Human rights project Gulagu.net releases more footage of torture in Russian prisons

Activists from Gulagu.net (No to the Gulag) have obtained and released new footage further evidencing the torture and abuse of inmates in Russian prisons. 

On Monday, December 20, the human rights group published a new video on YouTube that allegedly shows incidents of torture in a prison colony in Krasnoyarsk. Gulagu.net activists said that this “footage is from a new component of the secret FSB/FSIN video archive.”

One incident appears to show a Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officer giving instructions to a group of inmates in a quarantine unit, after which a man is brought in and the inmates beat him up. Gulagu.net founder Vladimir Osechkin underscored that these incidents of torture are taking place under the control of prison staff, who monitor what happens using video recordings.

Other footage shows an incident where, according to Osechkin, an inmate was deliberately thrown out of a window. The recording is dated July 27, 2020. The inmate in question died two days later.

Earlier this month, Osechkin reported that Gulagu.net had obtained a new, 200-gigabyte video archive evidencing prison torture in Krasnoyarsk, Zabaykalsky Krai, and Primorye. “This publication is less than one percent of what we have,” Gulagu.net emphasized on Monday.

In early October, Gulagu.net published three video clips leaked by a whistleblower that evidenced the torture and rape of inmates at the penitentiary service’s Tuberculosis Hospital No. 1 in Russia’s Saratov region.

Following the video leak, the hospital’s leadership was fired, along with 18 employees of the local penitentiary service department. Investigators opened several criminal cases on charges of sexual assault and abuse of power. Later, in November, President Vladimir Putin fired Federal Penitentiary Service Director Alexander Kalashnikov, appointing Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Gostev as his replacement. 

Also on Monday, a bill was submitted to the Russian State Duma that would reclassify tortured committed by officials as an “especially grave crime” and make it punishable by up to 12 years in prison.