argun, Chechnya, and that his whereabouts were unknown. Relatives stated that, while he was with his father, he got a call asking him to go outside; video footage showed him getting into a car and leaving. According to reports, police had previously illegally detained Shaikhayev and his wife in July. His wife was released after a week, and Shaikhayev was released after a month. Based on these and other prior interactions with police, Memorial concluded that there was a basis to believe that Shaikhayev had been abducted by Chechen security services and that they had targeted him as a suspected militant because of his long beard and devout Muslim beliefs.
There were reports Russia-led forces and Russian occupation authorities in Ukraine engaged in enforced disappearances .
C. TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT
Although the constitution prohibits such practices, numerous credible reports indicated law enforcement personnel engaged in torture, abuse, and violence to coerce confessions from suspects, and authorities only occasionally held officials accountable for such actions.
A Levada Center poll released in June indicated that one in 10 persons in the country had been subjected to what they perceived to be torture by law enforcement bodies.
There were reports of deaths as a result of torture .
Physical abuse of suspects by police officers was reportedly systemic and usually occurred within the first few days of arrest in pretrial detention facilities. Reports from human rights groups and former police officers indicated that police most often used electric shocks, suffocation, and stretching or applying pressure to joints and ligaments because those methods were considered less likely to leave visible marks. The problem was especially acute in the North Caucasus.
There were reports that security forces used torture as a form of punishment against detained opposition and human rights activists, journalists, and critics of government policies. For example, according to human rights groups, on July 12, in Nazran, Ingushetia, the FSB detained Rashid Maysigov, a reporter for the news website Fortanga, after raiding his home, where they allegedly found drugs and printed materials promoting Ingush separatism. Maysigov was reportedly tortured during interrogation, including by electric shock; he was also forced to confess to possessing drugs and questioned about his coverage of human rights violations, corruption, and the protest movement in Ingushetia. In November a district court in Magas, Ingushetia, extended his pretrial detention through January 7, 2020.
In several cities police reportedly subjected members of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious group the Supreme Court banned under antiextremism laws in 2017, to physical abuse and torture following their arrest. For example, on February 15, Investigative Committee officials in the city of Surgut reportedly subjected at least seven Jehovah’s Witnesses to torture involving beatings, stun guns, and suffocation at a police precinct.
There were multiple reports of the FSB using torture against young anarchists and antifascist activists who were allegedly involved in several “terrorism” and “extremism” cases. For example, on February 1, the FSB detained Moscow State University postgraduate mathematics student and reported anarchist Azat Miftakhov on suspicion of making an unexploded homemade bomb found in the Moscow region several weeks earlier. Miftakhov reported that during his detention, he was severely beaten, subjected to electric shock, threatened with rape, and denied access to a lawyer. Miftakhov attempted to commit suicide to end the abuse, leading to his hospitalization. On February 7, after Miftakhov’s initial period of detention expired, security officials briefly released him but then immediately detained him again in the courthouse, this time accusing him of attacking a local office of the United Russia party in January 2018. As of December he remained in pretrial detention; he did not admit guilt and claimed that security forces had fabricated the case against him. Memorial considered Miftakhov to be a political prisoner.
In the North Caucasus region, there were widespread reports that security forces abused and tortured both alleged militants and civilians in detention facilities.
According to human rights defenders, during the year police in Chechnya continued a campaign of unlawful detentions and torture of men presumed to be gay or bisexual. Media reports and human rights groups estimated that the number of victims during the year was as high as 50. In May, for example, the NGO Human Rights Watch released a report based on interviews with four men who were detained for periods of three and 20 days between December 2018 and February 2019 at the Grozny Internal Affairs Department compound, where law enforcement officials reportedly kicked them, beat them with sticks and pipes, denied them food and water, and tortured three of the four with electric shocks. One was reportedly raped with a stick. In an interview the four men described being held with many others subjected to the same treatment because of their real or perceived sexual orientation. According to the Russian LGBT Network, as of April 1, more than 150 LGBTI persons had fled Chechnya because of this campaign, the majority of whom had also left the country.
Reports by migrants, NGOs, and the press suggested a pattern of police officers and prison personnel carrying out beatings, arrests, and extortion of persons whom they believed to be Roma, Central Asian, African, or from the North Caucasus. In one case, on January 16, police in Magnitogorsk arrested Husniddin Zainabidinov, a labor migrant from Kyrgyzstan, on suspicion of involvement in a gas leak that led to an explosion in an apartment. According to lawyers from Memorial representing Zainabidinov, he was tortured to coerce a confession, including by electric shocks, severe beatings, and other abuse. According to press reports, police in Magnitogorsk had increased pressure on Central Asian labor migrants following the blast, including through raids, arrests, and increased document checks.
There were reports of rape and sexual abuse by government agents. For example, according to press reports, on August 27, two police officers in the city of Anapa in the Krasnodar region threatened a 17-year-old girl with arrest and administrative charges in order to force her to engage in sexual acts. Following an internal investigation, 11 police officers were fired, including the Anapa police chief. As of December authorities had not opened a criminal case.
There were reports of authorities detaining defendants for psychiatric evaluations to exert pressure on them or sending defendants for psychiatric treatment as punishment. Prosecutors and certified medical professionals may request suspects be placed in psychiatric clinics on an involuntary basis. For example, on April 8, authorities in the Perm region subjected opposition activists Aleksandr Shabarchin, Danil Vasiliyev, and Aleksandr Kotov to forced psychiatric evaluations, during which they were interrogated by doctors, according to their claims. The activists were on trial for “undermining public order” for placing a scarecrow with President Putin’s face and the words “war criminal” and “liar” in the center of downtown Perm, charges which carry up to a seven-year prison term. The activists claimed psychiatrists insisted that they reveal “who was paying them” for their actions, how they met each other, and other details about their organization. As of December the investigation continued.
On June 27, the investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a report about the use of punitive psychiatry in prisons. The article focused on the case of prisoner Zelimkhan Medov, who was serving a 17-year sentence for a 2004 attack on a military base. Medov alleged that in retaliation for filing complaints about abuses to which he was subjected in prison, he was sent for multiple lengthy punitive stints in prison psychiatric facilities between 2015 and 2018. During one of these periods, he was tied to a bed with restraints for six months and given daily injections of unnecessary psychotropic drugs until he agreed to sign a document to become an informant for the prison administration. As of December authorities had not opened an investigation into the allegations.
Nonlethal physical abuse and hazing continued in the armed forces. Activists reported such hazing was often tied to extortion schemes. For example, on April 25, military investigators opened an investigation into the Mikhailovskiy Military Artillery Academy in St. Petersburg after reports of severe hazing of recruits surfaced on social media. According to press reports, young soldiers were filmed being beaten and humiliated by their superiors.
There were reports Russia-led forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region and Russian occupation authorities in Crimea engaged in torture (see Country Reports on Human RightsPractices for Ukraine).
Photo: Russian tank (Russian ministry of Defence)