The penal colonies today, in Putin's Russia, are still the remains of the persistent claims Soviet Gulag, as the terrible conditions of detention and repression are similar to those of the Communist totalitarian regime: Lenin to Gorbachev.
There are still nowadays 758 active colonies in Russia including 735 000 prisoners, some of which are subject to extremely hard forced labor.
The network of settlements is supplemented by 389 prisons still contain 147,000 people. And that's not all! For there are also 62 "educational colonies" for minors, incorporating 7500 à 8000 adolescents.
As in the days of the Soviet Union, are locked into these prisons and penal colonies, not only common criminals but also "undesirable". These "undesirable" that were once considered by the Soviet regime, such as: "political", "class enemies," the "enemies of the people", the "cons-revolutionary", of "socially dangerous elements", etc. are now primarily (more activists of human rights and radical political movements), grouped under two broad distinct categories, as we just described Galia Ackerman (pages 8 and 9):
"The first group are the victims of raids: this is how we designate the operation that is to extort a company to its owner, with the complicity of police officers, prosecutors and tax authorities, as well as corrupt judges. If the victim is "consenting" will be paid a fraction of the real price of the deal but will not go to prison. If it is not and trying to fight a criminal conviction is a sure way to get rid of permanently. By some estimates, nearly a third of convicted of economic crimes are innocent of the crimes imputed to them. This would involve some 90 000 people!
The second group consists of "Islamists" is isolated most often preventively pretext that they would be "potential terrorists." Currently, between 20,000 and 40,000 Chechens are held in Russia's prisons and colonies. There are among them independence fighters, and also people who have never fought but the "Profile": one of their relatives had been killed, which is a suspected revenge reason: they attend a mosque called "Wahhabi"; they suspect knowledge, etc. Of course, it should be added to this figure with thousands of other Muslims, Tatars and Bashkirs, Dagestan and Ingushetia, which attracted the attention of the FSB and were often convicted on the basis of fabricated charges.
In the colonies, it is the latter group, the "terrorists", who suffers the most: the detainees are regularly sent to the dungeon, beaten, humiliated, deprived of their most basic rights. And they often receive from twenty to twenty-five years of camp, although the only evidence of their guilt is their own confession obtained under torture. "
Following a nefarious plot, Zara Mourtazalieva is arrested on 4 March 2004 under Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code for terrorism.
It is then that hell for Zara Mourtazalieva. She is taken to a police station and undergoes a full body search. She questioned, humiliated, insulted and abused by beatings. Moreover, as in the Soviet tradition, especially during periods of dreadful "Moscow Trials" in 1936 and the "Great Terror" in 1937-1938, the police are trying to get him to sign false confessions. But Zara Mourtazalieva knowing if totally innocent of these false charges made against him, refused to sign them.
The descent into hell is still accelerating, and she finds herself imprisoned arbitrarily in prison ...
In prison, Zara Mourtazalieva should be wary of some inmates because she discovers that many of them are charged, by the administration, conduct of informers. It is then, and repeatedly tortured, mainly during beatings.
But this is only the beginning of a long ordeal that lasted more than eight years in the camps of Russian penal colonies.
Indeed, Zara Mourtazalieva describes precisely and in great detail examples and the incredible hardness of life in the camps, and vegetating almost in a state of permanent survival. For in prisons and camps, it is the reign of the total dehumanization.
Disgusted suffering, she and her co-prisoners, those terrible prison conditions, and addressing his persecutors, Zara Mourtazalieva gives us so deep thought (pages 149 and 150):
"You who are intelligent and cultured people, you remember us? You who have stalked us to send in the camps, those places where prisoners are beaten, raped, broken, killed. You who have expelled us of society. You who have worked to develop theories on crime and to harden a particular sentence. You who shake the issue of the death penalty that many of you would have liked to apply ourselves. Do it enough you to have us thrown into darkness? Do not it enough that we have forgotten the difference between white and black, between good and evil? Do you need even our blood? "
"All of you, judges, prosecutors, witnesses, controllers, prison directors, which you keep quiet you when Stalin condemned to death in prison and millions of people! Today, history repeats itself and always obey the orders of power, in the same silence. Know that the camps are born of the same society in which you live. You beget them, then we'll push you in disgust. Indeed, we claim not be smart, beautiful, rich and happy. We About the flip side, a dark side that is not nice to see and do not deserve your attention. We are as destitute as beggars on the square. We express the essence of contemporary society, even . if you pouffez contemptuously when you say we talk to you whether you have adjusted our pain, but try to live here - nothing that a week -. and you will change your opinion Here, the masks are thrown low and the king is naked. "
My mind is bubbling. But better be indignant that fall into indifference. "
As in the days of the Gulag, forced labor is still relevant in penal colonies of Russia; especially in countries qu'inhospitalières also superb, and temperatures easily down to -40 ° in winter. This is the case of the camp of Mordovia, in which Zara Mourtazalieva spent most of his detention. Dressed (like other inmates), only old clothes and shoes insufficiently hot, the cold makes it even more painful labor, causing frostbite, blisters, etc ..
As yet the Gulag, prisoners (men and women) productivity quotas to achieve.
We also find the same type of procedures, terminologies, sanctions and physical and psychological sévisses that existed at the time of the Gulag. For example, there still unbearable torture "settler" of enclosing during endless hours after being beaten, the zek (prisoners) in a kind of small cages where it is cold too and out. Some or some prisoners do not survive the infamous shock treatment!
Even the notorious "Stolypin wagons" who served under the Soviet era to deport mass of prisoners and even entire populations, in appalling conditions towards the Gulag concentration camps are still operating in Russia.
CONCLUSION:
It seems that even today, in the XXI century, there are only few differences between prisons and penal colonies Russians and former Soviet Gulag. This is actually a continuity between the prison system and prison Gulag concentration camps and prisons and camps of the current penal colonies. This is what clearly demonstrates that moving testimony of Zara Mourtazalieva.
Just over twenty years after the collapse of the totalitarian Communist era Soviet (USSR) in 1991, this latest testimony Zara Mourtazalieva shows that repressive methods have hardly changed since that horrible and interminable ( 74 years) period, Russia ...
The arbitrary imprisonment of Zara Mourtazalieva by the "Justice" Russian, spoiled him the best years of his youth. Yet one feels that, despite its terrible course, she wanted and kept its humanity, with just more, his terrible life experience.
This lesson in courage therefore adds to many others and inspiring testimonies and stories, like those of: S. Eugenia Ginzburg, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Barbara Skarga, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov, Jacques Rossi, Aron Gabor, Lev Razgon, Gustaw Herling, Joseph Czapski, and many others, on the monstrosity of the Gulag yesterday but ... today!
