Russia Country Report on Human Rights Practices - 2003
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
February 25, 2004
The 1993 Constitution established a governmental structure with a strong head of state (President), a government headed by a prime minister, and a bicameral legislature (Federal Assembly) consisting of a lower house (State Duma) and an upper house (Federation Council). The country has a multi-party system, but the pro-presidential party that controls over two-thirds of the Duma puts majority support within reach for all presidential priorities. President Vladimir Putin was elected in March 2000. A new Duma was chosen on December 7, in an electoral process that the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) described as technically well managed but marred by widespread misuse of administrative resources by pro-government parties, systematically biased media coverage, and inequitable treatment of political parties. The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary. Although seriously impaired by a shortage of resources and by corruption, and still subject to undue influence from other branches of Government, the judiciary continued to show some increasing independence, and the criminal justice system was slowly undergoing reforms.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Procuracy, and the Federal Tax Police are responsible for law enforcement at all levels of Government. The FSB has broad law enforcement functions, including fighting crime and corruption, in addition to its core responsibilities of security, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism. The FSB operated with only limited oversight by the Procuracy and the courts. The primary mission of the armed forces is national defense, although the Government has employed them in local internal conflicts, and they were also available to control civil disturbances. The authorities increasingly dealt with security threats in parts of the country by employing militarized elements of the security services. Members of the security forces, particularly within the internal affairs apparatus, continued to commit numerous and serious human rights abuses.
The country had a population of approximately 145 million. The economy continued to grow, and the annual Gross Domestic Produce (GDP) growth was 7 percent compared with 4.5 percent in 2002; GDP was $365 billion. Industrial production grew by 5.9 percent, and real income increased by 8.6 percent; however, approximately 27 percent of the population continued to live below the official monthly subsistence level of $73. As of November, official unemployment was 8.6 percent, up from 7.1 percent at the end of 2002. Corruption continued to be a negative factor in the development of the economy and commercial relations.
Although the Government generally respected the human rights of its citizens in some areas, its human rights record worsened in a few areas. The Government's record remained poor in the continuing struggle with separatists in Chechnya, where federal security forces demonstrated little respect for basic human rights. There were credible reports of serious violations, including numerous reports of unlawful killings, and of abuse of civilians by both the Government and Chechen fighters in the Chechen conflict. There were reports of both government and rebel involvement in politically motivated disappearances in Chechnya. Parliamentary elections held on December 7 failed to meet international standards, although the voting process was technically well run. Criminal charges and threats of arrest or actual arrest against major financial supporters of opposition parties, and seizure of party materials from opposition parties, undermined the parties' ability to compete.
There were credible reports that law enforcement personnel frequently engaged in torture, violence, and other brutal or humiliating treatment and often did so with impunity. Hazing in the armed forces remained a problem. Prison conditions continued to be extremely harsh and frequently life-threatening. Arbitrary arrest and lengthy pretrial detention, while significantly reduced by a new Code of Criminal Procedure, remained problems, as did police corruption. Although there were some improvements, assessments of the progress made in implementing the significant reforms in criminal procedures code enacted in 2002 were mixed at year's end. Government protection for judges from threats by organized criminal defendants was inadequate, and a series of alleged espionage cases continued during the year and caused continued concerns regarding the lack of due process and the influence of the FSB in court cases. Authorities continued to infringe on citizens' privacy rights.
Government pressure continued to weaken freedom of expression and the independence and freedom of some media, particularly major national television networks and regional media outlets; this resulted in the elimination of the last major non-state television station; however, a wide variety of views continued to be expressed in the press. Authorities, primarily at the local level, restricted freedom of assembly and imposed restrictions on some religious groups. Societal discrimination, harassment, and violence against members of some religious minorities remained problems. Local governments restricted citizens' freedom of movement, primarily by denying legal resident permits to new residents from other areas of the country. Government institutions intended to protect human rights were relatively weak but remained active and public. The Government placed restrictions on the activities of both nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations in Chechnya. Ethnic minorities, including Roma and persons from the Caucasus and Central Asia, faced widespread governmental and societal discrimination, and, at times, violence. There were increasing limits on workers' rights, and instances of forced labor and child labor were reported. Trafficking in persons, particularly women and girls, was a serious problem.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:
a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
There were no confirmed reports of political killings by government agents; however, there continued to be credible reports that the federal armed forces engaged in unlawful killings in Chechnya. There also were credible reports that the armed forces used indiscriminate force at various times in the Chechen conflict in areas with significant civilian populations, resulting in numerous deaths (see Section 1.g.). They generally conducted such actions with impunity; however, there was at least one conviction; on July 25, a military court convicted Colonel Yuriy Budanov of charges of kidnapping, murder and abuse of authority in the death of an 18-year-old Chechen woman (see Section 1.g.). Hazing in the armed forces resulted in the deaths of servicemen (see Section 1.c.).
The press and media NGOs reported that unknown parties killed a number of journalists, presumably because of the journalists' work (see Section 2.a.).
Attacks on ethnic and racial minorities resulted in at least one death (see Section 5).
There were a number of killings of government officials throughout the country, some of which may have been politically motivated, in connection with either the ongoing strife in Chechnya, or with politics. A prominent Duma Deputy and Liberal Russia party co-Chairman, Sergey Yushenkov, was shot to death on April 17. Yushenkov had been an outspoken critic of the Putin Administration on a number of issues, and he was engaged in rivalry for leadership within his own party. A number of observers charged that the professionally executed killing was politically motivated. The first court hearing on Yushenkov's case was held on December 26. The prosecutor accused six persons, including Mikhail Kodanev, co-chair of the Liberal Russia party, and a supporter of President Putin's adversary Boris Berezovskiy.
Yuri Shchekochikhin, a Member of the Duma and deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, died in July under mysterious circumstances. Along with Yushenkov, he had begun to investigate charges of FSB responsibility for a series of 1999 apartment building bombings at the time of his death. In December, Yabloko launched its own investigation into Shchekochikhin's death.
On May 14, the St. Petersburg city court returned a guilty verdict for all four suspects in the 1999 killing of St. Petersburg legislative assembly Deputy Viktor Novoselov. Artur Gudkov, who had played the key role in the killing, received a life sentence; the other three received shorter sentences. Law enforcement officials were still looking for the individual or individuals who ordered the killing.
On June 26, a court acquitted all defendants charged with the 1994 murder of journalist Dimitriy Kholodov (see Section 2.a.).
Although the FSB announced in 2002 that they had arrested six unidentified suspects and charged them with the 1998 killing of Galina Starovoytova, a prominent Duma deputy, the investigation continued, and the suspects remained in detention at year's end. Human rights activists were convinced the suspects were not the masterminds of the killing, and some claimed that the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia was behind it.
Chechen rebels killed numerous civilians and increased their killings of civilian officials and militia associated with the Federally-appointed Chechen administration (see Section 1.g.). Chechen fighters killed a number of federal soldiers whom they took prisoner (see Section 1.g.). Large numbers of individuals were kidnapped and killed in Chechnya during the year (see Sections 1.b., 1.c., and 5). Both sides, as well as criminal elements, were involved in these activities. Authorities attributed bombing incidents in Dagestan and several cities in southern areas of the country to Chechen rebels.
Government forces and Chechen fighters have used landmines extensively in Chechnya and Dagestan since August 1999; there were many civilian landmine casualties in Chechnya during the year.
b. Disappearance
There were reports of government involvement in politically motivated disappearances in Chechnya. The NGO Memorial claimed that federal military forces have detained thousands of persons from Chechnya since the beginning of the conflict. According to Memorial, there were 472 cases of disappearances during the year. Memorial based this statistic only on the 25 to 30 percent of Chechnya to which Memorial had access, and it speculated that the actual number was at least three times higher. Of the 472, 269 disappeared without a trace, 48 were later found dead with marks of torture, and 155 were later released after a ransom was paid. According to Memorial, there was a sharp rise in disappearances during the year but a dramatic decline before the March constitutional referendum and the October presidential elections.
For example, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that Russian forces had "disappeared" at least 26 people between late December 2002 and late February. This was the highest rate of "disappearances" documented by HRW since 1999. HRW reported that, on June 2, security forces took five men, including Said-Magomed Imakaev and Ruslan Utsaev, from their homes in the Chechen village of Novye Atagi. Russian federal troops had detained Said-Magomed Imakaev's son, Said-Khusein Imakaev, in December 2000. There was at least one report that an NGO worker in Chechnya was kidnapped and threatened during the year (see Section 4).
The August 2002 kidnapping by unknown persons of the head of the Doctors without Borders Mission in Dagestan, which neighbors Chechnya, remained unsolved. Police and security services continued to investigate the case. This event, and overall security problems in the region, led the U.N. and many NGOs to suspend their activities temporarily, although the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) resumed operations in Dagestan in November.
There were numerous investigations into kidnappings, but as of January, only 1 of the 1,178 criminal cases initiated in relation to kidnapping had resulted in the commencement of criminal proceedings against an employee of the state law enforcement agencies. In the view of many observers, Government forces were implicated in many of the kidnappings. This led Rudolf Bindig, the Council of Europe's (COE) Rapporteur, to complain of a climate of impunity for state forces in Chechnya.
There were no developments in the ongoing criminal investigation into the disappearance in 2000 of former speaker of the Chechen Parliament and former field commander Ruslan Alikhadzhiyev, whom federal forces allegedly detained in Shali, and resolution of the case appeared unlikely.
Memorial estimated early in the year that the number of individuals unaccounted for in Chechnya since 1999 was somewhere between several hundred and more than 2 thousand. Russian and Chechen officials, including Chechen President Akhmed Kadyrov, acknowledged that disappearances continued but attributed many of them to separatist fighters. Memorial and other observers have said Kadyrov's security forces were also responsible for kidnappings. While many disappearances remained unresolved, the abductors released most of those taken, often after their relatives paid a bribe.
Criminal groups in the Northern Caucasus, some of which may have links to elements of the rebel forces, frequently resorted to kidnapping. The main motivation behind such cases apparently was ransom, although some cases had political or religious overtones. The hostage-takers held many of their victims in Chechnya or Dagestan.
c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
The Constitution prohibits torture, violence, and other brutal or humiliating treatment or punishment; however, there were credible reports that law enforcement personnel frequently engaged in these practices to coerce confessions from suspects and that the Government often did not hold officials accountable for such actions. Neither the law nor the Criminal Code defines torture; it is mentioned only in the Constitution. As a result, it was difficult to charge perpetrators. The only accusation prosecutors could bring against the police was that they exceeded their authority or committed a simple assault.
Prisoners' rights groups, as well as other human rights groups, documented numerous cases in which law enforcement and correctional officials tortured and beat detainees and suspects. Human rights groups described the practice of such abuse as widespread. Numerous press reports indicated that the police frequently beat persons with little or no provocation or used excessive force to subdue detainees.
Although there was no indication of a return to the widespread use of psychiatric methods against political prisoners, an NGO cited Sergey Volkov, whom the authorities described as a specialist in "sects," as stating that approximately 10 Jehovah's Witnesses were in the psychiatric hospital in Penza, where doctors were trying to "return to them their mental health." Human rights activists, including Yuriy Savenko, head of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, charged that political considerations had influenced a psychiatric evaluation supervised by the Ministry of Health that led to the determination that Platon Obukhov, a diplomat charged with espionage, was mentally ill. At year's end, Obukhov was undergoing treatment in a psychiatric hospital near Moscow.
Physical abuse by police officers usually occurred within the first few hours or days of arrest and usually took one of four forms: Beatings with fists, batons, or other objects; asphyxiation using gas masks or bags (at times filled with mace); electric shocks; or suspension of body parts (e.g., suspending a victim from the wrists, which are tied together behind the back). Allegations of abuse were difficult to substantiate because of lack of access by medical professionals and because the techniques used often left few or no permanent physical traces. There were credible reports that government forces and Chechen fighters in Chechnya tortured detainees (see Section 1.g.).
Reports by refugees, NGOs, and the press suggested a pattern of police beatings, arrests, and extortion directed at persons with dark skin, or who appeared to be from the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Africa, as well as Roma (see Section 5). Police continued to harass defense lawyers, including through beatings and arrests, and continued to intimidate witnesses (see Section 1.e.).
Police on at least one occasion beat protesters (see Section 2.b.).
Various abuses against military servicemen, including, but not limited to, the practice of "dedovshchina" (the violent, at times fatal, hazing of new junior recruits for the armed services, MVD, and border guards), continued during the year. Press reports cited serving and former armed forces personnel, the Main Military Procurator's Office (MMPO), and NGOs monitoring conditions in the armed forces, which indicated that this mistreatment often included the use of beatings or threats of increased hazing to extort money or material goods. On September 3, the chief military prosecutor announced that approximately 2,000 hazing incidents had been reported in the military in the first half of the year, an increase of 30 percent from the same period in 2002. According to the chief military prosecutor, over 300 criminal cases were opened regarding hazing incidents in the army during the year. He estimated that 1,200 solders had died in non-combat situations in the first half of the year, of which at least 16 were the result of hazing. At least five other deaths of military personnel have been attributed to cases of assault and battery. Soldiers often did not report hazing to either unit officers or military procurators due to fear of reprisals, since officers in some cases reportedly tolerated or even encouraged such hazing as a means of controlling their units. There also were reports that officers used beatings to discipline soldiers whom they found to be "inattentive to their duties." Hazing reportedly was a serious problem in Chechnya, particularly where contract soldiers and conscripts served together.
Both the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committee (USMC) and the MMPO received numerous reports about "nonstatutory relations," in which officers or sergeants physically assaulted or humiliated their subordinates. Observers have commonly attributed this tendency to stressful conditions--for example, degrading and substandard living conditions--that persisted throughout the armed forces and to the widespread placement of inexperienced reserve officers, on active duty for 2 years, as leaders of primary troop units.
Despite the acknowledged seriousness of the problem, the leadership of the armed forces made only superficial efforts to implement substantive reforms in training, education, and administration programs within units to combat abuse. The limited scale of their efforts was due at least in part to lack of funding and to the leadership's preoccupation with urgent reorganization problems and the fighting in Chechnya. Although the MMPO continued to cooperate with the USMC to investigate allegations of abuse, the USMC believed that as a result of fear of reprisals, the indifference of commanders, and deliberate efforts to cover up such activity, most hazing incidents and assaults were not reported.
Prison conditions remained extremely harsh and frequently life threatening. The Ministry of Justice administered the penitentiary system centrally from Moscow. The Ministries of Justice, Health, Defense, and Education all maintained penal facilities. There were five basic forms of custody in the criminal justice system: Police temporary detention centers, pretrial detention facilities known as Special Isolation Facilities (SIZOs), correctional labor colonies (ITKs), prisons designated for those who violate ITK rules, and educational labor colonies (VTKs) for juveniles. Responsibility for operating the country's penal facilities fell under the Ministry of Justice's Main Directorate for Execution of Sentences (GUIN). As of August, there were approximately 877,000 persons in the custody of the criminal justice system. Men were held separately from women, as were juveniles from adults. The FSB continued to run the "Lefortovo" pretrial detention center in Moscow, in keeping with a 1998 Presidential decree. The COE's rapporteurs called in 2002 for the transfer of the penitentiary system to the Ministry of Justice "without delay." Lefortovo appeared to be the only SIZO not under the control of the Ministry of Justice.
The Government did not release statistics on the number of detainees and prisoners who were killed or died in custody, or on the number of law enforcement and prison personnel disciplined. The Moscow Center for Prison Reform (PCPR) estimated that in earlier years, 10,000 to 11,000 prisoners died annually in penitentiary facilities, 2,500 of them in SIZOs. During the year, these numbers were estimated to be somewhat lower. Most died as a result of poor sanitary conditions or lack of medical care (the leading cause of death was heart disease). The press often reported on individuals who were mistreated, injured, or killed in various SIZOs; some of the reported cases indicated habitual abuse by the same officers.
Abuse of prisoners by other prisoners continued to be a problem. Violence among inmates, including beatings and rape, was common. There were elaborate inmate-enforced caste systems in which informers, homosexuals, rapists, prison rape victims, child molesters, and others were considered to be "untouchable" and were treated very harshly, with little or no protection provided by the prison authorities.
Penal institutions frequently remained overcrowded; however, there were some improvements. Mass amnesties offered immediate relief. The authorities also took longer-term and more systemic measures to reduce the size of the prison population. These included the use of alternative sentencing in some regions and revisions of both the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedures Code that eliminate incarceration as a penalty for a large number of less serious offenses. Many penal facilities remained in urgent need of renovation and upgrading. By law, authorities must provide inmates with adequate space, food, and medical attention; with the dramatic decrease in prison populations, they were increasingly meeting these standards.
Inmates in the prison system often suffered from inadequate medical care. In 2001, President Putin described the problem of disease in the prison system as a potential "Chernobyl." According to the GUIN, as of July 1 there were approximately 77,000 tuberculosis-infected persons and 37,000 HIV-infected persons in SIZOs and correction colonies. Public health measures, funded by international aid and by the doubling of government resources for the prison system's medical budget, have effected a limited reversal of the spread of tuberculosis but have not contained the spread of HIV. Detention facilities had tuberculosis infection rates far higher than in the population at large. The Saratov Oblast administration, concerned with the tuberculosis crisis in its facilities, fully funded the tuberculosis-related medicinal needs of prisoners, according to the PCPR. The PCPR also reported that conditions in penal facilities varied among the regions. Some regions offered assistance in the form of food, clothing, and medicine. NGOs and religious groups offered other support.
ITKs held the bulk of the nation's convicts. There were 753 ITKs. Guards reportedly disciplined prisoners severely to break down resistance. At times, guards humiliated, beat, and starved prisoners. According to the PCPR, conditions in the ITKs were better than those in the SIZOs, because the ITKs had fresh air. In the timber correctional colonies, where hardened criminals served their time, beatings, torture, and rape by guards reportedly were common. The country's "prisons"--distinct from the ITKs--were penitentiary institutions for those who repeatedly violated the rules in effect in the ITKs.
Conditions in police station detention centers varied considerably but generally were harsh; however, average periods of stay in such facilities decreased, and overcrowding was greatly alleviated. Implementation in July 2002 of the new Criminal Procedures Code and the overall reduction in the use of pretrial detention for petty criminals reduced both the numbers of persons being held and the length of time they may be held in pretrial detention. Since 2000, the pretrial population has declined by approximately 46 percent, virtually eliminating the problem of overcrowding in those institutions.
Despite these improvements, conditions in SIZOs, where suspects were confined while awaiting the completion of a criminal investigation, trial, sentencing, or appeal, remained extremely harsh and posed a serious threat to health and life. Health, nutrition, and sanitation standards remained low due to a lack of funding. Head lice, scabies, and various skin diseases were prevalent. Prisoners and detainees typically relied on families to provide them with extra food. Poor ventilation was thought to contribute to cardiac problems and lowered resistance to disease.
Because of substandard pretrial detention conditions, defendants at times claimed that they had confessed simply to be moved to comparatively less harsh prison conditions. Defendants' retractions of confessions made under these conditions generally were ignored, as were those who attempted to retract confessions they claimed they were coerced to make (see Section 1.e.).
VTKs are facilities for prisoners from 14 to 20 years of age. Male and female prisoners were held separately. In August, GUIN reported that there were 62 educational colonies, 3 of which were for girls. Conditions in the VTKs were significantly better than in the ITKs, but juveniles in the VTKs and juvenile SIZO cells reportedly also suffered from beatings, torture, and rape. The PCPR reported that such facilities had a poor psychological atmosphere and lacked educational and vocational training opportunities. Many of the juveniles were from orphanages, had no outside support, and were unaware of their rights. There also were two prisons for children in Moscow. Boys were held with adults in small, crowded, and smoky cells. Schooling in the prisons for children was sporadic at best, with students of different ages studying together when a teacher could be found.
The Government generally permitted the ICRC to work throughout the country, and the ICRC carried out regular prison visits and provided advice to authorities on how to improve prison conditions. However, there were limitations on access in the northern Caucasus where the organization was particularly active. In that region, the Government granted the organization access to some facilities where Chechen detainees were held, but the pretrial detention centers and filtration camps for suspected Chechen fighters were not always accessible to the ICRC or other human rights monitors (see Section 1.g.).
d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile
The Constitution provides that individuals may be arrested, taken into custody, or detained beyond 24 hours only upon a judicial decision; however, arbitrary arrest and detention remained problems. The Chief Justice of the Russian Supreme Court was quoted in May as saying that cases where law enforcement bodies asked courts to approve arrests, 92 percent were approved and 8 percent disapproved. He added that approximately 10 percent of such court decisions were appealed, with 87 percent of the arrests upheld by higher courts. The Criminal Procedures Code gives authorities the means to implement these requirements, and progress was made toward effective judicial oversight over arrests and detentions.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs, the national police, exists on the federal, regional, and local levels. Corruption was widespread and, although regulations and national laws prohibit corrupt activities, there were few crackdowns on illegal police activity. There were reports that the Government addressed only a fraction of the crimes federal forces committed against civilians in Chechnya (see Section 1.g.). Government agencies such as the MVD have begun to educate officers about safeguarding human rights during law enforcement activities through training provided by foreign governments; however, security forces remained largely unreformed.
The Criminal Procedures Code stipulates that if the police have probable cause to believe that a suspect has committed a crime, or that the suspect is an imminent threat to others, they may detain him for not more than 24 hours. During that time, they must notify the procurator, who then has 24 hours to confirm the charge or release the suspect. The Code also requires that the Procuracy obtain a judicial order for arrest, search, or seizure.
There were credible reports that security forces regularly continued to single out persons from the Caucasus for document checks, detention, and the extortion of bribes. According to NGOs, federal forces commonly detained groups of Chechen men at checkpoints along the borders, and during "mopping-up" operations following military hostilities, or in targeted operations known as "night raids," and severely beat and tortured them.
The Criminal Procedures Code also specifies the introduction of jury trials to the rest of the country (an experiment in jury trials has been underway in 9 out of 89 regions since 1993) for crimes punishable by more than 10 years' imprisonment. By the end of the year, 83 of the 89 regions implemented jury trials. On January 1, 2004, five of the remaining six regions, including St. Petersburg, were scheduled to implement jury trials, leaving only Chechnya, which was scheduled to begin jury trials on January 1, 2007. The new Criminal Procedures Code includes a formal procedure for pleading guilty and includes incentives such as shorter sentences and shorter trials for certain classes of crimes. In the first 6 months that this provision was available, it applied only to crimes punishable by less than 3 years' imprisonment. In that period, 100,400 criminal defendants made use of the new procedure. In July, the Code was amended to simplify the procedure and expand its availability to defendants facing up to 10 years' imprisonment.
The Criminal Procedures Code limits the duration of detention without access to counsel or family members and rendered statements given in the absence of a defense attorney unusable in court; however, there were reports that these reforms were being undermined by the police practice of obtaining "friendly" defense counsel for these interviews and the overall ignorance by defense counsel of these provisions. Despite the Code, courts remained reluctant to exclude evidence allegedly obtained through coercive means (see Section 1.e.).
In June, the Criminal Procedures Code was amended to permit "witnesses" to bring their own attorneys to interviews conducted by the police. This amendment was designed to address the police practice of interrogating suspects without the presence of counsel under the fiction that they were witnesses, and then after incriminating statements were obtained, declaring the suspects to be defendants. Generally was believed that if the witness was aware that that counsel could be present, witnesses were not being denied this right. Citizens' ignorance of their new rights was a problem. The Government was engaged in a public education program to inform citizens of their rights and responsibilities under the system introduced by the Code of Criminal Procedures, such as the right to a lawyer and the obligation to serve on juries when called. The Council of Judges together with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the Russian Information Agency Novosty, conducted an educational program called "Public Trust" for citizens explaining the work of the judicial system and citizens' rights.
Judges generally freed suspects whose confessions were taken without lawyers present or who were held in excess of detention limits. The Supreme Court overturned a number of cases in which lower court judges granted permission to detain individuals on what the Supreme Court considered to be inadequate grounds.
Some regional and local authorities took advantage of the system's procedural weaknesses to arrest persons on false pretexts for expressing views critical of the Government. Human rights advocates in some regions were charged with libel, contempt of court, or interference in judicial procedures in cases with distinct political overtones. Journalists, among others, have been charged with other offenses and held either in excess of normal periods of detention or for offenses that do not require detention at all (see Sections 2.a. and 4).
The law prohibits pretrial detention for crimes carrying a sentence of less than 3 years unless the defendant poses a demonstrable flight risk; detention during trial is limited to 6 months, except where particularly grave crimes are involved. The Code specifies that within 2 months of a suspect's arrest police should complete their investigation and transfer the file to the procurator for arraignment. A procurator may request the court to extend the period of criminal investigation to 6 months in "complex" cases with the authorization of a judge. With the personal approval of the Procurator General, the judge may extend that period up to 18 months. Juveniles may be detained only in cases of grave crimes.
The Code states that police may detain an individual not more than 24 hours before the case is referred to the procurator and gives the procurator 24 hours in which to open or reject the criminal case. At that point, the procurator must decide whether to seek pretrial detention from the court. Pretrial detention is limited in most cases to 6 months. The investigators have 2 months to refer the case file to the court and request more time for detention. Only in a small number of serious crimes and complex investigations can the Procuracy request an extension of detention for an additional 6 months, and only with the personal approval of the Procurator General can they apply to the court for an extension to a maximum of 18 months. During the first 6 months in which the new procedures were in place, no such 18-month extensions were requested and most cases went to trial in the allotted 6 months. According to Chief Justice Lebedev, from January until May, the courts received 37,000 applications for the extension of pretrial detention; 35,000 were granted. These procedures were generally respected; however, there were still some judges and regions that did not appear to enforce them fully.
An individual detained before January 2002 could spend up to 3 years awaiting trial in a SIZO; however, the Criminal Procedures Code gives the courts, rather than the Procuracy, the authority to review detention, and although the Supreme Court instructed all judges to enforce strictly statutory limits on pretrial detention, insufficient time had elapsed by year's end to permit evaluation of compliance with these instructions.
By December, there were approximately 866,500 persons in corrective facilities, prisons, and detention camps, including approximately 150,000 in prisons and in pretrial detention. In December, Minister of Justice Chaika stated, "since the population of imprisoned persons reached its peak in May 2000, it has been reduced overall by 240,000 persons."
At the end of December, a court suspended the trial of Igor Sutyagin, a disarmament researcher with the U.S. and Canada Institute, with the result that Sutyagin remained in pretrial detention where he has been since 1999 on suspicion of espionage. Prosecutors accused Sutyagin of passing classified information about the country's nuclear weapons to a London-based firm, but the Kaluga regional court ruled in 2001 that the evidence presented by the procurator did not support the charges brought against him and returned the case to the procurator for further investigation.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in October that authorities in Yekaterinburg had violated Tamara Nikolayevna Rakevich's international rights to liberty and security by holding her for 29 days, rather than the statutory 5 days, before providing her with an opportunity to challenge her incarceration. Psychiatrists had diagnosed Rakevich with paranoid schizophrenia.
Significant reforms occurred in law enforcement and judicial procedures, however, the apparently selective arrest and detention of prominent businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the eve of parliamentary elections raised a number of concerns over the arbitrary use of the judicial system.
The Constitution prohibits forced exile, and the Government did not employ it.
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial
The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary, and there were increasing signs of judicial independence; however, the judiciary did not act as an effective counterweight to other branches of the Government. Judges remained subject to some influence from the executive, military, and security forces, particularly in high profile or politically sensitive cases. The judiciary continued to lack sufficient resources and was subject to corruption. At times, government authorities refused to implement court decisions, including some ordering them to register certain religious groups and organizations.
The judiciary is divided into three branches. The courts of general jurisdiction, including military courts, are subordinated to the Supreme Court. These courts hear civil and criminal cases and include district courts, which serve every urban and rural district, regional courts, and the Supreme Court. Decisions of the lower trial courts can be appealed only to the immediately superior court unless a constitutional issue is involved. The arbitration (commercial) court system under the High Court of Arbitration constitutes a second branch of the judicial system. Arbitration courts hear cases involving business disputes between legal entities, and between legal entities and the state. The Constitutional Court (as well as constitutional courts in a number of administrative entities of the Russian Federation) constitutes the third branch.
The President approves judges after they have been nominated by the qualifying collegia, which were assemblies of judges. These collegia also had the authority to remove judges for misbehavior and to approve procurators' requests to prosecute judges.
Justices of the peace, introduced beginning in 1998, deal with criminal cases involving maximum sentences of less than 3 years and some civil cases. There were 5,576 justices of the peace throughout the country, although there remained many vacancies in this system. These judges handle a variety of civil cases as well as criminal cases. In those areas where the system of Justices of the peace had been implemented completely, backlogs and delays in trial proceedings decreased significantly, both among those cases referred to the justices of the peace and in the courts of general jurisdiction, because dockets were freed to accept more serious cases more rapidly. Justices of the peace were in various stages of development according to region, but were functioning nationwide, producing significant reductions in case backlogs and freeing the courts of general jurisdiction for more serious cases. In some regions, Justices of the peace assumed 65 percent of federal judges' civil cases and up to 25 percent of their criminal matters, which may have contributed to easing overcrowding in pretrial detention facilities (see Sections 1.c. and 1.d.). Justices of the peace were working in all regions except Kareliya and Chechnya.
Low salaries and lack of prestige continued to make it difficult to attract talented new judges and contributed to the vulnerability of existing judges to bribery and corruption. Working conditions for judges remained poor and lacking in physical security, and support personnel continued to be underpaid. Judges remained subject to intimidation and bribery from officials and others, and the authorities did not provide adequate protection from intimidation or threats from powerful criminal defendants.
The Criminal Procedures Code provides for the strengthening of the role of the judiciary in relation to the Procuracy by requiring judicial approval of arrest warrants, searches, seizures, and detention (see Section 1.d.). Judicial reforms enacted in 2001 provide for public representation on the qualifying collegia that rate judicial candidates as qualified to hold the office and which impose disciplinary measures. Such public representatives began to serve in some places in 2002 and more widely during the year, and have contributed at least somewhat to a sense that these processes are more open than in the past. In addition, the Supreme Qualifying Collegium of Judges began to make public some information concerning cases in which it had removed judges from office for various kinds of malfeasance in 2002 and continued this practice during the year, thereby adding at least a degree of transparency to the judicial discipline system. According to the Russian Supreme Court, qualification commissions dismissed 68 judges and ordered disciplinary action for over 220 judges during the year.
In addition, judicial training was mandated and strengthened during the year, and the new Academy of Justice under the Supreme Court, with responsibility for training and regular re-training of judges, began operation, with 10 branches in the regions.
The Constitution provides for the right to a fair trial; however, this right was restricted in practice. Assessments of the effects of the new criminal code on this process were mixed as of year's end. Abuses of the right to a fair trial declined; however, numerous critics argued that the country remained far from having a truly adversarial criminal procedure. The domestic press reported that 9,000 persons, or 0.8 percent of defendants, were acquitted in 2002, double the number from the previous year; however, figures suggested that the courts were slow in implementing judicial reforms. One legal observer noted that higher courts overturned 40 percent of the acquittals granted by lower courts, but only .05 percent of the guilty verdicts.
As of December 2002, 69 regions used adversarial jury trials. On July 1, 14 more regions, including the City of Moscow, began jury trials. On January 1, 2004, five more regions, including St. Petersburg, are scheduled to begin using jury trials, leaving only Chechnya scheduled to begin jury trials on January 1, 2007. According to observers, a majority of defense attorneys, defendants, and the public favored jury trials and an adversarial approach to criminal justice. However, trial by jury is available for only a small number of the most serious offences. The remaining criminal cases still were tried by single judges, since the two "peoples assessors" who sat with a judge before the introduction of reforms have been removed. According to the Supreme Court, there were 492 jury trials involving approximately 1,000 defendants during the year. Approximately 15 percent of these trials resulted in acquittals (compared to 0.8 percent of bench trials). As there is no double jeopardy bar to seeking review of acquittals, approximately one-quarter of these acquittals were overturned on appeal.
Many defendants did not attempt to exercise their right to counsel, believing that such efforts would be pointless. NGOs reported that investigators found ways to deny suspects access to counsel, such as by restricting visiting hours. Suspects often were unable or unwilling to exercise their right to counsel during pretrial questioning. Many defendants recanted testimony given during pretrial questioning, stating that they were denied access to a lawyer, that they were coerced into making false confessions or statements, or that they had confessed in order to escape poor conditions in pretrial detention facilities (see Section 1.d.). In the past, human rights monitors have documented cases in which prosecutors obtained convictions on the basis of testimony that the defendant recanted in court, even in the absence of other proof of guilt; however, the Criminal Procedures Code specifically excludes such confessions from evidence.
The Criminal Procedures Code and Federal Defense Bar statute provide for the appointment of a lawyer free of charge if a suspect cannot afford one; however, this provision often was not effective in practice. Lawyers tried to avoid accepting these cases since the Government did not always pay them. In January, a Federal Russian Bar was established, and the bar undertook the obligation to design a system to provide for the representation of indigent suspects. However, the high cost of competent legal representation meant that lower-income defendants often lacked legal representation. There were no defense attorneys in remote areas of the country.
There were public centers that provided legal advice to the general public. These centers usually were run on a part-time basis by lawyers who, while they could not afford to offer trial counsel or actual legal work, offered advice at no cost on legal rights and recourse under the law.
The Independent Council of Legal Expertise has reported that defense lawyers continued to be the targets of police harassment, including beatings and arrests. Professional associations at both the local and federal levels reported abuses throughout the country, charging that police tried to intimidate defense attorneys and cover up their own criminal activities.
The arrest and trial of Mikhail Trepashkin raised concerns about the undue influence of the FSB and arbitrary use of the judicial system. Trepashkin, an attorney and former FSB official, was arrested in October and charged with disclosing state secrets and illegal possession of a handgun and ammunition. A closed trial began on the case in December based on an indictment that was not made public. Trepashkin had served as a consultant to an independent parliamentary commission headed by then-deputies Sergei Yushenkov, who was killed in April, and Sergei Kovalyov, a prominent human rights advocate (see Section 1.a.). With Trepashkin's assistance, the commission investigated allegations of FSB responsibility for a series of apartment building bombings in 1999 that were blamed on Chechens, and which served as partial justification for the Government's resumption of the armed conflict against Chechen fighters. Trepashkin's October arrest came 1 month after his charges of FSB responsibility were cited in a book and 1 week before he was scheduled to represent the relatives of a victim of one of the apartment building bombings. After his arrest, Trepashkin wrote a letter describing extremely poor and filthy conditions in his detention cell (see Section 1.c.).
Authorities abrogated due process in continuing to pursue several "espionage" cases involving foreigners who worked with Russians and allegedly obtained information that the security services considered sensitive. The proceedings in these cases took place behind closed doors, and the defendants and their attorneys encountered difficulties in learning the details of the charges. Observers believed that the FSB was seeking to discourage Russians and foreigners from investigating problems that the security services considered sensitive, and were concerned by the apparently undue influence of the security services. On August 25, the Vladivostok court found Vladimir Shchurov, Director of the Sonar Laboratory of the Pacific Oceanographic Institute, guilty of revealing state secrets. Shchurov received a 2-year suspended sentence and was freed under amnesty. Regional FSB authorities brought the case in 2000. In June, prosecutors refused to support two of the three original FSB charges against the scientist for lack of evidence. The verdict reflected the tensions between security and scientific inquiry, as the court case pitted Shchurov and the scientific and human rights communities that supported him against the security services.
A Moscow court suspended the trial of Igor Sutyagin, a disarmament researcher with the U.S. and Canada Institute who had been detained in 1999 on suspicion of espionage. Sutyagin was serving his fifth year in prison without a trial (see Section 1.d.). Prosecutors accused Sutyagin of passing classified information about the country's nuclear weapons to a London-based firm, but the Kaluga regional court ruled in December 2001 that the evidence presented by the procurator did not support the charges brought against him and returned the case to the procurator for further investigation.
Grigoriy Pasko, a former military journalist and a former active-duty officer in the Pacific Fleet, who received a 4-year sentence in December 2001 for espionage, continued to appeal to the ECHR to have his conviction overturned. Pasko was granted parole in January 2002 after he served two-thirds (2 years and 8 months) of his sentence. The Russian Supreme Court had rejected his appeal on three occasions.
Platon Obukhov, a diplomat charged with espionage, was determined to be mentally ill and at the end of 2002 was undergoing treatment in a psychiatric hospital near Moscow. Yuriy Savenko, head of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, and other human rights activists criticized Obukhov's 2001 trial, charging that political considerations and pressure from the FSB influenced the psychiatric evaluation supervised by the Ministry of Health.
In a positive development, on December 29, a jury in Krasnoyarsk acquitted physicist Valentin Danilov of charges of spying for China while working on a commercial contract. A number of observers attributed the acquittal to the fact that a jury heard the case.
There were no credible reports of political prisoners.
f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, or Correspondence
The Constitution states that officials may enter a private residence only in cases prescribed by federal law or on the basis of a judicial decision; however, authorities did not always observe these provisions. The Constitution permits the Government to monitor correspondence, telephone conversations, and other means of communication only with judicial permission and prohibits the collection, storage, utilization, and dissemination of information about a person's private life without his consent. A 1999 Law on Operational Search Activity partially implemented these provisions, and the new Criminal Procedures Code implemented others; however, problems remained. Authorities continued to infringe on citizens' privacy rights. There were reports of electronic surveillance by government officials and others without judicial permission. Law enforcement officials in Moscow reportedly entered residences and other premises without warrants. There were no reports of government action against authorities who violated these safeguards.
In 1999, Internet service providers were required to install, at their own expense, a device that routes all customer traffic to an FSB terminal. Providers that do not comply with the requirements face either loss of their licenses or denial of their license renewal. While the framers of this "System for Operational Investigative Measures" (SORM-2) claimed that the regulation did not violate the Constitution or the Civil Code, because it required a court order to authorize the FSB to read the transmissions, there appeared to be no mechanism to prevent unauthorized FSB access to the traffic or private information without a warrant. In 2000, Communications Minister Leonid Reyman issued an order stating that the FSB was no longer required to provide telecommunications companies and individuals documentation on targets of interest prior to accessing information. Human rights activists suggested that this order only formalized existing practices, established since SORM was introduced, of monitoring communications without providing any information or legal justification to those being monitored. Despite the 2000 Supreme Court ruling upholding the requirements that the FSB conduct monitoring only by court order, the oversight and enforcement of these provisions were inadequate in practice.
A Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation that President Putin signed in 2000, although without legal standing, indicated that law enforcement authorities should have wide discretion in carrying out SORM surveillance of telephone, cellular, and wireless communications. Human rights observers continued to allege that officers in the special services, including authorities at the highest levels of the MVD and the FSB, used their services' power to gather compromising materials on political and public figures, both as political insurance and to remove rivals. They accused persons in these agencies, both active and retired, of working with commercial or criminal organizations for the same purpose. There were credible reports that regional branches of the FSB continued to exert pressure on citizens employed by foreign firms and organizations, often with the goal of coercing them into becoming informants.
Government forces in Chechnya looted valuables and food from houses in regions that they controlled (see Section 1.g.).
g. Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian Law in Internal and External Conflicts
The indiscriminate use of force by government troops in the Chechen conflict has resulted in widespread civilian casualties and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of persons, the majority of whom sought refuge in the neighboring republic of Ingushetiya. President Putin announced in 2001 the successful completion of the active military phase of the struggle against separatism in Chechnya and stated that an anti-terrorist operation under the direction of the FSB would begin immediately. The security situation prevented most foreign observers from traveling to the region, and the Government enforced strict controls on both foreign and domestic media access (see Section 2.a.).
Federal authorities--both military and civilian--have limited journalists' access to war zones since the beginning of the second war in Chechnya in October 1999. Most domestic journalists and editors appeared to exercise self-censorship and avoided subjects embarrassing to the Government with regard to the conflict (see Section 2.a.). Human rights observers also faced limitations in access to the region (see Section 4). These restrictions made independent observation of conditions and verification of reports very difficult and limited the available sources of information concerning the conflict. However, human rights groups with staff in the region continued to release credible reports of human rights abuses and atrocities committed by federal forces during the year. A wide range of reports indicated that federal military operations resulted in numerous civilian casualties and the massive destruction of property and infrastructure, despite claims by federal authorities that government forces utilized precision targeting when combating rebels. There were no reliable estimates of the number of civilians killed as a result of federal military operations; estimates of the totals since 1999 varied from hundreds to thousands. It was also impossible to verify the number of civilians injured by federal forces.
Mopping up or "cleansing" operations known as "zachistki" continued periodically throughout the year, although federal forces shifted tactics toward more targeted operations. Although this change reduced large-scale abuses that often accompanied zachistki, human rights organizations indicated that disappearances of those detained in these raids continued. Human rights activists, including Memorial, reported that federal forces continued to ignore order #80, issued in 2002, which established rules on how to carry out passport checks and mopping-up operations. That order required that the military forces have license plates on their vehicles when entering a village, that military personnel should be accompanied by a representative of the Procuracy and local officials, that they identify themselves when entering a house, and that lists be made and shared with local authorities of all persons arrested during a mopping-up operation. For example, in January, federal forces conducted a sweep in the town of Argun. According to reports, the federal forces dragged residents from their beds and took them to a quarry where they detained and tortured them. Relatives of the detained found two bodies that had been blown up in the quarry. Residents were able to identify one of the bodies as a resident whom federal forces had arrested. Only after mass protests in Argun were most of those detained released. All of them showed signs of physical abuse and required medical attention.
According to the NGO Memorial, in March, in the village of Alkhan-Yurt, armed men in armored personnel carriers arrested two Chechen police officers. Their bodies were found 8 days later riddled with bullets and showed signs of having been tortured by electric shocks.
Federal forces and police conducted security sweeps in neighboring Ingushetiya that also resulted in reported human rights violations and disappearances. In June, Federation and pro-Moscow Chechen forces conducted at least seven operations in Ingushetiya, according to HRW. As with similar operations in Chechnya, reports of beatings, arbitrary detentions, and looting usually followed these operations. In August, pro-Moscow Chechen police abducted five men from a polyclinic in Ingushetiya. According to reports, police burst into the clinic firing weapons. One of those detained was wounded. One of the policemen struck a doctor with a rifle. As of October 1, the whereabouts of the five were unknown. Ingush prosecutors opened a criminal case.
Government forces and Chechen fighters have used landmines extensively in Chechnya and Dagestan since 1999; there were many civilian landmine casualties in Chechnya during the year.
In addition to casualties attributable to indiscriminate use of force by the federal armed forces, individual federal servicemen or units committed many abuses. According to human rights observers, government forces responding to Chechen attacks at times engaged in indiscriminate reprisals against combatants and noncombatants alike. Federal forces were also believed to be responsible for the killing of Umar Zabiev, a civilian, in June near the Ingush village of Galashki. Heavy machine gun fire hit the car in which Zabiev, his brother, and his mother were riding as they were returning home. The gunfire was believed to come from a nearby column of armored vehicles. Umar Zabiev stayed with his injured mother and sent his brother to bring help. When villagers arrived a short time later, Umar was missing. His body was found the next morning bearing clear marks of torture and gunshot wounds. Police searching the area found more than 100 spent cartridges and other items that indicated the presence of Federation military personnel.
Command and control among military and special police units often appeared to be weak, and a climate of lawlessness, corruption, and impunity flourished.
Federation forces continued to use antipersonnel mines in Chechnya. Reports from hospitals operating in the region indicated that many patients were landmine or ordnance victims and that such weaponry was the primary cause of death. Government officials reported that in Chechnya there were 5,695 landmine casualties in 2002, including 125 deaths. The casualties included 938 children. By comparison, there were 2,140 landmine casualties in 2001.
There were additional discoveries of mass graves and "dumping grounds" for victims allegedly executed by government forces in Chechnya. There were no reports by year's end that the Government intended to investigate earlier cases. Memorial reported that in February, near the village of Kapustino, the bodies of seven men were found, and each showed signs of violent death; five of the deceased men were identified as having been arrested during 2002 by men believed to be Federal security officers. In August, villagers in Staryy Atagi witnessed a body thrown out of an armored vehicle and then blown up. They found body fragments at the site that were later determined to be the remains of a man arrested by Federal forces.
Large numbers of individuals were declared missing during the year, although estimates of the total number varied (see Section 1.b.). Of 267 persons declared missing during the first 6 months of the year, law enforcement agencies had solved 5 of these cases. HRW and other NGOs estimated that nearly 60 persons disappeared every month in Chechnya.
On March 15, human rights activist Imran Ezhiev, the head of the regional office of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society and a regional representative of the Moscow Helsinki Group, was kidnapped by unidentified armed, masked men in Chechnya and held for 3 days before being released (see Section 4).
Armed forces and police units reportedly routinely abused and tortured persons held at so-called filtration camps, where federal authorities sorted out fighters or those suspected of aiding the rebels from civilians. Federal forces reportedly ransomed Chechen detainees (and, at times, their corpses) to their families for prices ranging from several hundred to thousands of dollars. According to human rights NGOs, federal troops on numerous occasions looted valuables and foodstuffs in regions they controlled. Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) reported that guards at checkpoints forced them to provide payments or harassed and pressured them. There were some reports that federal troops purposefully targeted some infrastructure essential to the survival of the civilian population, such as water facilities or hospitals. The indiscriminate use of force by federal troops resulted in a massive destruction of housing, as well as commercial and administrative structures. Gas and water supply facilities and other types of infrastructure also were damaged severely. Representatives of international organizations and NGOs who visited Chechnya reported little evidence of federal assistance for rebuilding war-torn areas.
There were widespread reports of the killing or abuse of captured fighters by federal troops, as well as by the Chechen fighters, and a policy of "no surrender" appeared to prevail in many units on both sides. Federal forces reportedly beat, raped, tortured, and killed numerous detainees.
The Government investigated and tried some members of the military for crimes against civilians in Chechnya; however, there were few convictions (see Section 1.d.). According to reports, of the 1,700 cases filed against servicemen by military procurators, 345 had been halted for various reasons, including amnesties, and 360 had been handed over to the courts. Human rights observers alleged that the Government addressed only a fraction of the crimes federal forces committed against civilians in Chechnya.
According to Russian Justice Minister Yuriy Chaika, from the start of the conflict through November, 54 servicemen, including 8 officers, had been found guilty of crimes against civilians in Chechnya. Four servicemen, including three officers, were on trial for murder charges over the 2002 deaths of six Chechen civilians in a court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
Memorial concluded that the majority of cases opened for alleged crimes by Federation servicemen against civilians resulted in no charges. Cases were closed or investigations suspended because of the absence of the bodies or because of an inability to identify a suspect. In a trial widely regarded as a test case, a military court, on July 25, convicted Colonel Yuriy Budanov of charges of kidnapping, murder, and abuse of authority in the death of an 18-year-old Chechen woman. Budanov, the highest-ranking officer tried for crimes in Chechnya, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The ruling represented a positive step, although the sentence was a relatively lenient punishment for murder. In 2002, the court had ruled that Budanov was temporarily insane at the time of the killing. At that time, prosecutors asked the court to drop the murder charges. Those prosecutors were later replaced, and the new prosecution team and lawyers for the girl's family successfully appealed the decision, leading to the new trial in which Budanov was convicted.
The Government announced an amnesty program as part of an effort to persuade Chechen fighters to lay down their weapons. The offer of amnesty was also extended to Federation soldiers and police accused of crimes in Chechnya. After the September 1 deadline passed, government officials announced that 195 Chechens had applied for amnesty. Officials further announced that 225 Federation servicemen and police officers had applied.
Individuals seeking accountability for abuses in Chechnya became the targets of government forces. According to Memorial, government troops in May killed Zura Bitaeva and five members of her family in the Kalinovskaya settlement. Bitaeva had actively campaigned against the Federation military and its human rights violations during the first war and at the start of the second war. Authorities arrested her in January 2000 and held her for 1 month in the filtration camp at Chernokosovo. Following her release, she filed a case with the ECHR. In February, she had been one of a group of women who demanded an investigation of a reported mass grave near the Kapustino settlement. In March, Bitieva's husband and their son were charged with possession of narcotics and put on trial shortly before they were killed.
In response to international criticism of the human rights situation in Chechnya, the Government established several federal bodies to examine alleged domestic human rights violations. An Independent Commission on Human Rights in the Northern Caucasus headed by the Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Legislation maintained a number of offices in Chechnya and Ingushetiya. A Special Presidential Representative for Human Rights in Chechnya appointed by President Putin had branches in Moscow and in Chechnya to take complaints about alleged human rights violations. These two organizations heard hundreds of complaints from citizens, ranging from destruction or theft of property to rape and murder; however, neither organization was empowered to investigate or prosecute alleged offenses and had to refer complaints to the military or civil procurators. Almost all complainants alleged violations of military discipline and other common crimes.
Chechen rebel fighters also committed serious human rights abuses. According to various reports, they killed civilians who would not assist them, used civilians as human shields, forced civilians to build fortifications, and prevented refugees from fleeing Chechnya. In several cases, Chechen fighters killed elderly Russian civilians for no apparent reason other than their ethnicity. As with the many reported violations by federal troops, there were difficulties in verifying or investigating these incidents.
During the year, Chechen rebels carried out several bombings, and terrorist acts, including suicide bombings, increased. In May, a truck bomb outside the regional government building in Znamenskoye, Chechnya, killed 59 persons. Terrorist Shamil Basayev, a Chechen commander, claimed responsibility. Two days later, a woman blew herself up at an Islamic festival in Chechnya attended by then-Head of Administration Kadyrov. The blast killed 16 people. In June, a woman detonated explosives next to a bus shuttling Russian military and civilian personnel to an air base in North Ossetia. In July, 2 women detonated explosives while standing at the gates of a rock festival, killing 16 others. In August, suicide bombers drove a truck laden with explosives into a military hospital in Mozdok, killing 50 people, including wounded soldiers. In September, a car bomb exploded outside the headquarters of the Ingush branch of the FSB, killing three people. In Moscow, a bomb disposal expert died when a bomb outside a restaurant went off as he approached. Police had found the bomb when they detained a woman from Chechnya as she tried to enter a downtown restaurant. Chechen fighters planted landmines or used improvised explosives that killed or injured federal forces and often provoked federal counterattacks on civilian areas. On December 9, a woman believed to be from Chechnya, blew herself up in front of the National Hotel, killing 6 and wounding 14 persons. The bomber reportedly asked where the State Duma was located before detonating her explosives in front of the hotel; the National Hotel is located 170 yards from the Kremlin.
In other incidents, rebels took up positions in populated areas and fired on federal forces, thereby exposing the civilians to federal counterattacks. When villagers protested, the rebels sometimes beat them or fired upon them. Chechen fighters also targeted civilian officials working for the pro-Moscow Chechen Administration. In October, they killed the mayor of Shali, Musa Dakayev, and his son when they fired upon their car. The media reported that Dakayev was the fourth mayor of a Chechen town killed within 6 months. Chechen fighters also reportedly abused, tortured, and killed captured soldiers from federal forces. Rebels continued a concerted campaign, begun in 2001, to kill civilian officials of the Government-supported Chechen administration. According to Chechen sources, rebel factions also used violence to eliminate their economic rivals in illegal activities or to settle personal accounts.
Chechen fighters launched numerous attacks on government forces and police in Ingushetiya during the year.
Individual rebel field commanders reportedly were responsible for funding their units, and some allegedly resorted to drug smuggling and kidnapping to raise funds. As a result, it often was difficult, if not impossible, to make a distinction between rebel units and criminal gangs. Some rebels allegedly received financial and other forms of assistance from foreign supporters of international terrorism. Officials continued to maintain that there were 200 to 300 foreign fighters in Chechnya.
According to a December 2002 report by the U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict, Chechen rebels used children to plant landmines and explosives (see Section 5).
International organizations estimated that the number of IDPs and refugees who left Chechnya as a result of the conflict reached a high of approximately 280,000 in the spring of 2000 (see Section 2.d.). At various times during the conflict, authorities restricted the movement of persons fleeing Chechnya and exerted pressure on them to return to Chechnya (see Section 2.d.). As of September, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that 75,651 displaced persons remained in Ingushetiya and 141,000 IDPs.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press; however, government pressure on the media persisted, resulting in numerous infringements of these rights. Faced with continuing financial difficulties as well as increased pressure from the Government and large private companies with links to the Government, many media organizations saw their autonomy weakened further during the year. By a variety of means, the Government continued to exert influence over national television and radio, the most widespread sources of information for the public, particularly in television coverage of the parliamentary elections during the year. The public continued to have access to a broad spectrum of viewpoints in the print media and, for those with access, on the Internet.
While the Government generally respected freedom of expression, this did not always extend to sensitive issues such as the conduct of Russian forces in Chechnya or to discussions of religion. For example, the August reorganization of VTsIOM, an independent, commercially-viable, state-owned, polling agency, was widely seen as an attempt to eliminate an independent source of information about issues such as political party ratings and public opinion on the war in Chechnya. The Government depicted the reorganization as part of its program to privatize State enterprises, but the new board of directors was comprised of officials from the ministries and the presidential administration. However, the original VTsIOM reorganized under the name of VTsIOM-A and continued to conduct polls and publish their results. In October, a Moscow movie theater cancelled an independent film festival on Chechnya, reportedly out of concern that the films would offend the Kremlin. The Sakharov Center Director, one of the film festival's organizers, accused Russian authorities of pressuring the movie theater into canceling the event.
Following the vandalism of an exhibit on religious art at the Sakharov Center in Moscow in January, prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against two senior officials of the Center and three of the exhibit's artists. On December 25, prosecutors formally charged the Center's Director with inciting religious and ethnic hatred. Although police detained the six vandals responsible for defacing the art exhibit, they pressed charges against only two. A Moscow court dismissed the charges, ruling that the vandals had the right to express their disgust at the exhibit.
At times, the authorities exerted pressure in a number of ways on journalists, particularly those who reported on corruption or Chechnya, or criticized officials.
Five of the six national, and more than 20 percent of the 35,000 registered local, newspapers and periodicals remained in private hands; however, the Government attempted to influence the reporting of independent publications. Only approximately one-fourth of the 750 television stations in the country remained in private hands, and the Government indirectly influenced most private media companies through partial government ownership of federal and local-level commercial structures, including the gas monopoly Gazprom and the oil company Lukoil, which in turn owned large shares of media companies.
Of the three national television stations, the State owned the Rossiya Channel (RTR) and a majority of First Channel (ORT). The Government owned a 38 percent controlling stake of Gazprom, which in turn had a controlling ownership stake in the third national television station, the prominent, privately owned NTV. It also maintained ownership of the largest radio stations, Radio Mayak and Radio Rossii and news agencies ITAR-TASS and RIA-Novosti.
The Government exerted its influence most directly on state-owned media. As in 2002, the senior staff of RTR, one of the country's two largest networks, reported that managers offered "guidance" to program announcers and selected reporters, indicating which politicians they should support and which they should criticize. Criticism of presidential policies was strongly discouraged and even prohibited. Correspondents claimed that senior management at times asked them to obtain senior management approval for reports on sensitive political matters prior to broadcasting, and that "negative" language was occasionally edited out. At times, high-level Presidential Administration officials reportedly complained to RTR executives about reporting they viewed as critical of the President.
OSCE election observers noted that during the parliamentary election campaign, state-owned television networks actively promoted candidates from United Russia, the political party of the presidential administration, without providing comparable coverage for candidates from other parties.
Of the regional print media monitored by the OSCE observers, 19 of 24 were described as giving clear support to United Russia.
During the year, the Government enhanced its influence over NTV, once owned by Vladimir Gusinskiy but taken over in 2001 by Gazprom Media, the media arm of government-owned gas monopoly, Gazprom. Although NTV lost a number of popular shows and announcers following the Gazprom Media takeover, and viewership declined, the network remained among the four leading television stations. Under a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), financier Boris Jordan, NTV continued its coverage of controversial topics, and Jordan undertook measures that made it possible for NTV to break even in 2002 for the first time since the station was established in 1993. However, in January, Gazprom abruptly fired Jordan as head of Gazprom Media, a move some media analysts attributed to NTV's coverage of the Moscow theater hostage crisis in November 2002. Shortly afterward, Jordan resigned as the head of NTV. Media analysts said that Aleksandr Dybal, who was endorsed by the Kremlin to replace Jordan as head of Gazprom Media, took steps to ensure NTV's loyalty to the Government. Although NTV has preserved its relatively balanced approach to news reporting, analysts claimed that the change in the network's top management made it more susceptible to government pressure.
In June, the Press Ministry took TV Spektrum (TVS), the only remaining nationwide non-state affiliated channel, off the air and assigned the frequency on a temporary basis to the state-owned Sports Channel. In spite of the initial high public interest in TVS, many of whose personnel had originally been associated with NTV before the Government takeover, the network was unable to compete with first-tier networks, and its ratings plummeted. Unable to challenge the monopoly of the advertising giant Video International (VI), reportedly controlled by Media Minister Mikhail Lesin, TVS managed to raise only a fraction of the anticipated advertising revenues. Disputes among the shareholders over editorial and business issues aggravated TVS' problems. In May, TVS was disconnected from the Moscow cable network in a debt dispute, thereby losing the most valuable segment of the advertising market. By June, unpaid wages and growing debts to program producers led to the departure of many popular journalists and highly rated shows. In an official statement, the Press Ministry said TVS was taken off the air because of financial problems and to protect viewers' interests. Observers interpreted the move as an attempt to destroy the last remaining non-state national broadcaster, although some media analysts said that Lesin wanted to take TVS off the air so that he could control the sixth frequency and monopolize the lucrative advertising for VI.
A number of journalists were beaten, killed, or reported missing for reasons that may have been associated with their journalistic activities. The journalists had published critical information about local governments and influential businesses or reported on crime and other sensitive issues. According to the Moscow-based Glasnost Defense Foundation, 10 journalists were killed during the year under mysterious circumstances, and 96 were physically attacked. An Agence France-Presse correspondent was kidnapped in Ingushetiya and had not been freed by year's end. The Glasnost Defense Foundation, together with Journalists without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), also documented numerous cases of censorship and police intimidation of media personnel. In most cases where assailants attacked journalists physically, authorities and observers were unable to establish a direct link between the assault and those who reportedly had taken offense at the reporting in question. As in 2002, independent media NGOs characterized beatings by unknown assailants of journalists as "routine," noting that those who pursued investigative stories on corruption and organized crime found themselves at greatest risk.
On January 4, two off-duty policemen in Moscow beat Vladimir Sukhomlin to death in what was apparently a contract killing. Sukhomlin was a computer programmer, who had founded the Military History Forum website, Serbia.ru, and Chechnya.ru. The accused faced a maximum punishment of 15 years in prison for activities resulting in "the death of the victim because of negligence." The police did not explain why the charges had been downgraded from murder. Sukhomlin's friends and relatives believed that the murder was related to Sukhomlin's journalistic activities.
On April 18, Dmitry Shvets, deputy head of TV-21 in Murmansk, was shot dead outside the station's offices. Media reports quoted anonymous sources saying the killing was politically motivated. Media defense advocates noted that the channel had previously received threats from unknown sources, specifically against another TV-21 journalist, Oleg Motsokin.
On July 18, journalist Alikhan Guliyev was shot and killed in Moscow. Since arriving in Moscow from Ingushetiya in the summer of 2002, Guliyev had worked as a freelance journalist covering Chechnya for TV Tsentr and the daily newspaper Kommersant. While in Ingushetiya, Gulieyev had worked for the public television station Groznyy State Television and Radio (GTRK). In early 2002, Gulieyev had filed a complaint against Ingushetiya's Interior Minister, Khamsat Gutseriyev, who was running for President of the Ingush Republic. Gulieyev claimed Gutseriyev was ineligible to run while holding the office of minister of interior. The Supreme Court of Ingushetiya upheld the complaint and disqualified Gutseriyev as a candidate. In March 2002, unknown assailants fired upon Gulieyev's car. A criminal investigation was initiated.
On October 9, two unknown assailants stabbed to death Aleksey Sidorov, editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye published in Tolyatti, Samara region, near the entrance to his apartment building. Local police said that the assailants did not rob the victim. Sidorov succeeded Valeriy Ivanov, also killed in an apparent contract assassination in 2002. Local media and media advocacy organizations linked his death to his newspaper's investigative reporting on Tolyatti authorities' connections with the city's criminal groups, whose activities center on the Tolyatti-based VAZ automobile plant. Police subsequently arrested and charged a factory worker with the crime, but a number of observers, including media experts and a lawyer representing Siderov's family, were skeptical about the Government's case.
High profile cases of murdered or kidnapped journalists from earlier years remained unsolved. The cases of missing or murdered journalists from 2002 include: Natalya Skryl, correspondent for the Taganrog newspaper Nashe Vremya; Sergey Kalinovskiy, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Smolensk; Valeriy Ivanov, editor-in-chief of Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye; Aleksandr Plotnikov, founder of the newspaper Gostinyi Dvor; Chuvash reporter Nikolay Vasilyev; Igor Salikov, head of information security for Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Penza; Yuriy Frolov, deputy director of Propaganda Publishing; and Ilyas Magomedov, head of the independent station, Groznyy Television. The cases of murdered journalists from 2001 include: Vladimir Kirsanov, a local newspaper editor from Kurgan, and Eduard Markevich, editor of Novyye Reft in Reftinskiy.
As a result of consistent pressure applied by authorities over the years to control reporting on Chechnya and corruption among officials, an overall tendency by media to censor their own reports on these issues continued during the year, particularly among state-controlled television. Authorities selectively denied journalists access to information, including, for example, filming opportunities and statistics theoretically available to the public. They withheld financial support from government media operations that exercised independent editorial judgment and attempted to influence the appointment of senior editors at regional and local newspapers and broadcast media organizations. On occasion, they removed reporters from their jobs, brought libel suits against journalists, and intimidated and harassed journalists.
The North Caucasus region continued to be one of the most dangerous regions for journalists. Kidnapping and assaults remained serious threats. On July 4, in Ingushetiya, Ali Astamirov, a Chechen correspondent for AFP, was kidnapped by unknown armed assailants and has not been heard from since. Astamirov was based in Nazran, the capital of Ingushetiya, and had been reporting on Chechnya and Chechen refugees. He previously worked for Groznyy Television in Chechnya. In October, the media defense organization Reporters Without Borders called on the COE and the OSCE to intercede with the Russian authorities to intensify their efforts to find Astamirov.
The financial dependence of most major media organizations on the Government or on one or more of several major financial-industrial groups continued to undermine editorial independence and journalistic integrity in both the print and broadcast media. The concentration of ownership of major media organizations, including media outlets owned by the federal, regional, and local governments, remained largely intact and posed a continued threat to editorial independence. Government structures, banking interests, and the state-controlled energy giants United Energy Systems and Gazprom continued to dominate the Moscow media market and extend their influence into the regions. The continuing financial difficulties during the year of most news organizations exacerbated this problem, thereby sustaining their dependence on financial sponsors and, in some cases, the federal and regional governments. As a result of this dependence, the autonomy of the media, and its ability to act as a watchdog, remained weak.
During the year, private media organizations and journalists across the country often remained dependent on the Government for transmission facilities and access to property, printing and distribution services. As in 2002, the media advocacy group Glasnost Defense Foundation (GDF) reported that approximately 90 percent of print media organizations relied on State-controlled organizations for paper, printing, or distribution, while many television stations were forced to rely on the Government (in particular, regional committees for the management of state property) for access to the airwaves and office space. The GDF also reported that officials continued to manipulate a variety of other "instruments of leverage" (including the price of printing at state-controlled publishing houses) in an effort to apply pressure on private media rivals. The GDF noted that this practice continued to be more common outside the Moscow area.
In August, a state-owned printing plant in the Ryazan region refused to print the local newspaper Meshcherskaya Nov, citing an order of the regional administration. Meshcherskaya Nov journalists linked the administration's move to the paper's frequent criticism of the administration's performance.
Private print and broadcast media, like other enterprises, were vulnerable to arbitrary changes in the policy and practice of tax collection. Although media routinely continued to receive tax breaks on high-cost items such as paper, the GDF and other media NGOs documented numerous instances of government use of taxation mechanisms to pressure media across the country. The Government also occasionally sought to limit reporting on tax matters. Journalists continued to depend on local authorities for accreditation to major news events. There were widespread reports that authorities showed favoritism toward reporters associated or aligned with the federal or local administration and denied access to journalists representing independent media organizations. In Velikiy Novgorod, in April, the only invitee to a meeting with Nikolai Krasilnikov, head of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Division in the Russian Natural Resources Ministry, was Lyudmila Petrishchyova, editor-in-chief of the municipal newspaper, Velikiy Novgorod. Krasilnikov refused to talk with correspondents of the independent newspapers Russkiy Karavan and Novyi Obyvatel', pleading lack of time. The media advocacy group Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations believes the independent publications were kept out of the meeting because of previous reporting that had revealed widespread violations of federal and local environmental protection legislation.
In September, State Duma deputies and journalists petitioned the Constitutional Court to overturn a series of clauses in the voters' rights law that restrict the media's ability to carry out objective reporting during the Duma campaign. The Duma Deputies and journalists argued that the legislation was limiting their ability to fulfill their professional duties. At the end of October, a court decision struck down one clause of the controversial law "on basic guarantees of voters' rights," which was followed 2 days later by a statement from President Putin in support of the Court's ruling. The impact of the decision, issued only 1 month before the election, was minimal--journalists engaged in self-censorship throughout the campaign.
Authorities on the federal and local levels continued to bring lawsuits and other legal actions against journalists and journalistic organizations during the year, the majority of them in response to unfavorable coverage of government policy or operations. The GDF estimated that nearly 300 hundred such cases were brought during the year. In June, Konstantin Sterledev and Konstantin Bakharev, two reporters for the Perm daily newspaper Zvezda, went on trial, accused of revealing state secrets. In 2002, the reporters had published articles regarding methods allegedly used by the regional office of the FSB. Freimut Duve, the media representative for the OSCE, wrote a letter to Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Presidential Envoy to the Volga Federal District Sergey Kiriyenko asking their views on the trial. Members of the British PEN organization asked President Putin and Justice Minister Yuriy Chaika to have the case thrown out, because they believed that the trial contradicted international freedom of speech standards. In July, the Perm regional court acquitted Sterledev and Bakharev. The regional prosecutor's office appealed the acquittal to the Supreme Court that upheld the acquittal in a November ruling.
Some regional and local authorities took advantage of the judicial system's procedural weaknesses to arrest persons on false pretexts for expressing views critical of the Government.
With some exceptions, judges appeared unwilling to challenge powerful federal and local officials who sought to prosecute journalists. These proceedings often resulted in stiff fines and occasionally in jail terms. In August, a Chelyabinsk district court sentenced German Galkin, deputy editor of Vecherniy Chelyabinsk daily, to one year in a hard labor camp as a result of a libel suit filed in June 2002 by Vice Governors of Chelyabinsk region, Konstantin Bochkaryov and Andrey Kosilov. Three articles published in Rabochaya Gazeta in 2002 accused the officials of corruption and links to organized crime, but Galkin was not listed in bylines for the articles and denied having written them. According to GDF, Galkin was the first journalist in the post-Soviet era to be jailed for libel. International media defense representatives from Reporters Without Borders, the CPJ, the COE, and the OSCE expressed their concerns about the severity of the sentence, which they believed could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and information and freedom of the media. At Galkin's appeal, on October 6, the Kalininskiy District Court of Chelyabinsk upheld the sentence, but Galkin planned an appeal to a higher court. The sentence was upheld, but suspended on appeal, and Galkin was released.
GDF reported that in June, the Kyzyl city court in the Republic of Tuva upheld an earlier ruling by a Kyzyl district court, which had sentenced Stanislav Pivovarov to a suspended 1-year prison term for insulting Tuva Prime Minister Sherig-Oola Oordzhak. Pivovarov, a local politician who contributed articles to the Stolitsa newspaper, appealed the ruling to the Tuva Supreme Court. According to the Glasnost Foundation, no revision of the court's decision was expected.
In August, the Supreme Court acquitted Olga Kitova of libel charges and upheld charges of assaulting a police officer. Kitova was a correspondent for Belgorodskaya Pravda and a member of the Belgorod regional parliament. Authorities harassed her for her reporting on regional government officials. Police arrested her twice in 2001, and she suffered a heart attack while being held in pretrial detention. Previously she had received a 2Ѕ-year suspended sentence on libel charges, and, in July 2002, the Supreme Court reduced her extended jail time by 5 months. Kitova was living in Moscow and employed by the daily newspaper Russkiy Kuryer at year's end.
In May the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court overturned the 2002 acquittal of six men accused of organizing the 1994 murder of Dimitriy Kholodov, military affairs correspondent for the news daily Moskovskiy Komsomolets. The Supreme Court ruled that the Moscow Circuit Military Court had "failed to take all available evidence into account," in particular, testimony of one defendant, who stated that then-Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev asked him to "deal with Kholodov" because of the journalist's coverage of corruption in the military.
Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who gained international recognition and received death threats because of her reporting on Chechnya, was forced into hiding in 2001. In October 2002, she received e-mail death threats signed "Kadet," the nickname for Sergey Lapin, a member of the OMON (special forces unit of the Ministry of Interior). On March 4, the prosecutor's office in Nizhnevartovsk dropped the criminal charges against Lapin, citing evidence that Viktor Didenko, who died in 2002, had sent the e-mail threats to Politkovskaya and had signed them with Lapin's nickname.
In September, in Krasnoyarsk, police detained Valeriy Zabolotskiy, a photographer from the local daily Krasnoyarskiy Rabochiy, who was taking pictures for his newspaper. Police claimed that Zabolotskiy was taking photos of police. The journalist was released later that day.
On April 8, a Media Industrial Committee composed of heads of major media organizations adopted an Anti-terrorist Convention, a set of self-imposed rules of reporting on terrorist acts. The Convention established a priority of human life over press freedom, required journalists to report sensitive information to authorities, obliged journalists to seek approval from authorities to interview terrorists, and prohibited live broadcasts of terrorists.
In June, the Press Ministry extended for an additional 5 years Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) broadcasting license, which was due to expire July 3. In October 2002, President Putin revoked a 1991 presidential decree that authorized RFE/RL to open a permanent bureau in Moscow and instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to accredit RFE/RL. According to press reports at the time, President Putin attributed the decision to revoke the 1991 decree to a desire to put all foreign bureaus on the same legal footing and to the belief that the 1994 law on mass media has made then-President Yeltsin's 1991 decree obsolete. Some media advocacy groups associated President Putin's revocation with RFE/RL broadcasts to Chechnya.
On October 30, the Russian Constitutional Court struck down a controversial provision of the law "On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights." The provision would have made it possible to close media organizations for campaigning for or against candidates, for disseminating information about candidates not related to their professional duties, and for any activity "forming positive or negative attitudes towards a candidate." The court drew a distinction between the concepts of election canvassing and information. Under the amended version of the law, only those statements published in the media that have been proven by court to be aimed at supporting a certain candidate constitute election canvassing. The court ruled that a positive or negative opinion of a candidate or the expression of preference for a candidate does not in itself constitute election canvassing. Although the Constitutional Court demonstrated relative independence in this decision, the damage had already been done. With only 1 month left in the election campaign at the time of the ruling, journalists continued to practice self-censorship through the end of the campaign (see Section 3).
There were no discernible repercussions on the press from the Security Council's June 2000 Information Security Doctrine, which outlines "threats to Russian national security" in the fields of "mass media, means of mass communication, and information technology" (see Section 1.f.). However, many observers continued to view it as an indication that the Kremlin considered the media to be subject to the administration and control of the Government.
The Duma made no further attempts at passing an amendment introduced after the October 2002 Dubrovka theater seizure that would have restricted reporting on anti-terrorist operations. In response to widespread criticism from the media and other organizations, President Putin had vetoed an earlier amendment passed by the Duma in November 2002.
Government efforts to limit critical coverage of its attempt to subdue what it regarded as a security threat posed by the rebellion in Chechnya were widely seen as a major impetus for its pressure on the media. Confiscations of records and equipment and efforts by federal and regional authorities--both military and civilian--to limit journalists' access to war zones continued. On September 3, Akmed Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed head of Chechnya, combined the nationalities ministry with the press ministry, fired his press minister, Bislan Gantamirov, and appointed his campaign manager, Taus Dzhabrailov, as the head of the newly combined ministry. The next day, Kadyrov's security forces surrounded the headquarters of GTRK, a station created in March by Gantamirov, and prevented journalists from leaving the building with microphones, cameras, and other equipment needed to conduct television interviews. Kadyrov's forces told the journalists that they would not be allowed to leave the building with equipment that belonged to the State. Press reports quoted GTRK deputy director Islam Musaev as saying all the radio journalists had resigned, while other reports said a majority of the television journalists had resigned. The reorganization and management change occurred after Gantamirov publicly endorsed Kadyrov's rival in the presidential race.
Internet access appeared to be unrestricted, but the Government required Internet service providers to provide dedicated lines to the security establishment so that police could track private e-mail communications and monitor Internet activity. SORM-2 continued during the year to limit the electronic privacy of both citizens and foreigners (see Section 1.f.).
The Government did not restrict academic freedom; however, during the year human rights activists questioned whether the Sutyagin case and others discouraged academic freedom and contact with foreigners on issues that might be deemed sensitive (see Section 1.e.).
b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association
The Constitution provides for freedom of assembly and the Government generally respected this right in practice; however, at times local Governments restricted this right.
Organizations were required to obtain permits in order to hold public meetings, and the application process had to be initiated between 5 and 10 days before the scheduled event. Although religious gatherings and assemblies did not require permits, in at least one case the Jehovah's Witnesses organization in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was fined for meeting without a permit. While the Ministry of Justice readily granted permits to demonstrate to both opponents and supporters of the government, some groups were either denied permission to assemble or had their permission withdrawn by local officials after Ministry of Justice officials had issued them.
On April 15, police beat participants from an ultra-nationalist organization who were engaged in an unsanctioned demonstration to protest the celebration of St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary. Three of the protesters were beaten so seriously that they had to be hospitalized (see Section 1.c.).
The Constitution provides for freedom of association, and the Government generally respected this right in practice. Public organizations must register their bylaws and the names of their leaders with the Ministry of Justice.
By law, political parties must have 10,000 members in order to be registered and function legally, with no less than 100 members in a majority of the country's 89 regions (see Section 3).
In February, the authorities banned the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir for having terrorist connections and seeking to overthrow the Government. In April, the authorities launched a crackdown on the party, rounding up 55 leaders and members of the group in the capital by year's end. Party members denied the charges against the organization and called the raids an example of persecution. The FSB announced that the raid had resulted in the discovery of extensive munitions.
c. Freedom of Religion
The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respected this right in practice; however, in some cases the authorities imposed restrictions on some groups. Although the Constitution provides for the equality of all religions before the law and the separation of church and state, the Government did not always respect this provision in practice.
There were continuing indications that the security services were treating the leadership of some minority religious groups, particularly Muslims and Roman Catholics, as security threats (see Section 2.b.).
Many religious minority groups and NGOs complained of what they believed was collusion between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state. Neither the Constitution nor the 1997 law accords explicit privileges or advantages to "traditional religions;" however, many politicians and public figures argued for closer cooperation with them, above all with the Russian Orthodox Church's Moscow Patriarchate. Public statements by some government officials, including President Putin, and anecdotal evidence from religious minority groups, suggested that the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly enjoyed a status that approached official. The Church has entered into a number of agreements with government ministries giving it special access to institutions such as schools, hospitals, prisons, the police, the FSB, and the army. The Russian Orthodox Church appears to have had greater success reclaiming pre-revolutionary property than other groups, and many religious workers believed that the Russian Orthodox Church played a role in the cancellation of visas held by non-Orthodox foreign religious workers.
A 1997 law regulating religious practice limits the rights, activities, and status of religious "groups" existing in the country for less than 15 years and requires that religious groups exist for 15 years before they can qualify for "organization" status, which conveys juridical status. All religious organizations were required to register or reregister by the end of 2000 or face liquidation (deprivation of juridical status). Groups that were unregistered previously, including groups new to the country, were severely hindered in their ability to practice their faith. The Ministry of the Justice reported that, as of January, 20,448 organizations were registered. While isolated difficulties with registration continued to appear in different regions around the country, human rights lawyers and representatives of religious minorities reported that such difficulties related to the 1997 law decreased during the year. Local courts have upheld the right of non-traditional groups to register or reregister in a number of cases.
Treatment of religious organizations, particularly minority denominations, varied widely in the regions, depending on the attitude of local offices of the Ministry of Justice. In some areas such as Moscow, Khabarovsk, and Chelyabinsk, local authorities prevented minority religious denominations from reregistering as local religious organizations, as required by law, subjecting them to campaigns of legal harassment.
On April 7, a community of Jehovah's Witnesses was able to register after a local court overturned the authorities' earlier refusal. However, the Jehovah's Witnesses have been denied registration in Cheboksary (a city in Chuvashiya) and Tver. A lawyer for the Jehovah's Witnesses noted that registration issues were not the real problem--the real problem was the Moscow community case. In Moscow, efforts to ban Jehovah's Witnesses have led to continuous litigation in several Moscow district courts. Pending the outcome of a court-ordered study to determine the potential negative effects of Jehovah's Witnesses literature on society and a random survey to further evaluate these effects and assess the public's attitudes towards the religion, Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow were not allowed to reregister. Lawyers for the Jehovah's Witnesses organization appealed to the ECHR, which in turn requested a response by September. As a result, they continued to experience problems in leasing space.
Many other religious groups continued to contest administrative actions against them in the courts. While such cases were often successful in court, administrative authorities were at times unwilling to enforce court decisions. While the Moscow