HRC "Memorial": natives from Northern Caucasus are punished for no reason in penal colonies

Recently, human rights defenders have been receiving a lot of calls from relatives of inmates, who are serving their terms. Most of them complain that natives of North-Caucasian republics are punished for no reason and almost all of them are kept either in the stringent custody conditions (SCC) or in cell-type rooms (CTR). This is stated in the message of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial", received by the "Caucasian Knot".

Mainly the calls arrive from relatives of those convicted for participation in this or that armed conflict. According to them, inmates are restricted in their rights - to correspondence and visits of relatives. There are complaints of physical violence applied by administration officials; in some colonies security agents are torturing and beating inmates.

The HRC "Memorial" notes that typically, when some terror act happens in the country or some other serious incident, the position of prisoners - natives of the North-Caucasian republics in the colonies - aggravates. As an example, the fact is presented that after the explosions in Moscow metro on March 29, 2010, in almost all the colonies Caucasians were placed into SCC and CTR facilities.

The situation in penal colonies of the Chechen Republic is just slightly better than in Russia as a whole, but violations are recorded here either, the HRC "Memorial" reports. When in August 2010 the inmates of the Chernokozovo minimum security colony refused to go out and line up, the OMON (special militia) fighters were deployed there, who beat most of the convicts, the HRC reports.

There are no official comments on the above facts yet.