Russia

The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Procuracy, and the Federal Tax Police were responsible for law enforcement at all levels of Government. The FSB has broad law enforcement functions, including fighting crime and corruption, in addition to its core responsibilities of security, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism. The FSB operated with only limited oversight by the Procuracy and the courts. The primary mission of the armed forces was national defense, although they have been employed in local internal conflicts, and they were available to control civil disturbances. Internal security threats in parts of the Russian Federation increasingly have been dealt with by militarized elements of the security services. Members of the security forces, particularly within the internal affairs apparatus, continued to commit numerous and serious human rights abuses.

The country has a total population of approximately 143 million. The economy continued to grow, although at lower rates than in 2001. Annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 4.5 percent, compared with 5 percent in 2001. GDP was $252 billion for the first 9 months of the year. Industrial production grew by 3.7 percent; real income increased by 8.8 percent. Approximately 27 percent of the population, however, continued to live below the official monthly subsistence level of $60. Official unemployment was 7.1 percent, down from 9 percent at the end of 2001. Corruption continued to be a negative factor in the development of the economy and commercial relations.

Although the Government generally respected the human rights of its citizens in some areas, its record was poor in other areas. Significant reforms occurred in law enforcement and judicial procedures; however, a variety of direct and indirect government actions further weakened the autonomy of the electronic media, the primary source of information for most individuals, and the Government's record remained poor in Chechnya, where federal security forces demonstrated little respect for basic human rights. There were credible reports of serious violations, including numerous reports of extrajudicial killings, by both the Government and Chechen separatists in the Chechen conflict. Hazing in the armed forces resulted in a number of deaths. There were reports of government involvement in politically motivated disappearances in Chechnya. There were credible reports that law enforcement personnel continued to torture, beat, and otherwise abuse detainees and suspects. Arbitrary arrest and detention, while significantly reduced by a new Code of Criminal Procedure, remained problems, as did police corruption. The Government prosecuted some perpetrators of abuses, but many officials were not held accountable for their actions.

Lengthy pretrial detention was a serious problem; however, the introduction of the new Code of Criminal Procedure led to significant reductions in time spent in detention for new detainees. Prison conditions continued to be extremely harsh and frequently life threatening. Laws on military courts, military service, and the rights of service members often contradicted the Constitution, federal laws, and presidential decrees, raising arbitrary judgments of unit commanders over the rule of law. The Government made substantial progress during the year with implementation of constitutional provisions for due process and fair and timely trial; however, the judiciary continued to lack resources, suffered from corruption, and remained subject to influence from other branches of the Government, and judges were inadequately protected by the Government from threats by organized criminal defendants. A series of alleged espionage cases continued during the year and raised concerns regarding the lack of due process and the influence of FSB in court cases. Authorities continued to infringe on citizens' privacy rights.

Despite the continued wide diversity of views expressed in the press, government pressure continued to weaken the independence and freedom of some media, particularly major national television networks and regional media outlets. The Government at times restricted freedom of assembly at the local level. The Government did not always respect the constitutional provision for equality of religions, and in some instances the authorities imposed restrictions on some religious groups. Societal discrimination, harassment, and violence against members of some religious minorities remained problems. Despite constitutional protections for citizens' freedom of movement, local governments restricted this right, in particular by denying local residency permits to new settlers from other areas of the country. Government institutions intended to protect human rights were relatively weak, but remained active and public. The Government placed restrictions on the activities of both nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations in Chechnya.

Violence against women and children remained problems, as did discrimination against women. Persons with disabilities continued to face problems from both societal attitudes and lack of governmental support. Ethnic minorities, including Roma and persons from the Caucasus and Central Asia, faced widespread governmental and societal discrimination, and at times violence. There were increasing limits on worker rights, and there were reports of instances of forced labor and child labor. Trafficking in persons, particularly women and young girls, was a serious problem. Russia was invited by the Community of Democracies' (CD) Convening Group to attend the November 2002 second CD Ministerial Meeting in Seoul, Republic of Korea, as a participant.

A new Criminal Procedures Code that took effect beginning in July for the first time permitted the application of existing Constitutional provisions that individuals could be arrested, taken into custody, or detained, only upon a judicial decision. After the introduction of the new Code the number of criminal cases opened by the Procuracy declined by 25 percent; the number of suspects placed in pretrial detention declined by 30 percent; and the courts rejected 15 percent of requests for arrest warrants. Judges released some suspects held in excess of allotted time when the Government failed properly to justify its request for extension, and the Supreme Court overturned some lower court decisions to grant pretrial detention considered inadequately justified. Early indications were that the changes were having an effect on the behavior of police, prosecutors, and the judicial system. Human rights advocates reported that the strict new limits on time held in police custody without access to family or lawyers, and the stricter standards for opening cases, have discouraged abuse of suspects by police as well.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:

a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life

There were no confirmed reports of political killings by the Government or its agents; however, there continued to be credible reports that the federal armed forces engaged in extrajudicial killings in Chechnya. There also were credible reports that the armed forces used indiscriminate force at various times in the Chechen conflict in areas with significant civilian populations, resulting in numerous deaths (see Section 1.g.).

Hazing in the armed forces resulted in the deaths of servicemen (see Section 1.c.).

On June 26, a court acquitted all defendants charged with the 1994 murder of journalist Dimitriy Kholodov (see Section 2.a.).

Government "mopping-up" operations in the Chechen town of Tsotsin-Yurt in January, March, and July allegedly resulted in the deaths of many civilians (see Section 1.g.). No one had been charged with these killings by year's end. According to Human Rights Watch, no one has been held accountable for the extrajudicial killings of 130 civilians in Alkhan-Yurt, Staropromyslovskiy, and Novyye Aldi in similar operations in 1999 and 2000.

The press and media NGOs reported that a number of journalists were killed by unknown parties, presumably because of the journalists' work (see Section 2.a.).

Attacks on ethnic and racial minorities and asylum seekers resulted in some deaths (see Section 5).

There were a number of killings of government officials throughout the country, some of which may have been politically motivated, either in connection with the ongoing strife in Chechnya, or with local politics. Among the political figures killed were: Duma Deputy Vladimir Golovlev in August; Smolensk Oblast First Deputy Governor Vladimir Prokhorov in August; Akhmen Zavgayev, Head of Nadterechnyy District Administration (and brother of Doku Zavgayev, former Head of the Chechen Administration) in Chechnya in September; Leonid Volkov, Head of the Loknyanskiy District of Pskov Oblast in August; and Magadan Governor Valentin Tsvetkov in October.

On September 19, Mikhail Nikiforov, First Deputy Chief of the MVD's Criminal Militia, said that law enforcement officers had identified suspects in the 1997 killing of St. Petersburg Vice Governor Mikhail Manevich. Nikiforov stated that the two suspects in the Manevich case were no longer alive but provided no further details. There were no reports that the case was being investigated further.

On November 21, the FSB announced that six unidentified suspects had been arrested and charged with the 1998 killing of Galina Starovoytova, a prominent Duma deputy.

There have been no developments in the December 5, 2000 killing of the Mayor of Murom, Petr Kaurov. There also were no developments in the 2000 killing of Svetlana Semenova, a political party activist in the Union of Right Forces. It was not clear whether these killings were politically motivated. In 2001 police released Semenova's husband, who had been the main suspect in the case.

In early November, police arrested four persons in connection with the 1999 killing of St. Petersburg legislative assembly Deputy Viktor Novoselov but failed to capture the alleged criminal group leader. St. Petersburg city court hearings continued in this case.

Chechen rebels killed numerous civilians and increased their killings of officials and militia associated with the Russian-appointed Chechen administration, including many civilians (see Section 1.g.). Chechen terrorists killed two of the hostages they took in a Moscow theater in October (see Section 1.g.). Chechen fighters killed a number of federal soldiers whom they took prisoner (see Section 1.g.). Religious and secular figures also were kidnaped and killed in Chechnya during the year (see Sections 1.b., 1.c., and 5).

Authorities attributed bombing incidents in Dagestan and several cities in southern areas of the country to Chechen rebels.

Government forces and Chechen fighters have used landmines extensively in Chechnya and Dagestan since August 1999 (see Section 1.g.); there were many civilian landmine casualties in Chechnya during the year.

b. Disappearance

There were reports of government involvement in politically motivated disappearances in Chechnya; however, there were fewer reports of kidnapings than in previous years. The NGO Memorial claimed that federal military forces detained thousands of persons from Chechnya. Some of these persons disappeared, but most were released, often after their relatives paid a bribe. Memorial estimated that the number of individuals unaccounted for was somewhere between several hundred and a thousand. Former Presidential Representative for Human Rights in Chechnya Vladimir Kalamanov acknowledged that at least several hundred persons were missing in Chechnya.

The August kidnaping by unknown persons of the head of the Doctors without Borders Mission in the neighboring province of Dagestan remained unsolved at year's end. This event and overall security problems led the U.N. and many NGOs to suspend their activities in Chechnya temporarily.

A September report from the office of Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, the President's Special Representative for Human Rights in Chechnya, stated that since it began operations in February 2000 the office had received complaints of 959 disappearances. According to the office, 401 persons were located, 18 of whom were dead. Authorities were carrying out criminal investigations in 234 of the cases and searches for missing persons in 324 cases. Attacks on ethnic and racial minorities and asylum seekers resulted in some deaths (see Section 5).

There were no developments in the ongoing criminal investigation into the 2000 disappearance of former speaker of the Chechen Parliament and former field commander, Ruslan Alikhadzhiyev, who allegedly was detained in Shali by federal forces.

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The Constitution prohibits torture, violence, and other brutal or humiliating treatment or punishment; however, there were credible reports that law enforcement personnel frequently used torture to coerce confessions from suspects and that the Government often did not hold officials accountable for such actions.

Prisoners' rights groups, as well as other human rights groups, documented numerous cases in which law enforcement and correctional officials tortured and beat detainees and suspects. Human rights groups described the practice of torture as widespread. In 2000 Human Rights Ombudsman Oleg Mironov estimated that 50 percent of the prisoners with whom he spoke claimed to have been tortured. Numerous press reports indicated that the police frequently beat persons with little or no provocation or used excessive force to subdue detainees. Reports by refugees, NGOs, and the press suggested a pattern of police beatings, arrests, and extortion directed at persons with dark skin, or who appeared to be from the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Africa (see Section 5). Press reports and human rights groups indicated that police in some parts of the country also used beatings and torture as part of investigative procedures as well. Police continued to harass defense lawyers, including through beatings and arrests, and continued to intimidate witnesses (see Section 1.e.). Some human rights observers and members of the legal profession suggested that the introduction on July 1 of a new Code of Criminal Procedures that limits the duration of detention without access to counsel or family members and contains provisions that render statements given in the absence of a defense attorney unusable in court, would reduce the incentive for the authorities to abuse prisoners. However, authoritative reports concerning changes in actual practice were not available by year's end. Abuse of prisoners by other prisoners continued to be a problem.

Torture by police officers usually occurred within the first few hours or days of arrest and usually took one of four forms: Beatings with fists, batons, or other objects; asphyxiation using gas masks or bags (sometimes filled with mace); electric shocks; or suspension of body parts (e.g., suspending a victim from the wrists, which are tied together behind the back). Allegations of torture were difficult to substantiate because of lack of access by medical professionals and because the techniques used often left few or no permanent physical traces. There were credible reports that government forces and Chechen fighters in Chechnya tortured detainees (see Section 1.g.).

There were reports that police beat Roma during the year (see section 5).

Government agencies such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs have begun to educate officers about safeguarding human rights during law enforcement activities through training provided by foreign governments; however, security forces remained largely unreformed. Torture is not defined in the law or the Criminal Code; it is mentioned only in the Constitution. As a result, it was difficult to charge perpetrators. The only accusation that could be brought against the police is that they exceeded their authority or committed a simple assault.

Various abuses against military servicemen, including, but not limited to, the practice of "dedovshchina" (the violent, sometimes fatal hazing of new junior recruits for the armed services, MVD, and border guards), continued during the year. Press reports cited serving and former armed forces personnel, the Military Procurator's Office, and NGOs monitoring conditions in the armed forces, who indicated that this mistreatment often included the use of beatings or threats of increased hazing to extort money or material goods. Press reports also indicated that this type of mistreatment resulted in permanent injuries and deaths among servicemen. Soldiers often did not report hazing to either unit officers or military procurators due to fear of reprisals, since officers in some cases reportedly tolerated or even encouraged such hazing as a means of controlling their units. There also were reports that officers used beatings to discipline soldiers whom they found to be "inattentive to their duties." The practice of hazing reportedly was a serious problem in Chechnya, particularly where contract soldiers and conscripts served together.

Both the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committee (USMC) and the Main Military Procurator's Office (MPPO) received numerous reports about "nonstatutory relations," in which officers or sergeants physically assaulted or humiliated their subordinates. This tendency commonly has been attributed to stressful conditions--for example, degrading and substandard living conditions--that persisted throughout the armed forces--and to the widespread placement of inexperienced reserve officers, on active duty for 2 years, as leaders of primary troop units. The USMC estimated that approximately 3,000 noncombat deaths occurred annually; these included: Shootouts, suicides, and training and traffic accidents.

Despite the acknowledged seriousness of the problem, the leadership of the armed forces made only superficial efforts to implement substantive reforms in training, education, and administration programs within units to combat abuse. The limited scale of their efforts was due at least in part to lack of funding and to the leadership's preoccupation with urgent reorganization problems and the fighting in Chechnya. The MMPO continued to cooperate with the USMC to investigate allegations of abuse. Nonetheless, the USMC believed that most hazing incidents and assaults were not reported due to a fear of reprisals, the indifference of commanders, and deliberate efforts to cover up such activity.

There were reports that the corruption of government officials facilitated trafficking in persons (see Section 6.f.).

Criminal groups in the Northern Caucasus, some of which may have links to elements of the rebel forces, frequently resorted to kidnaping. The main motivation behind such cases apparently was ransom, although some cases had political or religious overtones. Many of the hostages were being held in Chechnya or Dagestan.

During the year, members of ethnic or racial minorities were victims of beatings, extortion, and harassment by "skinheads" and members of other racist and extremist groups.

Prison conditions remained extremely harsh and frequently life threatening. The Ministry of Justice administered the penitentiary system centrally from Moscow. The Ministries of Justice, Health, Defense, and Education all maintained penal facilities. There were five basic forms of custody in the criminal justice system: Police detention centers, pretrial detention facilities known as Special Isolation Facilities (SIZOs), correctional labor colonies (ITKs), prisons designated for those who violate ITK rules, and educational labor colonies (VTKs) for juveniles. Responsibility for operating the country's penal facilities fell under the Ministry of Justice's Main Directorate for Execution of Sentences (GUIN).

The Government did not release statistics on the number of detainees and prisoners who were killed or died or on the number of law enforcement and prison personnel disciplined. The Moscow Center for Prison Reform (PCPR) estimated that in earlier years, 10,000 to 11,000 prisoners died annually in penitentiary facilities, 2,500 of them in SIZOs. During the year, these numbers were estimated to be somewhat lower. Most died as a result of poor sanitary conditions or lack of medical care (the leading cause of death was heart disease). The press often reported on individuals mistreated, injured, or killed in various SIZOs; some of the reported cases indicated habitual abuse by the same officers.

Violence among inmates, including beatings and rape, was common. There were elaborate inmate-enforced caste systems in which informers, homosexuals, rapists, prison rape victims, child molesters, and others were considered to be "untouchable" and were treated very harshly, with little or no protection provided by the prison authorities.

Penal institutions frequently remained overcrowded; however, mass amnesties offered immediate relief. Longer-term and more systemic measures to reduce the size of the prison population were also taken. These included the use of alternative sentencing in some regions and revisions of both the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure which eliminate incarceration as a penalty for a large number of less serious offenses. Many penal facilities remained in urgent need of renovation and upgrading. By law authorities must provide inmates with adequate space, food, and medical attention; with the dramatic decrease in prison populations these standards increasingly were being met.

The implementation of the new Code of Criminal Procedure reduced both the numbers of persons being held and the length of time they may be held in detention, reducing the size of the SIZO population by 30 percent by year's end, and virtually eliminating the problem of overcrowding in those institutions. As of September 25, prisoners in SIZOs had an average of 38 square feet per person, up from 16 square feet the previous year, representing a significant advance toward the norm of 44 square feet specified by law.

Inmates in the prison system often suffered from inadequate medical care. According to the GUIN, as of September 1, there were approximately 86,000 tuberculosis-infected persons and 21,576 HIV-infected persons in SIZOs and correction colonies combined. Public health measures, funded by international aid and by the doubling of government resources for the prison system's medical budget, have effected a limited reversal of the spread of tuberculosis but have not contained the spread of HIV. Detention facilities had tuberculosis infection rates far higher than in the population at large. The Saratov Oblast administration, concerned with the tuberculosis crisis in its facilities, fully funded the tuberculosis-related medicinal needs of prisoners, according to the PCPR. The PCPR also reported that conditions in penal facilities varied among the regions. Some regions offered assistance in the form of food, clothing, and medicine. NGOs and religious groups offered other support.

Conditions in police station detention centers varied considerably but generally were harsh, although average periods of stay in such facilities decreased. In most cases, detainees lacked bedding, places to sleep, running water, toilets, showers, and adequate nutrition. Suspects awaiting the completion of a criminal investigation, trial, sentencing, or appeal, were confined in SIZOs, as occasionally were convicts when the State lacked transportation to take them elsewhere. Conditions in SIZOs remained extremely harsh and posed a serious threat to life and health. Health, nutrition, and sanitation standards in SIZOs remained low due to a lack of funding. Head lice, scabies, and various skin diseases were prevalent. Prisoners and detainees typically relied on families to provide them with extra food. Under such conditions, prisoners slept in shifts. In most pretrial detention centers and prisons, there was no ventilation system. Poor ventilation was thought to contribute to cardiac problems and lowered resistance to disease. Because of substandard pretrial detention conditions, defendants sometimes claimed that they had confessed simply to be moved to comparatively less harsh prison conditions. Defendants' retractions of confessions made under these conditions generally were ignored, as were those who attempted to retract confessions they claimed they were coerced to make (see Section 1.e.), although the NGO Human Rights Institute asserts that the problem of coerced confessions became less serious after mid-year as a result of the inadmissibility of confessions not made in the presence of counsel.

An individual detained before January 1 could spend up to 3 years awaiting trial in a SIZO; however, the new Criminal Procedure Code gives the courts, rather than the Procuracy, the authority to review detention, and the Supreme Court instructed all judges to enforce statutory limits on pretrial detention strictly (see Section 1.d.). The new Code limits detention in police stations to 24 hours before the case is referred to the procurator and to 24 hours for the procurator to open or reject the criminal case. At that point, the procurator must decide whether to seek pretrial detention from the court. Pretrial detention is limited in most cases to 6 months. The investigators have 2 months to refer the case file to the court and request more time for detention. Only in a small number of serious crimes and complex investigations can the Procuracy request an extension of detention for 6 more months, and only with the personal approval of the Procurator General himself can they apply to the court for an extension to a maximum of 18 months. During the first 6 months in which the new procedures were in place, no such extensions were requested, and most cases went to trial in the allotted 6 months. By year's end, it was possible to evaluate only the enforcement of some of these limitations. These have generally been respected; however there were still some judges and regions which did not appear to fully enforce this provision.

ITKs held the bulk of the nation's convicts. There were 749 ITKs. Guards reportedly disciplined prisoners severely in order to break down resistance. At times guards humiliated, beat, and starved prisoners. According to the PCPR, conditions in the ITKs were better than those in the SIZOs, because the ITKs had fresh air. In the timber correctional colonies, where hardened criminals served their time, beatings, torture, and rape by guards reportedly were common. In September 2001, procurators in Perm announced that they had brought charges of mistreating inmates against Special Forces Commander Sergey Bromberg, head of the strict regime prison colony at Chepets. Along with seven masked members of his unit, Bromberg was suspected of beating inmates at the prison colony. The Procurator subsequently announced that he had completed his investigation; however, there were no reports by year's end that a prosecution was being pursued. The country's "prisons"--distinct from the ITKs--were penitentiary institutions for those who repeatedly violated the rules in effect in the ITKs.

VTKs were facilities for prisoners from 14 to 20 years of age. Male and female prisoners were held separately. In September 2001, GUIN reported that there were 64 educational colonies, 3 of which were for girls. Conditions in the VTKs were significantly better than in the ITKs, but juveniles in the VTKs and juvenile SIZO cells reportedly also suffered from beatings, torture, and rape. The PCPR reported that such facilities had a poor psychological atmosphere and lacked educational and vocational training opportunities. Many of the juveniles were from orphanages, had no outside support, and were unaware of their rights. There also were two prisons for children in Moscow. Boys were held with adults in small, crowded, and smoky cells. Schooling in the prisons for children was sporadic at best, with students of different ages studying together when a teacher could be found.

In April 2001, President Putin described the problem of disease in the prison system as a potential "Chernobyl." He stated that the Government was not in a position to ensure standard conditions of detention in penitentiary institutions and that the system's problems had become a national concern. According to the PCPR, in order to forestall a crisis the system was obliged either to fund massive new construction and reconstruction of facilities--which was unrealistic under the country's economic conditions--or to reduce the prison population. Subsequently the Government launched a coordinated effort to reform criminal procedure, resulting in a reduction of the prison population. More offenses were moved from the Criminal Code to the Administrative Code, eliminating incarceration as an option in most cases. More crimes were shifted to Justices of the Peace, which had more flexible sentencing structures and could take advantage of a variety of alternative punishments. In some regions, alternative penalties such as house arrest and community service joined incarceration as acceptable penalties. For example, in Murmansk the local office of the Ministry of Justice actively pursued alternative punishments, and many convicted offenders were given sentences not involving incarceration. A similar program was under way in Nizhniy Novgorod, where it resulted in reductions in the number of persons in SIZO detention and the time they spent there. The standards of proof for convictions rose, and the shifting of more responsibilities to independent arbiters such as the courts decreased the number of cases opened. These factors combined have begun to reduce the prison population.

The Government permitted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to work throughout the country, and the ICRC was active especially in the northern Caucasus. The ICRC carried out regular prison visits and provided advice to authorities on how to improve prison conditions. The Government allowed the ICRC access to some facilities in the northern Caucasus where Chechen detainees were held; however, the pretrial detention centers and filtration camps for suspected Chechen fighters were not always accessible to human rights monitors (see Section 1.g.).

d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile

Arbitrary arrest and detention remained problems; however, there was progress toward effective judicial oversight over arrests and detentions. The new Code of Criminal Procedure gave authorities the means to implement the constitutional requirement that individuals could be arrested, taken into custody, or detained beyond 48 hours only upon a judicial decision. In many cases courts aggressively asserted their new rights, freeing prisoners in Chechnya, rejecting 15 percent of the requests for arrest warrants, and rejecting 30 percent of the requests for detention in some areas. Judges freed suspects whose confessions were taken without lawyers present or who were held in excess of detention limits. The Supreme Court overturned a number of cases in which lower court judges granted permission to detain individuals on what the Supreme Court considered to be inadequate grounds. The Courts issued strict instructions to judges to enforce the time limits set on various stages of detention; however, insufficient time had elapsed by year's end to permit evaluation of compliance with these instructions.

A new Criminal Procedure Code, passed by the Duma in December 2001, became effective on July 1, with some provisions to be implemented in 2003. The new Code stipulates that if the police have probable cause to believe that a suspect has committed a crime, or that the suspect is an imminent threat to others, they may detain him for not more than 24 hours. During that time, they must notify the procurator, who then has 24 hours to confirm the charge or release the suspect. The Code also requires that the Procuracy obtain a judicial order for arrest, search, or seizure. It provides that relatives are to be notified of a suspect's arrest within 12 hours and that suspects have access to prompt counsel prior to the first questioning. Pretrial detention for crimes carrying a sentence of less than 3 years is prohibited unless the defendant poses a demonstrable flight risk; detention during trial is limited to 6 months, except where particularly grave crimes are involved. The new Criminal Procedure Code specifies that within 2 months of a suspect's arrest police should complete their investigation and transfer the file to the procurator for arraignment. A procurator may request the court to extend the period of criminal investigation to 6 months in "complex" cases with the authorization of a judge. With the personal approval of the Procurator General, that period may be extended up to 18 months. Juveniles may be detained only in cases of grave crimes. The new Criminal Procedure Code includes a formal procedure for pleading guilty and includes incentives such as shorter sentences as well as shorter trials. The new Criminal Procedure Code became effective on July 1, but the Duma had specified that these provisions regarding detention were to be delayed until January 1, 2004. The Constitutional Court ruled in May that it was unconstitutional to delay the implementation of judicial oversight after the new Code was slated to become effective. In response the Duma amended the new Code in June so that these provisions took effect on July 1.

However, before July 1, the court system continued to be governed by the amended Soviet Criminal Procedure Code, under which suspects often were subjected to uneven and arbitrary treatment. Procurators were able to issue orders of detention without judicial approval and police detained suspects for up to 48 hours without a warrant. The PCPR reported terms of pretrial detention under the previous Code extending up to 3 years, with the average ranging from 7 to 10 months. However, in some extreme cases, the PCPR reported total pretrial and during trial detention periods of up to 5 years due to financial constraints and poor investigative and court work. Some suspects spent 18 months in detention under harsh conditions in a SIZO while the criminal investigation was conducted (see Section 1.c.). Indefinite extensions of the investigation period without explanation to the detainee were common, and many suspects did not exercise their rights to request judicial review of their detention due to fear of angering the investigating officer. There was no formal procedure for a suspect to plead guilty during the investigative period, although if a suspect informed the investigator that he was guilty, the period of the investigation usually was shorter than if he maintained his innocence. There also were many credible reports that persons were detained far in excess of the period permitted for administrative offenses, in some cases so that police officials could extort money from friends or relatives of detainees. The practice of detaining individuals arbitrarily for varying periods of time, both within and in excess of permissible periods, was common, and often resolved only with bribes. After July 1, many of the motivations for these acts were reduced, but abuses still remained.

Families often were denied access to suspects in police detention; however, stricter oversight generally produced better compliance with the law. A March 2001 amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code allowed defendants immediate access to counsel when they have been arrested and referred for a psychiatric examination; this amendment took effect in January. Citizens' ignorance of their new rights was a problem. The Government embarked on a public education program to inform citizens of their rights and responsibilities under the system introduced by the new Code of Criminal Procedures, such as the right to a lawyer and the obligation to serve on juries when called.

Even after July 1, there were credible reports that police continued abuses. There were credible reports from throughout the country that police detained persons without observing mandated procedures and failed to issue receipts for confiscated property. There were credible reports that security forces regularly continued to single out persons from the Caucasus for document checks, detention, and the extortion of bribes. According to NGOs, federal forces commonly detained groups of Chechen men at checkpoints along the borders and during "mopping-up" operations following military hostilities and severely beat and tortured them.

Some regional and local authorities took advantage of the system's procedural weaknesses to arrest persons on false pretexts for expressing views critical of the Government. Human rights advocates in some regions have been charged with libel, contempt of court, or interference in judicial procedures in cases with distinct political overtones. Journalists, among others, have been charged with other offenses and held either in excess of normal periods of detention or for offenses that do not require detention at all (see Sections 2.a. and 4).

Authorities abrogated due process in several "espionage" cases involving Russians who worked with foreigners who allegedly had obtained information that the security services considered sensitive (see Section 1.e.). Although investigations in many of these cases had continued for a number of years, charges were filed in nearly all of them in the last days before the new code took effect, in order that prosecutors could avoid certain procedural protections accorded defendants.

The Constitution prohibits forced exile, and the Government did not employ it.

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary, and there were increasing signs of judicial independence; however, the judiciary did not act as an effective counterweight to other branches of the Government. Judges remained subject to some influence from the executive, military, and security forces, particularly in high profile or politically sensitive cases. The judiciary continued to lack sufficient resources and was subject to corruption.

The judiciary is divided into three branches. The courts of general jurisdiction, including military courts, are subordinated to the Supreme Court. These courts hear civil and criminal cases and include district courts, which serve every urban and rural district, regional courts, and the Supreme Court. Decisions of the lower trial courts can be appealed only to the immediately superior court unless a constitutional issue is involved. The arbitration (commercial) court system under the High Court of Arbitration constitutes a second branch of the judicial system. Arbitration courts hear cases involving business disputes between legal entities and between legal entities and the state. The Constitutional Court (as well as constitutional courts in a number of administrative entities of the Russian Federation) constitute the third branch.

Judges were approved by the President after being nominated by the qualifying collegia, which were assemblies of judges. These collegia also had the authority to remove judges for misbehavior and to approve procurators' requests to prosecute judges.

Justices of the Peace, introduced beginning in 1998, dealt with criminal cases involving maximum sentences of less than 2 years and some civil cases. There were more than 4,500 Justices of the Peace throughout the country by year's end. These judges handled a variety of civil cases as well as criminal cases. In those areas where the system of Justices of the Peace had been implemented completely, there was a significant decrease in backlogs and delays in trial proceedings, both among those cases referred to the Justices of the Peace and in the courts of general jurisdiction, because dockets were freed to accept more serious cases more rapidly. Justices of the Peace were in various stages of development according to region, but were functioning nationwide, producing significant reductions in case backlogs and freeing the courts of general jurisdiction for more serious cases. In some regions, Justices of the Peace assumed approximately one-half of federal judges' civil cases and up to 15 percent of their criminal matters, which eased overcrowding in pretrial detention facilities (see Sections 1.c. and 1.d.).

Low salaries and a lack of prestige continued to make it difficult to attract talented new judges and contributed to the vulnerability of existing judges to bribery and corruption; however, judicial salaries were increased by 60 percent during the year. Working conditions for judges remained poor and lacking in physical security, and support personnel continued to be underpaid. Judges remained subject to intimidation and bribery from officials and others and were inadequately protected from intimidation or threats from powerful criminal defendants.

The new Criminal Procedure Code provides for the strengthening of the role of the judiciary in relation to the Procuracy by requiring judicial approval of arrest warrants, searches, seizures, and detention. Moreover, the new Law on the Status of Judges, approved in December 2001, was intended to eliminate subjectivity in the selection of judges; to facilitate access to the judicial profession by minimizing corruption in the appointment process; and to improve the accountability of judges by subjecting them to disciplinary and administrative liability and by introducing age limits. In addition, judicial training was mandated and strengthened during the year. The new Criminal Procedure Code also broadened the jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace to include all crimes with maximum sentences of less than 3 years.

The Constitution provides for the right to a fair trial; however, this right was restricted in practice. With the introduction of new criminal procedures, abuses of this right declined; however, it was too early at year's end to provide an authoritative reassessment of the situation. Many defendants did not attempt to exercise their right to counsel, believing that such efforts would be pointless. NGOs reported that investigators found ways to deny suspects access to counsel, such as by restricting visiting hours. Suspects often were unable or unwilling to exercise their right to counsel during pretrial questioning (see Section 1.d.). Many defendants recanted testimony given during pretrial questioning, stating that they were denied access to a lawyer, that they were coerced into making false confessions or statements, or that they had confessed in order to escape poor conditions in pretrial detention facilities (see Section 1.c.). In the past, human rights monitors have documented cases in which convictions were obtained on the basis of testimony that the defendant recanted in court, even in the absence of other proof of guilt; however, the new Criminal Procedure Code specifically excluded such confessions from evidence.

The Criminal Code provides for the court to appoint a lawyer free of charge if a suspect cannot afford one. It specifies that an advocates' collegium president must appoint a lawyer within 24 hours after receiving such a request; however, this did not always happen in practice. Lawyers tried to avoid accepting these cases since the Government did not always pay them. Judges often called upon the Society for the Guardianship of Penitentiary Institutions to provide legal assistance for suspects facing charges and trial without representation. This society operated primarily in Moscow, although it used its connections throughout the country to appeal to legal professionals to represent the indigent. However, the high cost of competent legal representation meant that lower-income defendants often lacked legal representation.

The new Criminal Procedures Code mandates that all regions have adversarial jury trials for the most serious offenses in place by January 1, 2003; since 1994 9 of the country's 89 regions have made use of adversarial jury trials. In December, citing administrative and logistical considerations, the Duma passed a law that required 69 regions to adopt the new system by the January 2003 deadline but left 11 to adopt the system at a later time. According to observers, a majority of defense attorneys, defendants, and the public favored jury trials and an adversarial approach to criminal justice.

The Independent Council of Legal Expertise has reported that defense lawyers increasingly were the targets of police harassment, including beatings and arrests. Professional associations at both the local and federal levels reported abuses throughout the country, charging that police tried to intimidate defense attorneys and cover up their own criminal activities.

Authorities abrogated due process in several "espionage" cases involving foreigners who worked with Russians and allegedly obtained information that the security services considered sensitive. The proceedings in these cases took place behind closed doors, and the defendants and their attorneys encountered difficulties in learning the details of the charges. Observers believed that the FSB was seeking to discourage Russians and foreigners from investigating problems that the security services considered sensitive, and were concerned by the apparently undue influence of the security services.

In September the Krasnoyarsk Kray court ruled that the prosecutor's office had committed "violations of law" in the case of Valentin Danilov, a Krasnoyarsk physicist, charged with espionage and fraud for allegedly selling sensitive information to China. The court returned the case to the prosecutor's office and released Danilov from prison.

At year's end, the Supreme Court had not completed its review of the criminal case against Vladimir Shchurov, Director of the Sonar Laboratory of the Pacific Oceanographic Institute, who was the subject of a criminal case brought by regional FSB authorities in 2000. NGOs familiar with the case reported that Shchurov's lawyer was denied access to many of the details of the charge and that the judge presiding over the case had unlawfully refused to enter into evidence documents that the defense attorney believed demonstrated Shchurov's innocence.

At year's end, Grigoriy Pasko, a military journalist and active-duty officer in the Pacific Fleet, was being held in a prison near Vladivostok after having been sentenced in December 2001 to 4 years' imprisonment for espionage. Both prosecution and defense appealed the verdict to the military collegium of the Supreme Court in Moscow. At year's end, Igor Sutyagin, a disarmament researcher with the U.S. and Canada Institute who had been detained in 1999 on suspicion of espionage, remained in detention. Sutyagin was accused of passing classified information about the country's nuclear weapons to a London-based firm, but the Kaluga regional court ruled in December 2001 that the evidence presented by the procurator did not support the charges brought against him and returned the case to the procurator for further investigation.

Platon Obukhov, a diplomat charged with espionage, was determined to be mentally ill and at year's end was undergoing treatment in a psychiatric hospital near Moscow. Yuriy Savenko, head of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, and other human rights activists criticized the Obukhov's 2001 trial, charging that the psychiatric evaluation supervised by the Ministry of Health was influenced by political considerations and by pressure from the FSB.

There were no reports of political prisoners.

f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, or Correspondence

The Constitution states that officials may enter a private residence only in cases prescribed by federal law or on the basis of a judicial decision. It permits the Government to monitor correspondence, telephone conversations, and other means of communication only with judicial permission. The Constitution prohibits the collection, storage, utilization, and dissemination of information about a person's private life without his consent; the 1999 Law on Operational Search Activity partially implemented these provisions, and the new Criminal Procedure Code implemented others; however, problems remained. Authorities continued to infringe citizens' privacy rights. There were reports of electronic surveillance by government officials and others. Law enforcement officials in Moscow reportedly entered residences and other premises without warrants. There were no reports of government action against authorities who violated these safeguards.

Internet service providers were required to install, at their own expense, a device that routes all Internet traffic to an FSB terminal. Those providers that did not comply with the requirements faced either loss of their licenses or denial of their license renewal. While the framers of the System for Operational Investigative Measures (SORM-2) claimed that the regulation did not violate the Constitution or the Civil Code because it required a court order, there appeared to be no mechanism to prevent unauthorized FSB access to Internet traffic or private information without a warrant. In 2000 Communications Minister Leonid Reyman issued an order stating that the FSB was no longer required to provide telecommunications and Internet companies documentation on targets of interest prior to accessing information. Human rights activists suggested that this order only formalized existing practices, established since SORM was introduced, of monitoring communications without providing any information or legal justification to those being monitored. Despite the 2000 Supreme Court ruling upholding the requirements that the FSB conduct monitoring only by court order, the oversight and enforcement of these provisions were inadequate in practice.

In 2000 President Putin signed the "Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation." This Doctrine is not, operational document, and there was no legal basis to "implement" it. While the Doctrine offers general language on protecting citizens' constitutional rights and civil liberties, it also includes specific provisions that justify greater state intervention. For example, according to the Doctrine, law enforcement authorities should have wide discretion in carrying out SORM surveillance of telephone, cellular, and wireless communications.

There continued to be allegations that officers in the special services, including authorities at the highest levels of the MVD and the FSB, used their services' power to gather compromising materials on political and public figures as political insurance and to remove rivals. Similarly, persons in these agencies, both active and retired, were accused of working with commercial or criminal organizations for the same purpose. There were credible reports that regional branches of the FSB continued to exert pressure on citizens employed by foreign firms and organizations, often with the goal of coercing them into becoming informants.

Government forces in Chechnya looted valuables and foodstuffs from houses in regions that they controlled (see Section 1.g.).

g. Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian Law in Internal Conflicts

In August 1999, the Government began a second war against Chechen rebels. The indiscriminate use of force by government troops in the Chechen conflict has resulted in widespread civilian casualties and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of persons, the majority of whom sought refuge in the neighboring republic of Ingushetiya. Attempts by government forces to regain control over Chechnya were accompanied by the indiscriminate use of air power and artillery. There were numerous reports of attacks by government forces on civilian targets, including the bombing of schools and residential areas. In 2000 Russian forces began a large-scale offensive military campaign in Chechnya; that offensive campaign largely ended following federal occupation of most of Chechnya by the late spring of 2000, although federal forces continued to engage in an intensive anti-insurgency campaign against Chechen guerillas. In January 2001, President Putin announced that the active military phase of the struggle against separatism in Chechnya had been completed successfully and that an antiterrorist operation under the direction of the FSB would begin immediately. The antiterrorist operation was marked by several large-scale clashes and several rebel attacks on population centers during the summer of 2001. During the year, government forces carried out a number of "cleansing" operations that involved extensive abuses of civilians.

The security situation prevented most foreign observers from travelling to the region, and the Government enforced strict controls on both foreign and domestic media access (see Section 2.a.). Federal authorities--both military and civilian--have limited journalists' access to war zones since the beginning of the war in October 1999. Most domestic journalists and editors appeared to exercise self-censorship and avoid subjects embarrassing to the Government in regard to the conflict (see Section 2.a.). These restrictions made independent observation of conditions and verification of reports very difficult. Nevertheless there were numerous credible reports of human rights abuses and atrocities committed by federal forces during the year. A wide range of reports indicated that federal military operations resulted in numerous civilian casualties and the massive destruction of property and infrastructure, despite claims by federal authorities that government forces utilized precision targeting when combating rebels. The number of civilians killed as a result of federal military operations could not be established; estimates of the totals since 1999 vary from hundreds to thousands. The number of civilians injured by federal forces also could not be verified.

Since August 1999, government forces and Chechen fighters have used landmines extensively in Chechnya and Dagestan. Reports from hospitals operating in the region indicated that many patients were landmine or ordnance victims and that such weaponry was the primary cause of death. Government officials reported that in Chechnya there were 5,695 landmine casualties during the year, including 125 deaths. The casualties included 938 children. By comparison there were 2,140 landmine casualties in 2001.

Government operations to "cleanse" an area following a rebel attack on a military block post or a military personnel vehicle continued periodically throughout the year. On January 3, during a mopping-up operation in Tsotsin-Yurt, 80 people were severely beaten, and 3 dead bodies were found after federal troops left the village. On March 24-25, another "cleansing operation" took place in Tsotsin-Yurt; according to Memorial, all males (300 people) were brought to a "filtration camp"; 14 were detained without charges, others were later released or ransomed by their relatives. On March 27, the Commander-in-Chief of the United Military Forces in Chechnya issued an order (Order #80) which established rules on how to carry out passport checks and mopping-up operations. For example, license plates on military vehicles entering a village should be visible; military personnel should be accompanied by a representative of the Procuracy and local officials; when entering a house, military officers should identify themselves; and all people arrested during a mopping-up operation should be included in lists which are shared with local authorities. However, human rights activists reported that this order frequently was ignored by federal forces. For example, in mid-April federal forces entered the village of Alkhan-Kala and blocked it: Memorial reports that there were gross violations of the requirements established in Order #80.

Tsotsin-Yurt was subject to a mopping-up operation on July 25-29. After a clash between local militia and rebels, federal forces entered the village and arrested about 60 people; some males were then transferred to a building where they were reportedly tortured with electricity. Memorial reported serious beatings and acts of vandalism by the federal forces as well as ordinary robberies during this operation. At year's end, no one had been officially charged or prosecuted in connection with this operation.

From May 21 to June 11, the Mesker-Yurt village was blocked and cleared. For 20 days, no one could enter or leave the village. There were reportedly severe beatings, violence, and harassment by Government troops. Sources from Mesker-Yurt reported that 20 corpses were returned to the relatives, many of them in fragments, because of a new practice of blowing up the bodies of those who were tortured. In addition, 20 more persons were missing, and no fragments of their bodies were found.

In addition to casualties attributable to indiscriminate use of force by the federal armed forces, individual federal servicemen or units committed many abuses. According to human rights observers, government forces responding to Chechen attacks at times engaged in indiscriminate reprisals against combatants and noncombatants alike. Such reports, not independently verified, included the killing of two men chosen at random after a mine incident between the villages of Chiri-Yurt and Novyyee Atagi in January. A similar report described the shelling by government forces of the village of Tsotsin-Yurt following a mining incident. A man and a woman were killed as a result of the shelling.

Command and control among military and special police units often appeared to be weak, and a climate of lawlessness, corruption, and impunity flourished. For example, Government troops executed at least 60 civilians in Aldi and Chernorechiye in 1999 and 38 civilians in Staropromyslovskiy in the period December 1999 to January 2000. According to human rights NGOs, government troops raped woman in Chechnya in December 1999 in the village of Alkhan-Yurt and in other villages. There were no reports of accountability for any these actions by year's end.

During the year, there were no confirmed reports of additional discoveries of mass graves and "dumping grounds" for victims allegedly executed by government forces in Chechnya; however, there were no reports by year's end that the Government intended to investigate earlier cases. In February 2001, relatives of three Chechen men who had disappeared in December 2000 while in the custody of Russian soldiers discovered a large number of bodies, belonging to their relatives and others, near the federal military base at Khankala. Federal law enforcement officials stated that they had found another 48 bodies from the village. Federal officials denied responsibility.

According to Memorial, government sources varied in their estimates of the number of missing persons. Memorial noted that in 2000 the office of Special Presidential Representative for Human Rights in Chechnya, Kalamanov, recorded an increase in the number of reported cases of missing persons from approximately 900 in early 2000 to approximately 3,000 at the end of that year. At the end of 2001, the local department of the Ministry of the Interior in Chechnya had recorded approximately 700 missing persons (i.e., persons for whom the Ministry was searching). Also at the end of 2001, the Chechen administration's missing persons commission had recorded approximately 1,400 reports of missing persons. On the basis of these sources, Memorial concluded that between 1,000 and 2,000 persons were missing in Chechnya at the end of 2001. Memorial also compiled its own list of missing persons on the basis of verified reports, but it is not comprehensive; that list contained approximately 300 records at the end of 2001. Memorial reports that 654 people were reported missing in the first 9 months of the year.

Armed forces and police units reportedly routinely abused and tortured persons held at so-called filtration camps, where federal authorities claimed that fighters or those suspected of aiding the rebels were sorted out from civilians. Federal forces reportedly ransomed Chechen detainees (and at times, their corpses) to their families. Prices were said to range from several hundred to thousands of dollars. According to human rights NGOs, federal troops on numerous occasions looted valuables and foodstuffs in regions they controlled. Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) reported that they were forced to provide payments to, or were otherwise subjected to harassment and pressure by, guards at checkpoints. There were some reports that federal troops purposefully targeted some infrastructure essential to the survival of the civilian population, such as water facilities or hospitals. The indiscriminate use of force by federal troops resulted in a massive destruction of housing, as well as commercial and administrative structures. Gas and water supply facilities and other types of infrastructure also were damaged severely. Representatives of international organizations and NGOs who visited Chechnya also reported little evidence of federal assistance for rebuilding war-torn areas. There also were widespread reports of the killing or abuse of captured fighters by federal troops, as well as by the Chechen fighters, and a policy of "no surrender" appeared to prevail in many units on both sides. Federal forces reportedly beat, raped, tortured, and killed numerous detainees.

The Government investigated, tried, and convicted some members of the military for crimes against civilians in Chechnya; however, there were few such convictions. It was reported that of the 1,700 cases filed against servicemen by military procurators, 345 had been stopped for various reasons, including amnesties, and 360 had been handed over to the courts. Human rights observers alleged that the Government addressed only a fraction of the crimes federal forces committed against civilians in Chechnya.

On December 31, after a trial widely regarded as a test case, a court acquitted Colonel Yuriy Budanov, charged with abducting and murdering an 18-year-old ethnic Chechen girl in 2000, on grounds of temporary insanity. The acquittal came after a lengthy judicial process in the course of which Budanov had undergone three psychological examinations by government-appointed experts. The Government's Commissioner for human rights, Oleg Mironov, called the verdict "alarming."

Individuals seeking accountability for abuses in Chechnya became the targets of government forces. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), government troops in June detained Chechen Said-Magomed Imakayev, who had filed a case with the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) regarding the disappearance during detention by Russian forces of his son in 2000. HRW and Memorial reported that Malika Umazheva--a Chechen who until September served as the head of administration for Alkhan-Kala--was killed in November by government forces, in retribution for her outspokenness about abuses by Russian forces in her village. HRW also reported attacks by soldiers and Ingush policemen on activists of the Russia-Chechnya Friendship Society (a human rights monitoring and advocacy group), and that an activist with the same group, Luiza Betergeryeva, had been killed by Russian forces at a checkpoint in December 2001.

On July 18, during a planned city-center "clean-up" in Groznyy, federal forces broke down the door of the Groznyy Human Rights "Memorial" receptionroom and entered the offices. Nobody was there at the time, although an employee arrived a short time later. The intruders then left without identifying themselves.

International organizations estimated that the number of IDPs and refugees who left Chechnya as a result of the conflict reached a high of approximately 280,000 in the spring of 2000 (see Section 2.d.). At various times during the conflict, authorities restricted the movement of persons fleeing Chechnya. The most recent estimates put the number of IDPs in Chechnya at 140,000 with an additional 110,000 in Ingushetiya. During the year, the authorities closed three refugee camps, and IDPs returned involuntarily to Groznyy. International organizations and IDPs suggested that the authorities applied severe pressure on IDPs to return to Chechnya, an objective denied by President Putin.

In response to international criticism of the human rights situation in Chechnya, several federal government bodies were established to examine alleged domestic human rights violations. In July President Putin appointed Abdul-Khakim Sultygov as Special Presidential Representative for Human Rights in Chechnya (replacing Vladimir Kalamanov). Sultygov's office had branches in Moscow and in a number of locations in the northern Caucasus to take complaints about alleged human rights violations. In April 2000, Pavel Krasheninnikov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Legislation, was elected head of a newly created Independent Commission on Human Rights in the northern Caucasus. In September 2000, the Commission opened nine offices in Chechnya and three in Ingushetiya. Sultygov's office and Krasheninnikov's commission heard several thousand complaints from citizens, ranging from destruction or theft of property to rape and murder; however, neither organization was empowered to investigate or prosecute alleged offenses and had to refer complaints to the military or civil procurators. Almost all complainants alleged violations of military discipline and other common crimes. In December the Government appointed a commission to review complaints about treatment of Chechen IDPs in Ingushetiya, but its findings were not released by year's end. For the third year, the Federal Government did not comply with a 2001 U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolution calling for a broad-based independent commission of inquiry to investigate alleged human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law. The Government refused to renew the mandate of the Chechnya mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), charged with "promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms" in the territory, which expired on December 31 (see Section 4).

Chechen fighters also committed serious human rights abuses. According to unconfirmed reports, rebels killed civilians who would not assist them, used civilians as human shields, forced civilians to build fortifications, and prevented refugees from fleeing Chechnya. In several cases, elderly Russian civilians were killed for no apparent reason other than their ethnicity. As with the many reported violations by federal troops, there were difficulties in verifying or investigating them.

On October 23, approximately 41 members of Chechen terrorist groups took more than 750 persons hostage in a Moscow theater. They threatened to kill the hostages and themselves unless the Government withdrew its troops from Chechnya. Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev subsequently took responsibility for the operation. The effort to rescue the hostages resulted in 168 persons killed, including 127 hostages (in addition to 2 whom the hostage-takers had killed) and the 41 terrorists, who were shot by the rescuers. Most fatalities among the hostages were caused by toxic gas introduced by Government security forces in order to subdue the hostage takers. Medical and other observers claimed that many of the deaths might have been avoided if the authorities had provided doctors with information that would have permitted them to administer appropriate antidotes in a timely manner. The authorities cited security reasons for their refusal.

Chechen fighters planted landmines that killed or injured federal forces and often provoked federal counterattacks on civilian areas. In other incidents, rebels took up positions in populated areas and fired on federal forces, thereby exposing the civilians to federal counterattacks. When villagers protested, they sometimes were beaten or fired upon by the rebels.

On May 19, Chechen rebels killed S. Simbarigov, allegedly because of his cooperation with federal forces. They placed his head near the building of the local administration of the village of Mesker-Yurt, and his skinned body was found later in the village outskirts. This episode provoked additional special operations by federal forces in Mesker-Yurt, which lasted until June 11.

Chechen fighters also reportedly abused, tortured, and killed captured soldiers from federal forces. Rebels continued a concerted campaign, begun in 2001, to kill civilian officials of the Government-supported Chechen administration. In a December 27 suicide attack on the governmental headquarters in Groznyy they killed over 80 persons, many of them civilians, and wounded many more.

According to Chechen sources, rebel factions also used violence to eliminate their economic rivals in illegal activities or to settle personal accounts.

Individual rebel field commanders reportedly were responsible for funding their units, and some allegedly resorted to drug smuggling and kidnaping to raise funds. As a result, it often was difficult, if not impossible, to make a distinction between rebel units and criminal gangs. Some rebels allegedly received financial and other forms of assistance from foreign supporters of international terrorism. In October 2001, presidential spokesman Sergey Yastrzhembskiy claimed that there were approximately 200 non-Chechen fighters in Chechnya.

Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

a. Freedom of Speech and Press

The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press; however, government pressure on the media persisted, resulting in numerous infringements of these rights. Faced with continuing financial difficulties as well as increased pressure from the Government and large, private companies with links to the Government, many media organizations saw their autonomy weaken during the year. The public continued to have access to a broad spectrum of viewpoints, particularly in the print media. However, by a variety of means the Government continued to exert influence over national television and radio, the most widespread sources of information for the public.

Following the October hostage crisis, the two houses of parliament passed a broadly worded amendment that would have prohibited the media from disseminating information that "hindered an antiterrorist operation" or that was "opposition propaganda against an operation or an attempt to justify such opposition." Following widespread criticism from the media and international media defense organizations, President Putin vetoed the amendment on November 25, returning the issue to the Duma for further consideration.

At times the authorities exerted pressure in a number of ways on journalists, particularly those who reported on corruption or criticized officials. They selectively denied journalists access to information, including, for example, statistics theoretically available to the public and filming opportunities. On many occasions, particularly in regions outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, they demanded the right to approve and then censored certain stories prior to publication and prohibited the tape recording of public trials and hearings. They systematically withheld financial support from government media operations that exercised independent editorial judgment and attempted to influence the appointment of senior editors at regional and local newspapers and broadcast media organizations. On occasion they removed reporters from their jobs, brought libel suits against journalists, and intimidated and harassed journalists.

Although NTV continued to exercise editorial independence, a state-affiliated bank bought a 49 percent share of the company's stock in October from the majority stockholder, the state-controlled energy firm, Gazprom. Some media analysts interpreted the complex restructuring of Gazprom's media assets as a continued effort by the Government to retain influence over the station in the campaigning for the 2003 Duma and 2004 presidential elections. TV-6 managers teamed up with a media company co-chaired by former Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov and the head of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs to form a new television company, TV Spektrum (TVS). Observers attributed the station's low audience ratings to a general decline in the demand for political news and the difficulties experienced by Kiselev's team in developing new program content. Nevertheless, numerous national and regional media reflected a variety of opinions.

The Government owned approximately 150 of the 550 television stations in the country and indirectly influenced private media companies through partial state ownership of the gas monopoly Gazprom and the oil company Lukoil, which in turn own large shares of media companies. Of the three national television stations, the State-owned Russian Television and Radio (RTR) and a majority of Russiane Public Television (ORT); it also maintained ownership or control of the major radio stations Radio Mayak and Radio Rossii and news agencies ITAR-TASS and RIA-Novosti. The Government owned a 38 percent controlling stake of Gazprom, which in turn had a controlling ownership stake in the prominent, privately owned national television station, Nezavisimoye Televideniye (NTV). Since Gazprom's takeover of NTV in April 2001, the Government has been in a position to influence NTV's editorial stance, but at year's end, the station continued to assert its editorial independence

The Government owned nearly one-fifth of the 12,000 registered newspapers and periodicals in the country and attempted to influence the reporting of independent publications. The financial dependence of most major media organizations on the Government or on one or more of several major financial-industrial groups continued to undermine editorial independence and journalistic integrity in both the print and broadcast media. The concentration of ownership of major media organizations, including media outlets owned by the federal, regional and local governments, remained largely intact and posed a continued threat to editorial independence. Government structures, banking interests, and the state-controlled energy giants United Energy Systems (UES) and Gazprom continued to dominate the Moscow media market and extend their influence into the regions. Continuing financial difficulties of most news organizations exacerbated this problem during the year, thereby increasing their dependence on financial sponsors and, in some cases, the federal and regional governments. As a result of this dependence, the media's autonomy and its ability to act as a watchdog remained weak.

In other important matters as well, private media organizations and journalists across the country remained dependent on the Government during the year. As in 2001, the GDF reported that some 90 percent of print media organizations relied on State-controlled organizations for paper, printing, or distribution, while many television stations were forced to rely on the state (in particular, regional committees for the management of state property) for access to the airwaves and office space. The GDF also reported that officials continued to manipulate a variety of other "instruments of leverage" (including the price of printing at state-controlled publishing houses) in an effort to apply pressure on private media rivals. The GDF noted that this practice continued to be more common outside the Moscow area. Private print and broadcast media, like other enterprises, were vulnerable to arbitrary changes in the policy and practice of tax collection. Although media routinely continued to receive tax breaks on high-cost items such as paper, the GDF and other media NGOs documented numerous instances of government use of taxation mechanisms to pressure media across the country. The Government also occasionally sought to limit reporting on tax matters.

In 2000 the FSB office for the Volgograd region tried to impose a "cooperation agreement" on a number of local newspapers, including Volgogradskaya Pravda, Inter, Gorodskiye Vesti, and Delovoye Povlozhye, which reportedly were pressured into signing the agreement. The document obliged the newspapers to clear with the FSB prior to publication all of their reports concerning the FSB and to print official FSB releases without comment. The locally based Center for Protection of Media Rights published the agreement, which attracted media attention across the country and subsequently was opposed by human rights advocates. No known attempts to enforce the agreement had been reported by year's end.

Journalists continued to depend on local authorities for accreditation for major news events. There were widespread reports that authorities showed favoritism toward reporters associated or aligned with the federal or local administration, and denied access to journalists representing independent media organizations.

In July Gleb Pavlovkskiy, head of the Effective Policy Foundation, sold his web site to the Russian State TV and Radio Company (VGTRK), a large conglomerate that includes all the government-owned media assets. The media community had previously considered the web site to be a de facto Kremlin media outlet.

Government agencies continued to bring lawsuits and other legal actions against journalists and journalistic organizations during the year, the majority of them in response to unfavorable coverage of government policy or operations. The GDF estimated that several hundred such cases had been brought in 2001. Judges rarely found in favor of the journalists; in the majority of cases, the Government succeeded in either intimidating or punishing them. In July the Central District Court of Sochi ordered the newspaper Sochi and correspondent Sergey Zolovkin to pay $3,175 and $1,587 (105,000 and 50,000 rubles), to the Krasnodar region administration for alleged defamation of 26 judges from the Krasnodar region. The judge who made the ruling was also one of the plaintiffs in the case. An article by Zolovkin printed in September 2000 reported on the lack of transparency of the court system, while not naming any particular person. Zolovkin left the country for security reasons in March after surviving an assassination attempt and was living abroad at the time of the ruling. With some exceptions, judges appeared unwilling to challenge powerful federal and local officials. These proceedings often resulted in stiff fines and occasionally in jail terms. Zolovkin was a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow biweekly newspaper specializing in investigative reporting, which for several years has been the target of libel suits filed because of reporting on corruption among elected officials and accounts of the Government's military campaign in Chechnya.

In February a Moscow municipal judge handed down two rulings against the newspaper. In the first ruling, a judge ordered the newspaper to pay Krasnodar region judge Aleksandr Chernov $964,000 (30 million rubles) for a January story alleging that Chernov was living beyond the means of his monthly salary of $300 (9,000 rubles). In a separate ruling later that month the judge ordered the newspaper to pay Mezhprombank $482,000 (15 million rubles) for a story alleging the bank's involvement in money laundering. The excessive amounts of the awards (the largest libel award in the country up to that time was $3,400 (110,501 rubles) drew the attention of media advocacy groups, which sent letters to the Minister of Justice and the President, protesting the excessive damage awards, as well as physical threats to the newspaper's journalists. In April the newspaper settled with Chernov and agreed to admit to errors in reporting in exchange for having the suit dropped. In June Mezhprombank announced that it would not collect its damage award, because it did not want to bankrupt the newspaper. Commentators claimed the bank was more interested in avoiding court scrutiny of financial documents that implicated the bank in money laundering.

Media analysts point to Novaya Gazeta's settlement with Chernov and its refusal to print a paid announcement for an event called "A Two Day World Hunger Strike in Defense of Chechnya" as proof that lawsuits against journalists served to reinforce the already significant tendency toward self-censorship.

There were no discernible repercussions on the press from the Security Council's June 2000 Information Security Doctrine, which outlines "threats to Russian national security" in the fields of "mass media, means of mass communication, and information technology" (see Section 1.f.); however, many observers continued to view it as an indication that the Kremlin considered the media to be subject to the administration and control of the Government, and government efforts to limit critical coverage of its attempt to subdue what it regarded as a security threat posed by the rebellion in Chechnya were widely seen as a major impetus for its pressure on the media.

In Moscow in April, police arrested journalists from Ekho TV, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, and Reuters along with protesters who staged an unauthorized rally outside the Kremlin protesting the import of nuclear waste. Police exposed film and confiscated camera and recording equipment. Stavropol Kray journalists reported that they were not accredited to report on the President's visit to the flooded area in July, saying only a select group of Moscow journalists was accredited. Some journalists in Nizhniy Novgorod reported that neither the Volga Federal District Presidential Representative nor high-ranking staff would meet with reporters. They said the envoy's press center would instead offer information via e-mail or from the official web site.

In Sverdlovsk Oblast, Valentin Zhivulin, the editor-in-chief of the independent opposition newspaper testified that he was told in April to leave town or he would "be in serious trouble." Zhivulin was threatened immediately after his newspaper reported that only two roads in the city of Irbit had been repaired in 2001, one of which connected the town hall to the mayor's mansion. In July the city court of Naryan-Mar abruptly closed a criminal case against Olga Cheburina, the editor of "Krasniy Tundrovik," for abuse of office and exceeding official responsibilities. Cheburina's case drew national attention after a presidential press conference in June, when one of the newspaper's reporters asked the President his opinion of the corruption investigation of Nenets governor Viktor Butov. Cheburina was fired a week later by the newspaper's founders, who included representatives of the regional administration, the regional legislature, and the municipal administration. The newspaper board said that her firing was not connected to the question posed by the reporter

The Government exerted its influence most directly on state-owned media. As in 2001, the senior staff of RTR--the station with the most extensive coverage area--reported that managers offered "guidance" to program announcers and selected reporters, indicating which politicians should be supported and which should be criticized; criticism of presidential policies was discouraged strongly and even prohibited. Correspondents claimed they occasionally were asked to obtain senior management approval for reports on sensitive political matters prior to broadcasting; occasionally "negative" language was edited out. At times, high-level presidential administration officials reportedly complained to RTR executives about reporting they viewed as critical of the President.

The consequences of the 2001 struggle between Media-Most (owned by Vladimir Gusinskiy) and Gazprom over control of NTV and other Media-Most properties continued to be felt. In January 2001, Media-Most financial chief Anton Titov was arrested on charges of fraud and placed in pretrial detention, where he remained in October. In September Gazprom dropped its lawsuit against Media-Most, Vladimir Gusinskiy, and Anton Titov, saying that the dispute had been settled. Gazprom also asked the court to release the Media-Most assets that the court had frozen after Gazprom filed its suit against Media Most in 2000. The court, however, refused to take into consideration the Gazprom-Media-Most settlement and did not release the Media-Most assets. On December 24, the Cheremushkinskiy inter-municipal court of Moscow convicted Titov of misappropriating loans extended by Gazprom to Media-Most in 1998-1999, sentenced him to 3 years in a labor camp, then amnestied him. Titov was acquitted of charges of money laundering and using forged documents to mislead the creditor. Titov was first arrested in January 2001, and spent the past 2 years in pretrial detention until his amnesty and acquittal.

In September 2001, a provision of the joint stock companies law that allows a minority shareholder to force the liquidation of companies showing a negative balance for more than 2 years was invoked against TV-6, the privately owned television station that had hired a number of NTV journalists who quit NTV to protest Gazprom's takeover in April 2001. Minority shareholder Lukoil-Garant, a pension fund that owned 15 percent of TV-6, won a claim in the Moscow Arbitration Court to liquidate TV-6's parent company, which was 75 percent owned by the oligarch, Kremlin critic, and exiled businessman, Boris Berezovskiy. Media freedom experts generally considered the ruling to be a government-supported effort to remove TV-6 from the control of Berezovskiy, accused of financial crimes in an unrelated case, and from the control of former NTV managers, including general director Yevgeniy Kiselev.

The Moscow Arbitration Court ruling was upheld by the High Arbitration Court in January. Later in January, before the "liquidation" procedure was formally completed, the Media Ministry took TV-6 off the air and scheduled an auction date for its broadcasting frequency on March 27. In February Kiselev resigned as head of TV-6 and established a new television company, "Sixth Channel," with financial support from a group of leading businessmen, which also owned shares in the company. In order to increase its chances of winning the frequency, the Sixth Channel teamed up with Media-Sotsium, a media company co-chaired by former Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov, head of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs, Arkadiy Volskiy, and entrepreneur Oleg Kiselev. The Sixth Channel and Media Sotsium established TV-Spektrum (TVS), a new media company in which Media Sotsium holds the broadcasting license and Sixth Channel provides programs and retains its editorial independence. In March Media-Sotsium won the broadcasting license, and in June TV-S started to broadcast on the former TV-6 frequency. Despite the widespread notion that Primakov and Volskiy were Kremlin-appointed "internal censors," Kiselev and other TVS managers and journalists reported that there were no serious attempts by Primakov or Volskiy to interfere in the Sixth Channel's editorial policies. Observers attributed the station's low audience ratings to a general decline in the demand for political news and the difficulties experienced by Kiselev's team in developing new program content.

In July Gazprom's media branch, Gazprom-Media, announced that it had purchased the last of Vladimir Gusinskiy's stock in the media companies that formerly were part of his Media-Most holding company, which included a 30 percent stake in NTV and 14.5 percent of independent radio station Ekho Moskvy. In September, 11 months after Gazprom announced intentions to sell its media assets, Gazprom established a new holding company to manage the 23 media companies it took over from Media-Most in April 2001. The new holding company replaced Gazprom-Media and was jointly owned by Gazprom and the state-affiliated Eurofinance Bank. Gazprom retained a 51-percent stake in the new company and its subsidiaries, while Eurofinance received a 49-percent share in exchange for repaying the media subsidiaries' $600 million (1.8 billion rubles) debt to Gazprom. The future of Gazprom's media assets, particularly NTV, has remained a matter of public concern since Gazprom took them over. Some media analysts believed the complex financial transaction between two government-owned instruments was a means to assert control over an influential media outlet, particularly before the 2003 Duma and 2004 Presidential elections.

In October, in a move that some media advocacy groups associated with radio broadcasts to Chechnya, President Putin revoked a 1991 presidential decree that authorized Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to open a permanent bureau in Moscow and instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to accredit the bureau. According to press reports, President Putin attributed the decision to revoke the 1991 decree to a desire to put all foreign bureaus on the same legal footing and to the belief that the 1994 law on mass media has made Yeltsin's 1991 decree obsolete. A statement issued by the Presidential Administration said that RFE/RL's editorial policies, "despite the end of the Cold War," had in recent years become "biased," especially those of its Chechen and Ukrainian services, but also indicated that revocation of the 1991 decree was unrelated to RFE/RL editorial policies.

At times local government officials actively restricted freedom of the press, particularly during election periods. GDF reported numerous violations of journalists' rights during elections. For example, reporters from the newspapers Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda were denied access to a polling station in Voronezh during city council elections; armed police in Volgograd prevented New Wave Radio and Alternative Broadcasting News correspondents from observing vote counting during mayoral elections. The Moscow City Electoral Commission prevented correspondents from Novyye Izvestiya newspaper and Russian Public Television (ORT) from attending a meeting where the registration of mayoral candidates would be discussed, on the grounds that ORT would draw "a distorted picture of the Commission's performance."

Journalists who published critical information about local governments and influential businesses, as well as investigative journalists writing about crime and other sensitive issues, continued to be subjected to death threats, threats of beatings, and other physical violence by unknown assailants. Assailants also frequently attacked journalists physically, although in most cases no direct link was established between the assault and the authorities who reportedly had taken offense at the reporting in question. A number of independent media NGOs characterized beatings by unknown assailants of journalists as "routine," noting that those who pursued investigative stories on corruption and organized crime found themselves at greatest risk.

During the year, a number of individuals whose occupations were related to the media were killed or reported missing, and scores were attacked, drawing protests from international media defense organizations. The International Press Institute voted unanimously in May to keep the country on its watch list of countries that "retain the essential elements of democracy, but which have entered a repressive phase," or countries with the means to halt attacks on media. The NGO Glasnost reported 25 killings of journalists during the year; however, other observers noted that not all of the killings had been linked to the victims' occupations. In the following cases, colleagues and police considered the victims' professions to be the motive for the crimes against them: On March 11, Natalya Skryl, a journalist for the Taganrog-based newspaper Nashe Vremya, was killed by a blow to the head. Sergey Kalinovskiy, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Smolensk, disappeared on December 14, 2001; his body was found on April 1. Valeriy Ivanov, editor-in-chief of Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye, was shot dead on April 29 in Tolyatti. On May 19, Aleksandr Plotnikov, founder of the newspaper Gostinyi Dvor, was found murdered in Tyumen Oblast. Nikolay Vasilyev, a local Chuvash reporter, was robbed and beaten to death on August 18 in Cheboksary. Igor Salikov, head of information security for Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Penza, was shot to death on September 21 in Penza. Also in Penza, the editor of Lyubimiy Gorod newspaper was beaten unconscious on August 11. The next day, Yuriy Frolov, deputy director of Propaganda Publishing, was abducted and had not been located by year's end. On August 14, Viktor Shamayev, crime reporter for Penzenskaya Pravda and editor of the newspaper Dlya Sluzhbenovo Polzovaniya, was abducted in Arbekov, tied up and beaten and told to give up journalism and leave town. He was subsequently released and was reported to have remained in Arbekov. In February Ilyas Magomedov, head of an independent Groznyy Television channel, disappeared after leaving his home in Beloreche on February 21.

The northern Caucasus region continued to be one of the most dangerous regions for journalists. Kidnapping and assaults remained serious threats. On September 26, British free-lance television journalist Gervaise Roderick John Scott was killed during fighting in Ingushetia between Chechen fighters and government forces. Federal authorities--both military and civilian--limited journalists' access to war zones and confiscated reports and equipment. On August 16, government soldiers confiscated accreditation documents and equipment belonging to ORT and TV Tsentr journalists as they were interviewing Chechens fleeing their village. The Government required reporters to obtain special accreditation besides the usual Foreign Ministry accreditation for entry to the region. Foreign journalists have also publicly complained that military officials in the northern Caucasus region made it excessively difficult for them to obtain local press accreditation.

The courts did not respond by year's end to an appeal of a Supreme Court ruling upholding some of the charges against Olga Kitova, a correspondent for Belgorodskaya Pravda and a member of the Belgorod regional parliament. Authorities harassed Kitova because of her reporting on regional government officials. She was arrested in March and May of 2001 and suffered a heart attack while being held in pretrial detention. After a series of trials and motions, she received a 2½-year suspended sentence on libel charges, and her lawyers filed an appeal with the Supreme Court. In July the Supreme Court reduced her extended jail time by 5 months and dropped some of the charges.

There were no leads in the cases of two journalists killed in 2001. Vladimir Kirsanov, a local newspaper editor from Kurgan, was reported missing in May 2001 after his bloodstained documents were found on the bank of the Tobol River in Kurgan. Eduard Markevich, editor of Novyye Reft, was shot and killed in September 2001. The cases of journalists killed in 2000 remained unsolved, including: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Iskander Khatloni, who had been investigating alleged human rights abuses by the federal military in Chechnya; the July 2000 killing of Igor Domnikov, a journalist with Novaya Gazeta; and the July 2000 killing of Sergey Novikov, president of the independent radio station Vesna.

On June 26, a court acquitted six defendants, including a former intelligence chief of the airborne infantry, Colonel Pavel Popovskikh, three other officers, and two civilians, on charges of the 1994 murder of Dimitriy Kholodov, military affairs correspondent for the news daily Moskovskiy Komsomolets. The court cited lack of evidence against the defendants and also acquitted them of malfeasance and misappropriation of ammunition and explosives.

The well-known Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who gained international recognition and received death threats because of her reporting on Chechnya, was forced into hiding in 2001. In October her lawyer reported that she was provided with federal guards after receiving death threats from Sergey Lapin, a member of the OMON (special forces unit of the Ministry of Interior), because of her article concerning the disappearance of Zelikhman Murdalov, a man arrested by OMON forces in Chechnya in January 2001. A criminal case against Lapin remained open at year's end.

In May and June 2001, a poll conducted among adults throughout the country by the Institute for Comparative Social Research reported that 7 percent of adults had access to the Internet and that Moscow and St. Petersburg had the highest number of users. Access appears to have been unrestricted, but the Government required Internet service providers to provide dedicated lines to the security establishment so that police could track private email communications and monitor activity on the Internet. The system of operative and investigate procedures (SORM-2) continued during the year to limit the electronic privacy of both citizens and foreigners (see Section 1.f.).

The Government did not restrict academic freedom; however, during the year human rights activists questioned whether the Sutyagin case and others discouraged academic freedom and contact with foreigners on issues that might be deemed sensitive (see Section 1.e.).

b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

The Constitution provides for freedom of assembly, and the Government generally respected freedom of assembly; however, at times local Governments restricted this right. Organizations were required to obtain permits in order to hold public meetings and the application process had to be initiated between 5 and 10 days before the scheduled event. Religious gatherings and assemblies do not require permits. While the Ministry of Justice readily granted permits to demonstrate to both opponents and supporters of the government, some groups were either denied permission to assemble, or had their permission withdrawn by local officials after Ministry of Justice officials had issued them. For example, in May 2001 authorities in Podolsk denied a permit to the Anti-Militarist Radical Association and the Radical Party to hold a demonstration against the war in Chechnya in front of the Podolsk military commissariat ("voyenkomat"), claiming that most of the event's potential participants were not residents of Podolsk but of Klimovsk, another town in the same region. In June 2001, Presnya district authorities in Moscow denied organizers a permit to hold a demonstration in front of the International Trade Center, claiming that the location was too close to potentially explosive and flammable installations; officials denied the permit without giving the organizers the required 3 days' notice. The demonstrators intended to protest the decision to hold the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, citing China's human rights record. In August police disrupted a planned peace march from Groznyy to Moscow by invoking their legal authority to conduct document checks; several persons were detained for lacking registration permits (see Section 2.d.).

The Constitution provides for freedom of association, and the Government generally respected this right in practice. Public organizations must register their bylaws and the names of their leaders with the Ministry of Justice.

Government efforts to increase cooperation with NGOs, including President Putin's civic forum held with many of them in 2001 and in December, enhanced their standing in society, but some NGOs feared that they represented an effort by the Government to enhance its influence over them. Although the 1-year anniversary of the Civic Forum was celebrated November 22-24 in Samara, NGOs generally expressed disappointment at the lack of tangible results of the initiative.

By law political parties must have 10,000 members in order to be registered and function legally, with no less than 100 members in a majority of the country's 89 regions (see Section 3).

c. Freedom of Religion

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion; however, in some cases the authorities continued to impose restrictions on some groups and there were increasing indications that the security services may be treating the leadership of some minority religious groups, particularly Roman Catholics, as security threats.

The Constitution also provides for the equality of all religions before the law and the separation of church and state; however, in practice the Government did not always respect the provision for equality of religions. Many religious minority groups and NGOs complained of what they believed was a confluence between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state. Public statements by some government officials and anecdotal evidence from religious minority groups suggested that the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly enjoyed a status that approaches official. In its preamble, which some authorities denied had the force of law, the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience recognized the "special contribution of Orthodoxy" to the country's spirituality and culture. The Church has entered into a number of agreements with government ministries that have raised the question of favoritism. For example, the Russian Orthodox Church appears to have had greater success reclaiming prerevolutionary property than other groups. Also, many religious workers believe that the Russian Orthodox Church played a role in the cancellation of visas held by foreign religious workers.

The 1997 law regulating religious practice limits the rights, activities, and status of religious "groups" existing in the country for less than 15 years and requires that religious groups exist for 15 years before they can qualify for "organization" status, which conveys juridical status. All religious organizations were required to register or reregister by the end of 2000 or face liquidation (deprivation of juridical status). Groups that were unregistered previously, including groups new to the country, were severely hindered in their ability to practice their faith. The Ministry of the Press reported that as of January 1, 20,441 organizations were registered. Religious minority denominations and NGOs reported that a number of groups were liquidated despite repeated attempts to reregister; some of these cases were being challenged in court. At year's end, a number of government working groups were reported to be preparing possible changes and amendments to the 1997 law. However, no new changes were made to the law by year's end.

Treatment of religious organizations, particularly minority denominations, varied widely in the regions, depending on the attitude of local offices of the Ministry of Justice. In some areas such as Moscow, Khabarovsk, and Chelyabinsk, local authorities prevented minority religious denominations from reregistering as local religious organizations, as required by law, subjecting them to campaigns of legal harassment. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses continued to contest the rejection by the Moscow department of the Ministry of Justice of its repeated applications to reregister under the 1997 law; however, at year's end, the courts continued to uphold those denials. In addition, the procurator for Moscow's northern administrative circuit continued his efforts to ban Jehovah's Witnesses. Despite earlier efforts to defend themselves against a ban in Moscow's Golovinskiy Intermunicipal Court, a new trial on this issue began in that same court on October 30 and was ongoing at year's end. Pending the outcome of a court-ordered study to determine the potential negative effects of Jehovah's Witnesses literature on society and a random survey to further evaluate these effects and assess the public's attitudes towards the religion, Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow were not allowed to reregister. As a result, they continued to experience problems in leasing space. Outside of Moscow, Jehovah's Witnesses have been denied registration in Chuvashiya and Tver but successfully registered in Novgorod.

Many religious groups continued to contest administrative actions against them in the courts. While such cases are often successful in court, administrative authorities are at times unwilling to enforce court decisions. The Constitutional Court ruled as unconstitutional the 2001 liquidation of the Moscow chapter of the Salvation Army by a local court. While the Salvation Army has not yet been cleared to reregister, the group continued to operate at year's end. Efforts to liquidate the Moscow branch of the Church of Scientology were defeated in the courts. At year's end, the Church continued to be engaged in legal battles in other localities.

The Moscow Department of Justice (DOJ), a branch of the Ministry of Justice, filed a liquidation suit in 2001 against the Moscow branch of the Church of Scientology, but the Church won both the suit and ensuing DOJ appeal in July. While the Moscow Church had not been cleared to reregister by October, the group continued to operate. The Scientologists filed a suit with the ECHR against the liquidation order. The St. Petersburg branch of the Church of Scientology filed an application to register in February, but was refused twice. In Khabarovsk the local Department of Justice filed for the liquidation of the Dianetics Center. The Church of Scientology lost on appeal and the case was under consideration by the federal Supreme Court. In a related case, the director of the Dianetics Center was convicted on criminal charges of the illegal practice of medicine and education. She lost on appeal and was given a suspended sentence of 6 years. Local media attention included references to "totalitarian sects" in their coverage. The case was also under consideration by the Supreme Court.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) administered 38 locally registered organizations; however local officials rejected registration attempts in Ryazan, Kazan, Shakhty, and Chelyabinsk. A suit was filed with a local court in Chelyabinsk, questioning the repeated refusals of the authorities to register the Church. The case was pending at year's end. The Church's organizations experienced initial problems registering in Khabarovsk and Nakhodka but were ultimately successful.

The Vanino Baptist Church in Khabarovsk continued to experience difficulties in registering and operating in its own building, despite winning its rights in a court case in August. Dan Pollard continued to be denied a visa despite a court order removing his name from a list of individuals to be denied visas.

A Muslim community spokesman confirmed that as of October, 3,186 Muslim groups were registered, up from 3,048 in 2001. Rival Muslim groups continued to accuse each other of "Wahhabism" (see Section 5). This pejorative label may have had a detrimental effect on reregistration in certain regions and has made local ethnic Russians more wary of Muslim religious organizations.

Reports continued that some local and municipal governments prevented religious groups, including congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses, Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and Hare Krishna from using venues suitable for large gatherings and from acquiring property for religious uses. In August Catholics in Yaroslavl were barred from building a new church on a previously approved plot of land. Jehovah's Witnesses reported difficulties obtaining permission to build. In Volgograd the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints successfully filed suit against an order preventing them from registering as owners of their newly constructed hall.

Property disputes continued to be among the most frequent complaints cited by religious groups. In accordance with a presidential decree, some synagogues, churches, and mosques have been returned to communities to be used for religious services. According to the Government, requests for restitution may be considered by the official entities responsible for the properties in question. In the context of the Duma's adoption of a new law allowing for private land ownership, Russian Orthodox officials and politicians raised the issue of restitution of church lands taken after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Other religious groups also expressed interest. No action was taken by year's end

Some minority groups expressed concern over the release in November by the Minister of Education of an optional course entitled "Orthodox Culture" for introduction into the public school curriculum. The course would be a part of the general curriculum beginning in primary school. Courses on religion were already offered in a number of regions, but critics expressed concern that school administrators throughout the country would see the release of this document as central government encouragement of such courses. Following complaints, including some from minority religious leaders, the Ministry emphasized that enrollment in the course would be voluntary.

The Government continued to deny foreign religious workers visas to return to the country. In the case of Roman Catholics, these efforts were accompanied by deportations. Five leading Roman Catholic officials were either deported, barred entry, or denied visa renewals during the year: Stefano Caprio, an Italian priest based in Vladimir; Jerzy Mazur, a bishop of Polish-Belorussian descent based in Irkutsk; Stanislav Krajniak, a Slovakian priest based in Yaroslavl; Edward Mackiewicz, a Polish priest based in Rostov-on-Don; and Jaroslaw Wisnewski, a Polish priest (and Russian permanent resident) based in Sakhalin. According to officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the priests were expelled on security grounds. In September a court in Krasnodar ordered the deportation of Swedish Evangelical missionary Leo Ma