Tearful mothers of detainees have been camping for five days outside Lgov prison in southwest Russia where hundreds of prisoners have mutilated themselves and begun a hunger strike to protest against abuses.
Some 150 relatives and friends of the inmates have refused to leave the prison's surroundings and are spending the night in cars or tents on a street leading to the detention center, now surrounded by police.
Last Saturday night, more than 200 inmates slashed themselves with razor blades, and the self-mutilations continued the following day.
The number of injured on Friday had reached 437, according to a hospital registry consulted by Valery Borshchev, a human rights defender and ministry of justice expert.
Some 800 prisoners, or around half the population of the prison, are on a hunger strike, and 500 of them are already unable to stand, Boris Panteleyev, a representative from the For Human Rights association, said.
On Thursday evening, some 40 relatives of the detainees joined the hunger strike, according to For Human Rights.
"My son is 18, he was just transferred here from a minors' prison," at tearful Tatiana Nikitina, 39, told reporters. "I saw him the day before yesterday at a visit. They brought him to me, he could not stand up, he had to be supported. He could hardly breathe. His arms were bandaged up, he showed me his injuries."
"He said, `Mom, help us, they're humiliating us, we cut ourselves and we're on hunger strike.' I cried and said, `You should get out on July 22, just wait a bit, don't do anything stupid. He said `five people wanted to rape me, I cut my veins,'" she said.
Nikitina was informed by the director of the prison Yury Bushin that her son had been placed in an isolation cell. "And he told me: `We're going to kill your son.'"
Valentina Lamina, 50, was also waiting outside the prison anxiously in the heat.
"My son is 22, they beat him in prison from time to time," Lamina said. "I saw him on June 2, he was complaining. And yesterday too. His arms were bandaged up."
"He told me they wanted him to put on a red arm-band and betray his friends." The arm-band is worn by prisoners who collaborate with the prison guards.
"He said, `Kill me, my mother will pick up my corpse but I won't be a traitor. They beat me in front of the head of the prison until I lost consciousness.'"
The prisoners who do not want to collaborate are threatened with rape by prison staff, especially when they are young, Panteleyev said.
"Mom, we haven't eaten for three days, we haven't drank anything, except for those who are badly injured. We'll be on hunger strike until they sack the heads of the prison," Lamina's son told his mother.
The detainees' relatives are demanding the resignation of Bushin and his deputies Vitkor Reutov and Vladislav Dvoenosov. They accuse all three of participating directly in the abuses.
The prosecutor's office in Kursk region has charged Bushin's two deputies with abuse of power, according to the Russian prosecutor general's office but the head of the regional penitentiary service, Viktor Fedichev, told the relatives that no one would be sacked.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS