Together with a number of Russian and international media, Dagbladet has gained access to parts of a huge video leak that will show how inmates in Russian prisons have been systematically tortured for a number of years.
The material has shaken even President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle in the Kremlin, which has launched an investigation into the situation.
In all, the human rights group Gulagu.net claims to sit on over 40 gigabytes of similar videos, which will show everything from physical and mental humiliation, gross violence and rape of Russian prisoners.
“These secret and inhumane methods of torture must be stopped immediately,” Vladimir Osechkin, the founder of Gulagu.net, told Dagbladet.
view more
–
Must show rape
The video, which has caused the biggest uproar in Russia, is said to come from a prison hospital in the city of Saratov, located along the Volga River, about 730 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
The video, taken in 2020, is to show how a naked man, tied to a bed, howls in pain while being raped with what appears to be a long red broomstick.
Thick plastic has been laid on the bed, and there are to be prison guards covering the inmate’s face.
The management acquitted after prison imprisonment
Dagbladet has gained access to this video, among others, but has not been able to verify whether the content in them is real. It does not have Russian authorities either.
– If it is proven that the material is genuine, there is of course a basis for a comprehensive investigation, says the president Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the Moscow Times.
At the same time, Russian authorities have sent a handful of senior officials to Saratov to investigate.
– All material is genuine and it comes from a video archive. The reaction of the Russian authorities speaks for itself. We have good and detailed routines for verifying our information and never spread anything that is false, says Gulagu.net founder Osechkin to Dagbladet.
European Director in Human Rights Watch (HRW), Tanja Loksjina, tells BBC that HRW has not been able to verify the videos. However, she believes that the material gives cause for concern.
“Torture as a problem in Russian prisons is very acute and the authorities are not doing enough to ensure effective investigations into it,” said Loksjina.
view more
–
– Will continue
All videos must come from a former inmate who served time in the Saratov prison. The former inmate must be an IT expert, who during imprisonment gained access to the prison’s IT systems.
In a digital archive, the videos must have been stored.
To Dagbladet, Osetskin does not want to go further into who the whistleblower is.
It is already known that the man is supposed to be Belarusian and that he is no longer in Russia. Osechkin calls him “the Belarusian Snowden.”
Had to have the light on for 711 days
So far, only a small part of the total leak has been shared. In the time to come, Gulagu.net will share more and more videos, according to Osechkin.
Regardless of what is going to happen.
– It is important to understand that we will not give up. “We will continue to publish this material, which reflects the actual situation, and reveals the torture machinery, in Russian prisons,” said Oshkin.
view more
–
Compared to the Gulag
The Gulagu.net founder lives in France himself, and has done so since 2015. Four years earlier, in 2011, he founded the organization, which, among other things, works to improve conditions in Russian prisons.
The Gulagu name is in itself a reference to the infamous penal and labor colonies of the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s reign. At least 7.6 million prisoners are said to have passed through the Gulag system between 1921 and 1953, but the number is controversial and can be far, far higher.
In total, it is estimated that between 1.5 and 1.7 million people died during or as a result of stays in the Gulag camps, according to Store norske leksikon.
Torture and secret executions
The inhuman conditions in many of the camps have been portrayed, among other things, by the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was himself a Gulag prisoner from 1945 to 1950.
– These Gulag conditions have never disappeared from Russian prisons. They only exchanged the name SSSR (Soviet Union, journ.anm.) With Russia, but the whole system, with its weak points and totalitarian inclinations, was preserved, says Osechkin.
view more
–
– Call of violence and oppression
Therefore, he is also skeptical about the consequences of the huge video leak he has facilitated in Russia.
It is true that the leader and several employees at the prison hospital in Saratov have been fired, but when asked directly whether he thinks the videos can lead to lasting changes in the prison system, Osechkin’s answer is consistent:
– In the.
Then Oshechkin begins to embroider. He believes that Russian society is dormant, and points out that even in Saratov, the city where the rape of the prisoner is said to have taken place, no one has taken to the streets.
These images frighten Putin
Of course, he hopes that the video material he has shared will have consequences, both internally in Russia and in the rest of the world, he says. In the near future, he and the organization will work to get a response from the Council of Europe’s Torture Monitoring Committee and the UN.
Then Osechkin quickly turns into a more gloomy track.
– The chance for change is not real as long as the international community believes this is the Russians’ problem. At the same time, the Russian people are so full of fear of ending up in prison and being tortured, as in the videos. Then a ring of violence and oppression ends, which since the Gulag era has traumatized an entire population and instilled in them a fear of standing up for themselves, Osetschkin says.
However, this does not mean that Osechkin and his organization will give up, he emphasizes.
– We will do everything in our power to make Russian society humane. As a minimum, we will continue to talk about this. We will continue to uncover torture and incidents of violence, but with the current regime, we do not expect any real change.
–
