DATE: 17:00 – 18:00, Wednesday 23rd May 2018
VENUE: Committee Room A, Houses of Parliament
SPEAKER: Nikolay and Tatyana Shchur
EVENT CHAIR: Chris Bryant MP
Chris Bryant MP
I am taking my jacket off which means we are starting. Everybody else should feel free to take their jacket off if they want to – but there is no obligation to do so. Welcome, zdravstvuyte, we are not doing anymore in Russian. I am not doing anymore in Russian. My name is Chris Bryant. I am Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Russia and I am proud to be associated with The Henry Jackson Society because all over the years that I have been a member of Parliament, The Henry Jackson Society has been one of the most committed and consistent bodies on issues in relation to human rights and the democratic space in the Russian Federation. I do not agree with every policy The Henry Jackson Society has but I have to say on this issue, on Russia they have been very very good. I last visited Russia in 2010 in January. I remember meeting then a number of people who worked in human rights organisations in Moscow, in Saint Petersburg and in Nizhny Novgorod and they talked then of the really difficult experience they had as trying to stand up for human rights in a space where President Putin, or President Medvedev as it then was, his regime had little respect for human rights. It is a delight to have Nikolay Shchur and Tatyana here with us today. They have been campaigning for a large number of years, at least 1994, on series of environmental issues and I know that again back in 2010 I met with people who were campaigning around the forest, around the environmental protection, around clean water and clean air and they were having just as difficult the time as anybody who was campaigning on political human rights in Russia. So Nikolay and Tatyana are going to speak for something around 20 minutes and then we shall have an opportunity for questions. They both had pretty tough time in Russia. It is worth saying that nearly everybody who I have ever chaired a meeting with, who has come from Russia has ended up being arrested at some point when they get back to Russia. But you have been arrested before coming, so before meeting me. So [inaudible]. We have an enormous respect for you and Nikolay – over to you.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
I will be telling you straightaway about Russian penal system, the state it is in now. Very often people think that contemporary Russian penal service is the same as Gulag. Now it is completely different. This does not mean, of course, that the penal service is no longer a place for severe conditions and severe treatment of prisoners and detainees. Just simply, the tasks that the state expects to be carried out by the service are completely different from what they were. The aim of Gulag was to develop the economy to such an extent as to make it capable of waging the World War. The prisoners of Gulag who counted millions build the giants of Soviet economy in metallurgy, car building and all this was predominantly aimed at war and production of weapons. The economy that the Russian federation inherited from the Soviet Union was the economy built by the slaves, by prisoners of Gulag – including the space industry and the nuclear production. So the state at that time needed millions and thousands of millions of practically free labour, especially as far as the extraction of natural resources was concerned because they generally located in remote places. When the Soviet Union disintegrated this task, this function of the penal service disappeared completely. So the authorities of the country did not need a kind of Gulag anymore. The country inherited huge number of concentration camps or different detention centres, which was much larger than the number of prisoners, detainees held there. Besides one of the most important functions of Gulag has disappeared and it was a production of weapons of war, the war industry. That is why the state actually stopped looking at the penal system as attentively, as closely, as it used to. So because the number of political prisoners, also just political opponents who were held in prison also decreased, there was obviously much fewer prisoners there altogether. Today, the majority of prisoners are rather ignorant, rather ill-educated people who do not have any proper qualification in work or education. Well, basically ignorant in the direct sense of the word. Some of these people are just illiterate – they do not know how to read or write. That seems very bizarre but that is how it is. A small group of 650,000 prisoners now held within the Russian penal service are political prisoners and Tatyana adds – business people. But the business people are there for political reasons. Yes, I just wanted to say “Khodorkovsky”. Because the state does not really pay close attention to the prisons because as such, as this huge institution it does not need it unlike it was in the Soviet years. So the state does not even control the system very seriously. So basically what it resulted in it allowed the people working for the penal service to do whatever they like and survive by their own means. A very similar situation is with the Russian police, especially with traffic police. The main bribe takers in the country are of course, traffic policemen. So basically, the state allowed the penal service to treat prisoners in whatever way they like and they seem to bare no responsibility whatsoever for what they do to the prisoners. Because in these last 30 years the doors to Western civilisation have slightly opened for the citizens of Russia and people started getting access to all the fruit of civilization, to the goods that you use here in the West, the most important thing now is money. It was not like that in the Soviet years. The penal system has as one of its main aims extortion of money of the people who happened to be imprisoned. It became clear that prisoners or rather their families because prisoners being inside cannot give you very much but their families can, one can collect huge amounts of money. I can just give you an example. In a penal colony where there are 1500 prisoners one can collect within a month million or million and a half of American dollars.
Chris Bryant MP
Is this in exchange for benefits or food for the prisoner?
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
That is what I am going to talk about. When someone gets arrested and gets into the penal service completely unbearable conditions are created for him there. He is beaten, he is tortured. There are some very severe, very cruel ways of torture used in today’s Russia and some of them are basically the same as were used in the Middle Ages. They are basically the same tools, the same instruments that are used for torture. This does not mean that he immediately starts being tortured. When he first comes to the prison (we are mostly talking about male prisoners because they are the majority), first of all a prisoner is asked or is demanded to pay – that is the first demand. People who refuse to pay are immediately subjected to humiliation, to torture, to all sorts of, basically to get money from them, to extort the money. People are told that they have to pay for things in prison which normally of course according to the law should be free. Basically, for the fact that you are in prison or in a colony for a month, for example, you have to pay the people who are guarding you there. Generally, according to the law, a prisoner is allowed a visit from a member of his family. But in today’s prison or a colony, you have to pay for that as well. If a parcel arrives for a prisoner, the governor or the people guarding them are demanding payment. This money which is collected from the families of the prisoners is collected in a regional centre. Naturally, something out of this collected money is given to the prison governor or to the administration. Something remains with the regional authorities. But the main bulk of this collected money goes virtually in suitcases (because it is cash of course) to Moscow. And then you can see this money with your own eyes because here in London many Russian people have bought their mansions with the money that partially had been collected in this way. Also, investigators, prosecutors and judges receive a bonus to their relatively moderate salaries from this money. The investigators, the judges who are supposed to be in control of sticking to the rules in prison, they receive the money for them to turn a blind eye to any breaches of the laws or rules. Judges and prosecutors get some additional money from other sources as well. Russian law actually allows people to leave the penal service, the colony or prison, before their term expires. It is the early release policy. The decision about the early release is taken by courts. And these decisions are simply bought. Different courts have different rates. For example, if you know you still have to be in prison for two and a half years you take this rate and you multiply it by 30 months for example.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
Now it is time we said and maybe it is quite legitimate for you to ask how do we know about it. Why do we speak so confidently about it? The thing is, that in 2008, in Russia a remarkably progressive law was passed that allowed, it was passed thanks to absolutely heroic efforts of human rights activists – the law which ensured that the human rights in the penal service, the observants of human rights should be controlled by the public. And in every subject of the Federation as they are called, and in every region, the created the so-called public oversight commissions the aim of which was to watch how human rights in the penal service are observed. These public oversight commissions consisted of the ordinary citizens but human rights activists who immediately understood how valuable this law is, tried very hard to get into these commissions and worked there very actively. There were lots of human rights activists in these commissions. And thanks to this law, Nikolay and myself worked in one of those commissions for 6 years.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
The main thing about this law was that it entitled the members of these commissions to go without any obstacles into any penitentiary institution to talk tete-a-tete without any witnesses to prisoners and to get from them complaints about what was happening to them in prisons without ignoring the censorship of the prisons.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
Moreover, the evidences that we collected and the documents that we compiled were treated as a very serious evidence up to the level of the European court in Strasbourg. Many human rights activists did that but I am just now talking about what Nikolay and myself did. We made a report about labour in camps, which we call slave labour. We also monitored torture and we also wrote a report which was published on our website and it already has been translated into English. It is available in English. And we generally analyse the whole system, the whole penal system and Nikolay has written about that. And then the very last thing and then you will be able to ask questions.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
The reports that Tatyana has mentioned were published completely legally even with the help of the Presidential grant. But the last work that I have written I had to publish like samizdat, like self-publishing and completely illegally. There are no publishing details or [inaudible] number or anything on the book and I had to take it out of the country. We just brought this book here to Britain.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
By 2016, the Russian authorities finally realized how dangerous it is for them to have these public oversight commissions. Because if you start with public oversight commissions or observing what is going on in prisons you can then have commissions trying to watch what is happening in other areas of the state. And people started already to try and do something like this public control over other areas. So by 2016, the state authorities realized that they do not want any more to put up with it and they haven’t closed the commissions – they made something more inventive. The law about public oversight commission still exists. But by all sorts of illegal means the state ensured that there are no longer human rights activists within them. And if today we have about 10 human rights activists for the whole of Russia as members of these commissions that is already something. Probably there are less. Within these 6 years we were working there we managed first of all to investigate and to study the system very well and also to win trust of prisoners and their relatives and that helps us to try and control of what is going on there – only not by legal means anymore and not openly. But we still can try to watch and observe what is going on.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
Because we are no longer official members of these commissions we are now concentrating our attention on something else. We are now working on looking after political prisoners, mostly Ukrainian political prisoners. There are about 60 Ukrainian political prisoners in Russian penal service and the most famous of them are Oleh Sintsov, Olexandr Kolchenko, people arrested in Crimea and it is their release that we are trying to achieve now.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
The increase of the number of political prisoners in Russia is unfortunately again a very bitter reality for our country.
Chris Bryant MP
OK, thanks very much. I am sure there may be questions that people have. It would be helpful if you probably said who you were.
Question 1
Yes, my name is Bob Dobson. I lived and worked in Moscow in 1991 to 1994 when the Soviet Union collapsed. At that time, there was a great deal of optimism and people were very excited. My question really is – can you tell us what is the level of understanding amongst the Russian population about human rights? Is it a major issue? Did it feature in the election? Or is this something which people say bivaet (things happen).
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
Unfortunately, the country that you saw between 1991 and 1994 and the country we see today – these are two different countries. You were in Russia when the country was approaching its membership in the Council of Europe. Now we have a huge propaganda campaign with the aim of leaving the Council of Europe. This is a huge agitation and propaganda. Then you could hear this word “human rights” very often and now many state borders including the Constitutional Court of Russia are against the concept of human rights all together. And a huge work against the idea of human rights and the popularisation of the concept in society is being done by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Chris Bryant MP
Why the Russian Orthodox Church? Is it just corrupt?
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
Because the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the state institutions. It is headed by the KGB General and it is completely under the control of the state. And some rare priests who have conscience of their own who could try to protest against the hierarchy, against the top echelons of the Russian Orthodox Church like Alexander Myen in the 1990-s or Pavel Adelheim quite recently, are simply destroyed, killed, eliminated. You cannot compare the Russian Orthodox Church and say, the Church of England.
Chris Bryant MP
No, but the former archbishop of Canterbury went to Moscow to receive an award from the Russian Orthodox Church for his work on human rights. This is Rowan Williams who is a good man but I was very angry about it at the time.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
That is Putin’s victory.
Chris Bryant MP
Da. And FIFA.
Question 2
This is a big question but I will say it briefly. You describe the state that seems to be at the same time all powerful and yet it is giving up power in the prisons and police system and allowing corruption to take place. So it seems to me that there are two powers. You have got the state and it is becoming more powerful and [inaudible]. What is it?
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
Maybe I did not make myself clear enough. I did not mean that the state has completely abandoned prison. It just gave them Carte Blanche. It gave them free will and free action. The state assured the penal service that nobody would bear any responsibility for torture or for extortion out of the people working in the penal service. The state has lost interest in the penal system as far as economy is concerned.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
People working within the penal system can be punished for corruption, for stealing from the state but not for torture or extortion of money from the prisoners.
Chris Bryant MP
Or the murdering overseas.
Question 2 continues
Can I say that the part of the problem [inaudible] is that there seems to be a further breakdown of the rule of law.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
Yes, of course.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
Penal service, any prison or any penal colony or a pre-trial detention centres in Russia, the prisoners say these establishments and these institutions are the places where there is no law.
Question 3
[inaudible] In relation to the Football World Cup in Russia, what can Brits face if they end up running into trouble [inaudible] and equally what is your advice to Brits [inaudible]?
Chris Bryant MP
What can they face?
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
To stay at home. Not because they will be threatened there. Maybe it is not so decent to go to the country where such awful things are happening just to go as football fans.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
I would give a completely opposite advice – the more people would go the better. For two reasons. Nothing will be threatening them, nobody will imprison them, nothing of the kind should be considered. Putin’s regime would not want to ruin its image and it would want to make this World Cup as glamorous as Sochi Olympics. The second reason why huge numbers of fans should go – you should win the Games. When was it last time when you Brits won it? You are the motherland of football.
Chris Bryant MP
So I am Welsh. We are boycotting the World Cup. Not deliberately. Along with the Scots. My fear is I am quite often when drinks get involved, sometimes emotions get very high and things happen. And I would be worried about the British fans ending up in the Russian prison. Not because Putin intends this to happen. I agree that he wants this to be as an advert of how wonderful Russia is, not an advert of how terrible Russian prisons are. But nonetheless it might happen.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
I think Russian detention centres would be different for British or any Western fans who happen to end up there, they would be very different from those where Russian anarchists end up.
Chris Bryant MP
There is another point too which is – everything we have heard about corruption in the criminal justice system in Russia also applies to the economy in Russia, to running a bar in Russia, to being a traffic policeman in Russia, and to securing the World Cup for FIFA. The corruption runs at every single stage and actually Russia is one of the best educated countries in the world but it has a brain drain going on with intelligent people wanting to live elsewhere because they don’t like having to live their life in the corrupt environment and corruption has gotten worse in the last 5-8 years in Russia. They should reverse that, cut the corruption and try to keep the brains in Russia. Because otherwise, they will still only have 1.2% economic growth which is stagnation which leaves the ordinary Russian people poor and unable to prosper. Can I ask you about the question though? The law that was passed that allowed you to do legal inspections of prisons was at a particular moment in Russian politics. Today is obviously more difficult politically. Why has there been a change? Was that because of Medvedev being prime minister for a moment and then (going to) being a president rather than going back to prime minister or if you are a president and you keep on going for too many years you just get more and more authoritarian and corrupt?
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
I will tell you very briefly how the law was passed, about this public oversight commission. For 10 years before that this law had not been adopted. There was a diplomat called Lukin, the Ombudsman for human rights, and he suddenly joined the campaign to adopt this law. And he agreed to the main demand of the ministry of finance or treasury of the Russian Federation to remove from the law everything that was related to financing of these commissions. The state miscalculated – they thought if we were not going to pay them nobody will come to work. Who would work for free, the state thought? The thing is, it is not that human rights activists are not after money or all that. The main funds that there are they are spent not on people and their salaries. Our country is huge and the distances between the points where people should go to control and to observe are many times bigger than England. The most important thing is to have money for transport to move from point A to point B. The authorities thought – if we do not finance it nobody would go and control anything. They were not worried about it and it is not because it was Medvedev. Neither Medvedev nor Putin were really interested in this. There was not much difference between them. But basically, these human rights activists who got this right to get into prisons to talk to prisoners, to bring out documents, there was a huge upheaval in the system. And these people from these public oversight commissions became very dangerous individuals for the power because they became civil individuals. 8 years later they suddenly stopped it.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
I want to come back to the World Cup in a much more serious mode. Maybe because we are coming to an end, maybe you will have more questions. I think that now we are witnessing a really tragic development within the Russian penal system. Maybe it is one of the most tragically serious developments in Russia since Perestroyka. We have talked about the political prisoners and we have already mentioned the name of Oleh Sintsov, the Crimean activist who was taken away from Crimea, who was tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison on completely trumped up charges. He was charged with heading a group of terrorists. At the moment, he is at a very far north, in Yamal. Oleh is affiliate director and lots of intelligentsia both in Russia and in the West try to interfere and to ensure his release. 4 years have passed since his arrest and absolutely nothing changed about his faith or his friends.
Chris Bryant MP
We are going to have to end in a few minutes. I am conscious that there may be some more questions. I have got to go and chair something in 4 minutes, so there is a lady there, if you could be quite quick.
Tatyana Shchur (Masha Karp translating)
The very last sentence. Sintsov has now gone on a hunger strike till death unless all the Ukrainian prisoners are released. He said “If I die before the beginning of the World Cup maybe it will help to release my friends”.
Chris Bryant MP
That is very sobering.
Question 4
Very briefly. Well, I don’t know your opinion but I feel that the West is rather, well, we give sanctions and are very cold towards Russia. We are always trying to put them in order, and I just wonder whether if we had a less aggressive approach or willing to maybe lift sanctions and have a dialogue with them – Boris Johnson did not even go to Russia because of particular political reason – and I was also hoping that Donald Trump might have more dialogue with Russia because [inaudible] that is obviously not happening. What is your feeling on what the West could do to [inaudible]?
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
I think you are wrong. Just remember negotiations with Hitler – they also were trying to appease him.
Chris Bryant MP
Well, that was a good shot. I was trying to avoid the Hitler word because it did not go so well for Ken Livingstone, did it?
Question 5
Sorry, I am just interested in what are Russia’s attitude to collaboration with foreign law enforcement would be? What could we expect from Russia in the event where we do have to collaborate with them on an international crime basis?
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
Sorry, could you be a bit clearer. When you are saying foreign law enforcement can you give an example? What are you talking about?
Chris Bryant MP
So, it is the British police dealing or the European police dealing with Russian police about the international criminal incident. Like in Salisbury for example.
Nikolay Schchur (Masha Karp translating)
It is very important to distinguish between two notions: Russian authorities – people who are in power in Russia – and Russian people. Russian people are mostly open to any cooperation with the West and would be ready cooperate on any level in any area. The Russian authorities is something completely different. They are only interested in their profit.
Chris Bryant MP
I am really sorry that I have to bring this to a close but I am meant to be chairing something somewhere else in minus one minute. I think everybody in this room is struck by what you said today. Obviously we have read a lot of things over the last few years and especially this year about the situation in Russia and the complicated relations between Russia and the United States of America and the UK. But to use the very old word – I feel solidarity with you, solidarnost, and I cannot imagine the life that people have to lead of courage and personal self-sacrifice to be able to do the kind of work that you do. So on behalf of everybody here I would like to give you an enormous thank you.