Ask Amnesty

From Nancy:

Could you tell about the awareness of Russian citizens and perhaps others who live in former Soviet states that they have regarding torture that has occurred in their own areas as well as with others living in nearby republics?

Satsita Muradova is a lawyer for the Russian human rights organization Memorial. Most recently, she was based in Nazran, Ingushetia, and made frequent trips into neighboring Chechnya.

Russian citizens and citizens of the former Soviet republics are insufficiently informed. From 1987 to 1991, there were publications on topics of human rights’ abuse. They talked of what was going on in the camps (places for detention of political prisoners), mainly about famous politicians, writers, and scholars. After that, however, government authorities vetoed such discussions. The authorities claimed that if any such debates would occur, they would be discriminative of the power of the day. Then the horrors of the current reality occurred (like the Chechen war), which covered the government’s attitudes toward freedom of speech. Even though there are organizations studying the history of torture and persecution, the activists are mostly among those who have themselves suffered from such treatment.

The official political agenda of the Russian state is all about the image of a democratic government; joining the European Council; signing international conventions to abolish torture and persecution, etc. In reality, persecution is common among the civil population during a conflict, in the army, and in prisons. Of course, media is censured. Such is the real situation in all countries of the former Soviet space, excluding the Baltic Republics (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia).