Statement by the YABLOKO party, 20.10.2015

The bill broadening the possibilities of the Federal Penitentiary Service officers to use physical force, impact munition and firearms against prisoners, which the State Duma is planning to pass in the first reading, is nothing but the revival of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs methods in the Russian system of execution of punishment.

According to the law norms, the number of grounds for using violence against prisoners will double. The use of impact munition (batons, stun guns) is allowed to restrain any сustody violations. So, an incorrectly made bed or not greeting a warder will become the sufficient grounds for using violence. This is nothing but sadism sending us back to the Stalin’s methods of treatment the prisoners which revives the GULAG system elements. The introduction of additional grounds for using force in our system of execution of punishment, which can hardly be called humane as it is, actually means the revival of the totalitarian system in places of confinement.

In a modern state prisoners cannot be an object of sadistic violence and mockery.
We call the deputies to stop and remember the folk wisdom that no one, especially in our country, is safe from poverty or prison and in the history of Russia the anti-human policy more than once turned against those who formed and supported it.
We call the deputies of all factions to reject the disgraceful bill and relegate it to the dustbin of history.

Sergei Mitrokhin,
YABLOKO Chairman

See also:
Human rights defenders conducted picketing against “sadists’ law”