BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT RUSSIA

The Russian Federation is in transition. Dramatic political and economic changes have profoundly affected the country's 144 million people.

The human rights landscape has been transformed since the 1970s. Nevertheless, serious human rights violations remain widespread.

Throughout the Russian Federation, the torture or ill-treatment of women, men and children in custody is virtually routine. Conditions in the country's pre-trial detention centres are generally so extreme that they amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The conflict in Chechnya has been characterized by widespread and credible reports of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by Russian forces, including arbitrary arrests, torture, "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions. Chechen forces have also reportedly committed breaches of international humanitarian law, including the targeting of civilians and the execution of captured soldiers.

Those responsible for human rights abuses are rarely held to account for their crimes, and the victims are frequently denied redress.

Amnesty International is launching a major worldwide campaign to highlight the reality of widespread human rights abuses committed in a climate of impunity. It aims to put pressure on the Russian government to live up to its international obligations to protect and promote human rights so that there is justice for everybody.

CHILDREN’S RIGHTS ABUSED

Children detained and abused

‘When you go to the procuracy, say to them that you took your child home, that he fell there and broke his vertebrae’.

Advice reportedly given to the mother of Sergei Kalinin by the police-appointed lawyer

Sixteen-year-old Sergei Kalinin (pseudonym) was arrested in the Fili-Davidkovo district of Moscow on 14 September 2000 after he allegedly stole a car to go "joy-riding".

The law states that the procurator and parents should be promptly informed when a child is arrested. Yet Sergei Kalinin was detained for 24 hours at the local police station, without the procurator or his parents being informed. During that time he was reportedly tortured.

Sergei Kalinin says that police officers beat him on his back and head, and banged his head against a wall, apparently to make him confess to stealing other cars. After his release, a medical centre found that he had compressed fractures of the vertebrae.

On 28 May 2001 the Kuntsevskii municipal court found Sergei Kalinin guilty of theft and sentenced him to three years' imprisonment in a prison colony for juveniles. He was released on a suspended sentence after an appeal before Moscow City Court on 17 July 2001.

Even though Sergei Kalinin told the court and the procuracy that he had been tortured by police, no criminal investigation has been opened into his allegations.

According to his mother, Sergei Kalinin is still in pain as a result of the torture he suffered.

CHILDREN are entitled under international standards to special protection, including against torture and ill-treatment, because their youth makes them particularly vulnerable to abuse. Yet children who are detained by Russian police are denied this special protection. For example, in cases known to Amnesty International children have been denied one of the most basic protections – having a lawyer and an adult relative present during questioning – which serves as a safeguard against torture and ill-treatment. Amnesty International has documented cases of children who have been tortured or ill-treated by police in such circumstances.

Such cases are particularly disturbing given the vast numbers of children who are arrested and interrogated by police every year.

Tens of thousands of children are being deprived of their liberty in Russia, even though the authorities are obliged, under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to ensure that the "arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child... shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time". Children are routinely held for months or even years in pre-trial detention and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for relatively minor offences. In mid-2001 there were more than 17,000 children serving prison sentences in 64 special colonies for juveniles, according to the Justice Ministry. Many more were held in pre-trial detention centres, where conditions are generally so appalling that they amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

In pre-trial detention centres or prisons, children are vulnerable to abuse by both guards and other inmates. Again, the authorities appear to do little to protect children in prison from abuse – allegations of torture and ill-treatment made by children rarely lead to investigations, let alone prosecutions.

A radical rethinking of the juvenile justice system is needed to restore the presumption of liberty for children and to protect them from torture and ill-treatment in custody.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

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