BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Bashkortostan -- In this town last Dec. 10, it was a cold, snowless Friday opening the holiday weekend when Russia celebrates the Constitution. The rights enshrined in that document, as well as many residents of Blagoveshchensk, were about to take a beating.
At 11 p.m., the main street, a long drag of crumbling apartment blocks and street-level stores, seemed eerily quiet to Anastasia Rozhenkova when she emerged from a friend's apartment. In the darkness, Rozhenkova, 19, hurried to a store to buy some cigarettes while her husband lingered over his farewells.
"From nowhere, people wearing black masks grabbed me and twisted my hands behind my back," Rozhenkova recounted in an interview. "They pushed me onto the ground and kicked me."
In those first moments, Rozhenkova said, she did not know if she was being mugged by thieves or kidnapped by terrorists: "I was in shock, terrified." But as she was dragged to a nearby bus, her lip and nose swelling from the kicks, her calves and thighs burning from baton strikes, Rozhenkova realized she was not in the hands of bandits.
She had been arrested.
Between Dec. 10 and Dec. 14, hundreds of Blagoveshchensk residents were arrested and beaten by local police and masked special forces from the regional Interior Ministry, according to people and officials here. The sweep, designed to crack down on what the authorities said were assaults on police officers and a spiking crime rate in the town of 30,000 people, turned into a police riot.
The violence ranks among the most graphic illustrations of the failure of police to embrace the rule of law and the state's inability or unwillingness to impose it on them. The abuses have fueled a profound crisis of public confidence in the criminal justice system, at a time when the government seeks to galvanize citizens to fight terrorism, crime and corruption.
The events in Blagoveshchensk have drawn widespread condemnation, led to the dismissal of three senior police officers and a prosecutor, and prompted local and federal investigations. Nine police officers have been charged with abuse of power.
"The necessity of conducting such an operation was not in doubt, but the way the operation was executed was really bad," said Ruslan Sharafutdinov, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Bashkortostan. "What I mean to say is that they overdid it."
The regional prosecutor's office has accepted more than 200 complaints from residents and so far has found that 120 residents are "injured parties" entitled to legal redress, according to the Interior Ministry. Most of those detained, like Rozhenkova, were held for one night.
For human rights groups and legal scholars, Blagoveshchensk is unusual only for its scale and the fact that the regional Interior Ministry admitted to widespread violations. Every year, in huge numbers, Russians are beaten, tortured and sometimes killed by the police, according to reports by human rights and government agencies, opinion polls and revelations from high-profile cases.
"The violations are so gross and the problem is so deeply penetrated that it's going to take years to correct," said Vladimir Lukin, Russia's ombudsman and a former ambassador to the United States.
Police brutality extends well beyond Chechnya, where widespread human rights violations have been documented in 10 years of armed conflict.
The crackdown in Blagoveshchensk was organized by the Interior Ministry after five policemen were allegedly assaulted in the center of town as they tried to arrest some local businessmen. Sharafutdinov said there was no order to use violence or wear masks, but that the police on the ground lost control. "You can't rule out a Chechnya syndrome," he said, noting that the 17 Interior Ministry troops who took part in the operation, along with 130 local police, were veterans of the conflict in the Caucasus.
Around 8 p.m. on Dec. 11, Alexander Kosov, 29, was grabbed as he stood outside a store with his year-old child, who was in a stroller. The baby, he said, was left behind on the street by the police despite his protests. Kosov's wife was shopping nearby and happened to return to the child within minutes of Kosov's departure. Another man, Alexander Shabanov, 27, slashed his wrists at the police station on Dec. 12 after he was arrested for a second time. A third man, Sergei Fedoseyev, 19, said he was forced to shout "I love the police!" as he was struck with a baton.
Over four days, 388 people were swept off the streets and taken to the police station, where officials acknowledge many were beaten with batons. About 170 of those arrested were initially charged with minor offenses, including public drunkenness, according to the Interior Ministry.
On March 1, the republic's Supreme Court rescinded all the charges.
"They behaved like fascists," said Alexei Raschyoskov, 29, who had surgery for internal bleeding and a ruptured bladder after he was struck with a rifle butt when arrested in the center of town on Dec. 11.
At 11 p.m., the main street, a long drag of crumbling apartment blocks and street-level stores, seemed eerily quiet to Anastasia Rozhenkova when she emerged from a friend's apartment. In the darkness, Rozhenkova, 19, hurried to a store to buy some cigarettes while her husband lingered over his farewells.
"From nowhere, people wearing black masks grabbed me and twisted my hands behind my back," Rozhenkova recounted in an interview. "They pushed me onto the ground and kicked me."
In those first moments, Rozhenkova said, she did not know if she was being mugged by thieves or kidnapped by terrorists: "I was in shock, terrified." But as she was dragged to a nearby bus, her lip and nose swelling from the kicks, her calves and thighs burning from baton strikes, Rozhenkova realized she was not in the hands of bandits.
She had been arrested.
Between Dec. 10 and Dec. 14, hundreds of Blagoveshchensk residents were arrested and beaten by local police and masked special forces from the regional Interior Ministry, according to people and officials here. The sweep, designed to crack down on what the authorities said were assaults on police officers and a spiking crime rate in the town of 30,000 people, turned into a police riot.
The violence ranks among the most graphic illustrations of the failure of police to embrace the rule of law and the state's inability or unwillingness to impose it on them. The abuses have fueled a profound crisis of public confidence in the criminal justice system, at a time when the government seeks to galvanize citizens to fight terrorism, crime and corruption.
The events in Blagoveshchensk have drawn widespread condemnation, led to the dismissal of three senior police officers and a prosecutor, and prompted local and federal investigations. Nine police officers have been charged with abuse of power.
"The necessity of conducting such an operation was not in doubt, but the way the operation was executed was really bad," said Ruslan Sharafutdinov, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Bashkortostan. "What I mean to say is that they overdid it."
The regional prosecutor's office has accepted more than 200 complaints from residents and so far has found that 120 residents are "injured parties" entitled to legal redress, according to the Interior Ministry. Most of those detained, like Rozhenkova, were held for one night.
For human rights groups and legal scholars, Blagoveshchensk is unusual only for its scale and the fact that the regional Interior Ministry admitted to widespread violations. Every year, in huge numbers, Russians are beaten, tortured and sometimes killed by the police, according to reports by human rights and government agencies, opinion polls and revelations from high-profile cases.
"The violations are so gross and the problem is so deeply penetrated that it's going to take years to correct," said Vladimir Lukin, Russia's ombudsman and a former ambassador to the United States.
Police brutality extends well beyond Chechnya, where widespread human rights violations have been documented in 10 years of armed conflict.
The crackdown in Blagoveshchensk was organized by the Interior Ministry after five policemen were allegedly assaulted in the center of town as they tried to arrest some local businessmen. Sharafutdinov said there was no order to use violence or wear masks, but that the police on the ground lost control. "You can't rule out a Chechnya syndrome," he said, noting that the 17 Interior Ministry troops who took part in the operation, along with 130 local police, were veterans of the conflict in the Caucasus.
Around 8 p.m. on Dec. 11, Alexander Kosov, 29, was grabbed as he stood outside a store with his year-old child, who was in a stroller. The baby, he said, was left behind on the street by the police despite his protests. Kosov's wife was shopping nearby and happened to return to the child within minutes of Kosov's departure. Another man, Alexander Shabanov, 27, slashed his wrists at the police station on Dec. 12 after he was arrested for a second time. A third man, Sergei Fedoseyev, 19, said he was forced to shout "I love the police!" as he was struck with a baton.
Over four days, 388 people were swept off the streets and taken to the police station, where officials acknowledge many were beaten with batons. About 170 of those arrested were initially charged with minor offenses, including public drunkenness, according to the Interior Ministry.
On March 1, the republic's Supreme Court rescinded all the charges.
"They behaved like fascists," said Alexei Raschyoskov, 29, who had surgery for internal bleeding and a ruptured bladder after he was struck with a rifle butt when arrested in the center of town on Dec. 11.
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