Prisons protect from human rights defenders – Newspaper Kommersant No. 58 (7503) of 04/05/2023

Members of public monitoring commissions (POCs) will be able to visit prisoners in the pre-trial detention center only 48 hours after they have been notified. This follows from the new procedure for visiting “places of detention”, the draft of which was published by the Federal Penitentiary Service. 50 members of the PMC opposed the change in visitation, saying it would stop their work to protect the rights of prisoners. Instead of immediately checking reports of torture and other violations in the pre-trial detention center, human rights activists will have to write requests, while in 48 hours everything can be “touched up and cleaned up” by moving the prisoner to another place, experts say. On Tuesday evening, the PMC of Moscow reported that they had received “feedback” from the Federal Penitentiary Service and expected that the document would not be adopted in its current form.

The draft order of the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service Arkady Gostev on the new procedure for visiting the pre-trial detention center and other “places of detention” by members of the PMC is published on regulation.gov.ru. The document states that the members of the commissions must inform the territorial body of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia “no later than 48 hours before the day of the visit” about the planned visit to the pre-trial detention center. The explanatory note states that the new procedure is needed “in order to organize the personal security of members of the PMC” and “to establish the existence of circumstances that prevent members of the PMC from visiting places of detention.” What these circumstances may be is not specified in the explanatory note. It should be noted that now members of the commissions can visit the pre-trial detention center without an appointment and are required to notify the Federal Penitentiary Service of their visit after the fact. The draft order also proposes to exclude information about PMC members from information stands in isolation wards.

The publication of this document caused a demarche of a number of official human rights activists. Georgy Volkov, head of the Moscow PMC, said that more than 50 members of regional commissions opposed the new order, and some of them expressed their desire to publicly resign if approved (discussion on the regulation.gov.ru portal ends on April 5).

“If such restrictions are adopted, the activities of the commissions will be imitation. Public control throughout Russia will be virtually stopped,” Mr. Volkov explained.

Member of the PMC of Moscow Alexander Maltsev suggested that the initiative of the Federal Penitentiary Service goes beyond the federal law “On Public Control”. Georgy Volkov considered the adoption of the draft order “the beginning of the end of the institute, which took 15 years to build.”

Alexander Maltsev stressed that now human rights activists can immediately come with a check on an urgent appeal, for example, about torture. “It often happens with us that complaints are received – urgently help, save, an hour ago they used unreasonable force against such and such a person. We leave, we notify the Federal Penitentiary Service according to the law, ”the executive secretary of the Moscow PMC, Alexei Melnikov, described to Kommersant the current procedure. At the same time, he stressed that often information about violations during such inspections is not confirmed, calling the 48-hour limit “harmful to the FSIN itself.” “I don’t understand why the Federal Penitentiary Service does this, it’s not profitable for them,” he added.

A member of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Eva Merkacheva, called the draft order “madness that paralyzes the entire work of the PMC”: “Suppose we receive an appeal that someone is being killed in such and such a pre-trial detention center or someone is dying there. It turns out that instead of sorting it out on the spot, bringing the prosecutor or contacting the doctors, members of the POC should write requests. And come in 48 hours, when a person is killed or he himself dies of the disease.

“In 48 hours, the staff of the detention center will even have the opportunity to take out of the pre-trial detention center a person who may have been tortured,” Alexander Maltsev said.

“There will be employees who want to hide the suspect from us. 48 hours is more than enough time to hide shortcomings from us,” Alexey Melnikov also believes. “In 48 hours, everything will be touched up, cleaned up, corrected and everything will be done as it should. This reduces the work of the PMC members to formalism, there will be no sense in it,” said Eva Merkacheva.

Georgy Volkov, head of the PMC of Moscow, made it clear that human rights activists were not invited to discuss the draft order. Alexey Melnikov also said the same. However, by the evening he told Kommersant that he had “received feedback” and that the Federal Penitentiary Service was ready to discuss the normative act with members of the POC: “There was hope that the order would not be adopted in this form.”

Alexander Voronov