Military men from military unit No. 5517, located in Uralsk, during the “search activities” beat the prisoners of the maximum security institution (maximum security colony) RU-170/3 from units No. 2, No. 4 and No. 6.
According to the head of the group of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) for the West Kazakhstan region, the director of the branch of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law (KIBHR), Pavel Kochetkov, the incident occurred on January 23.
The human rights activist notes that the soldiers beat everyone in a row: sick, disabled and elderly prisoners.
“The servicemen burst into the cells, dragged the people there along the corridor and the flights of stairs, and then half-naked, often just in their shorts, were thrown into local areas, where they forced them to squat in puddles and in the snow with their hands behind their heads. Apparently so that the prisoners did not freeze, they constantly beat them with batons and kicked,” says Kochetkov. “In this position they were forced to sit for more than three hours. Someone caught a cold, some of them fell, because they could not sit so long in one position. The servicemen took out and threw food products, cigarettes out of the cells, smashed portable radios purchased at the personal expense of the convicts, and prime necessities.”
Kochetkov explained that members of the NPM became aware of this from the words of the prisoners during the scheduled visit.
“Human rights defenders received about two hundred prisoners who transmitted about a hundred written appeals to the Ombudsman in Kazakhstan, the NPM, the Prosecutor general of the Republic, the Prosecutor of the West Kazakhstan region and the Commission on Human Rights under the President of Kazakhstan,” Kochetkov adds. “Here are quotes from some of the submitted applications: “My condition is currently very serious, my whole body hurts and it is very difficult for me to breathe. I am registered in the institution as a patient with asthma. When they beat me, they took my inhaler. I thought I would die, because asthma is a very dangerous disease. I beg you to punish the above employees for their lawlessness”; “There we were held on the street for about four hours. Returning to my cell, I discovered that the whole cell was turned upside down. Also, I did not find my personal things: two black tracksuits, four black t-shirts.” The following is a list of things that disappeared from the bag in the depot.
One of the statements stated: “After that we were taken out one at a time, while we were beaten with a baton. They were forced us to strip naked on the street. We were completely naked in the cold. After that, they beat us again, but even harder. I got a lot of injuries, including to my head. Barefoot we were forced to do squats. It was a real mockery, humiliation of honor and torture. I ask you to take measures and provide me with medical assistance.”
Members of the NPM group checked the medical records of prisoners. It turned out that none of them was provided with assistance. Moreover, there is no record of injuries in the cards, that is, no one examined the injured prisoners.
Kochetkov recalls that in this colony there was already a similar fact of the beating of prisoners by military personnel. It was in May 2019.
“Then a special visit was conducted, a report was sent to the National Center for Human Rights, but no one has been held accountable by law,” the human rights activist notes.
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