Over the period of December 10-14, 2004 hundreds of people were subject to assault and torture. Residents of the small Bashkirian town Blagoveschensk and its surroundings, were taken from the streets, bars, discos and even their homes without any explanations and brought to the local police station. The police used their night-sticks and severely beat those who asked questions. After several hours in the police station, a lot of the fearful people were brought to the hospital. (29-MAR-05)
The main target of the assault was teenagers and people under the age of 40. It was called “police raids” because the members of OMON (police riot squad) swooped down on the people and began to beat them with their legs, night-sticks and used tear gas without any explanations. The policemen let the women and girls go but the men were hammered into a bus; four men sitting in one seat. Those who didn’t have a place were forced to lie on the floor with police walking on them and continually beating everybody. The men who lost consciousness weren’t freed. In the Blagovecshensk police station, citizens were made to turn and face the wall, hands behind their heads with their legs spread. They were obliged to stay in this position for several hours. Anyone who tried to alleviate the pain in their mussels by changing position or, who fell on the floor, were beaten by police and forced to scream: “I love our police!”
Following the beatings, members of OMON made those who had been taken by police sign papers blaming themselves for public disturbance. Any person who didn’t agree to sign the paper was put in jail where members of OMON began to beat them until they agreed to sign the paper. A lot of people were taken to the hospital with severely damaged kidneys, impaled bladders or with a concussion. Some of these people are now permanently crippled.
After these four days the police began intimidating the Blagovecsensk citizens, forcing them to take back complaints they had earlier filed with the local prosecutor. But the cover up didn’t work and the story became known. Local journalists, in this situation, brought out the same hackneyed story they always use – all of this comes after several policemen were beaten by a few inhabitants. The chief of the local police passed off the facts of mass assault and torture as an operation to tighten up discipline.
The true account won’t be possible if human rights organizations don’t interfere. Moscow Helsinki Group (Ludmila Alekseeva), Committee against Torture (Nizhni Novgorod), Human Rights Center of Kazan, Fund “Public Verdict”, Fund “International Standards”, united to carry out their own investigation. All of the present facts come from these groups. Ludmila Alekseeva stated the mass beatings of Blagovecshensk-city inhabitants by a police riot squad, a terrible crime. She, along with these human rights organizations, instituted a criminal investigation against Bashkiria’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Rafael Divaev, Regional Director, Mr. Anatoliy Nuretdinov and the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Russian Federation, Mr. Anatoly Smirnov. Under pressure, some deputies in the Ministry of Internal Affairs were fired. The commissioner for human rights, Russian Federation, Mr. Vladimir Lukin, in his report to Vladimir Putin, said that officials in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Republic of Bashkiria were protecting each other. As a result these officials need to be fired.
On the 23rd of March, the Bashkirian Supreme Court ruled the actions of the police illegal and instituted criminal charges against them, including the chief of the OMON unit and Ildar Ramazanov, chief of the Department for Regional Cities, Internal Affairs.
On Sunday morning 27 March, more than 10.000 inhabitans of Blagoveschensk and Ufa (capital of Republic Bashkiria) came to the central town-square demanding the retirement of Mr. Rakhimov, the President of Bashkiria and compensation for emotional and physical damage. Russian human rights defenders support those demands and insist on punishment of all officials, quietly in the arbitrariness.
