Report from Nizhny Novgorod

The All-Russia Conference "Prevention of Tortures in Russia"
On October 24, 2003 the all-Russia conference "Prevention of Tortures in Russia" started its work in the meeting hall of the central administrative interior affairs board of Nizhny Novgorod region. The conference is organized by Nizhny Novgorod Committee against Torture with the support of the International Helsinki Federation. Representatives of the law-enforcement structures, non-governmental organizations and mass media from different regions of the Russian Federation are participating in the work of the conference. The conference was opened by the chairperson of Nizhny Novgorod Committee against Torture Igor Kalyapin. He emphasized the necessity of cooperation between the structures of power and human rights organizations to achieve positive changes in the field of human rights protection in his speech. The deputy of the chief of the Migration Service at the Interior Affairs Ministry of the Russian Federation, the deputy of the chief of the central administrative board!
of sentences serving at the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, the deputy chief of the central administrative interior affairs board of Nizhny Novgorod region, the chief of the Security System at the Interior Affairs Ministry in the Volga Federal District.

The following issues are tackled at the conference:
-Lawmaking and other problems connected with torturing in Russia
-The experience of the Russian non-governmental organizations in the area of torture prevention
-The ???? of international organizations in the area of torture prevention.
All the speakers, both representatives of human rights organizations and law-enforcement structures, shared the opinion that prevention of tortures is the task of the primary importance as it is the base to reestablish confidence of citizens of the Russian Federation to law-enforcemnet structures.
Yury Zaikin, the chief of the Security System at the Interior Affairs Ministry in the Volga Federal District, told in his speech, "We have been cooperating with Nizhny Novgorod Committee against Torture for two years and we consider our joint efforts very effective. As for the per cent of victims, no matter what it is, it is necessary to tell about it".

Representatives of the Chechen non-governmental organizations, that Nizhny Novgorod Committee against Torture cooperates with, also attend at the conference. Nizhny Novgorod Committee against Torture is planning to set up the network consisting of seven organizations in different regions of the Russian Federation by 2005. One of these regions is the Chechen Republic. Mansur Taguirov, the ex-chairman of the Independent Investigatory Committee of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, will coordinate this work in the Chechen Republic. He told in his speech that one of the reasons of the fact that representatives of law-enforcement structures torture people is the lack of the independent investigatory structure. Natalya Estemirova, a representative of Grozny office of the human rights center "The Memorial", told that the problem of tortures had taken on the most sinister forms. This "phenomenon" is explained by the fact that representatives of the force structures of the Russian Fed!
eration attached to Chechnya have a task to accomplish - "to find terrorists" among civil people. But they don't carry out thorough investigations but prefer making people confess by beating. Tortures can be not only physical but psychological as well. They are connected with threatening relatives of missing people. According to Natalya Estemirova, such treatment results in both increasing the number of terrorists and spreading this dangerous tendency to other regions of the Russian Federation.

The Round Table "The Cooperation of Structures of Power and Social Organizations in Prevention of Tortures" will be held in the framework of the conference.

(From our correspondent).
Editor-in-chief Stanislav Dmitriyevsky.
Editor of the current issue Oksana Chelysheva.
This edition has been put out with the support of The National Endowment for
Democracy, as part of their "Russian-Chechen Information Partnership"

_____________________________________________
mailto:friend@sinn.ru
http://friendly.narod.ru/
http://www.uic.nnov.ru/hrnnov/rus/friend/