Russian Courts

KAFKA HAUNTS RUSSIAN COURT CASES

By Stephen Wilson

 

MOSCOW -- "Only when you yourself get into trouble do you begin to understand how difficult life is for people, the injustice they can come up against . As long as your own life is fine, you turn you back on people suffering", philosophically mused the ex-minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev, who was sentenced to eight years in a harsh penal colony for allegedly accepting a 12 million dollar bribe from 'a key witness', who didn't even turn up in court for questioning. 

Ulyukayev had been arrested for accepting a basket sent to him which he assumed was a gift of wine and sausages. But it turned out to be full of money. All the evidence points to a crude and primitive set up sanctioned by the Russian government. Ulyukayev later warned his fellow officials that : "Anyone is three clicks away from being charged with corruption". The case has shocked even members of the establishment as it represents the first unprecedented case of a minister being arrested under spurious charges. But he is hardly the only high-profile figure facing absurd charges. The director of the Gogol center has been under house arrest on corruption charges and Yuri Dmitriyiv, a Gulag historian, is in detention following baseless charges of child pornography. 

The good news is that the latter is to be released this year on the 28th of January.

Anyone who faces serious charges in Russia is almost likely to be convicted. Russia has a 98% conviction rate. While Aleksei Ylyukayev sat in court he was seen reading a work by Kafka called: 'The Trial'. The novel seems an appropriate choice. The plot of the novel tells of how a banker called Joseph K is arrested on charges he never discovers and attempts to unravel how the justice system works or rather doesn't work but is instead chaotic and capricious. Anyone can be arrested on a whim. The court cases are even held in secret attics above houses. The judges are angry, rude and arrogant. It sounds so familiar!

As a result of this case, officials are now refusing to accept any gifts at all, never mind baskets! Despite a law which stipulates that officials can accept gifts if they don't exceed the price of 3000 rubles, nobody is in the festive mood to give or accept gifts from strangers.

Ulyukayev may have been overstating things, but he is largely correct to state most people in Russia are indifferent to the fate of those arrested unless they experience a similar predicament. If people understood the trauma of being suddenly arrested on inexplicable charges and being thrust into a crowded confined cell they would think less about calling for this or that person to be put in prison. This reality was starkly brought home to me while I was working with the homeless in the 1990's . I and Jim Vail recall speaking to a wrongly imprisoned homeless Korean translator. He had been arrested and charged with murder after being found within the vicinity of a corpse. He was later released after many months. Being homeless in Moscow, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I recall him telling us: "Conditions were so terrible in prison you would not wish that your worst enemy go through what I experienced." We also found that one of the husbands of a volunteer at the soup kitchen had been arrested on charges of terrorism because some strange package was near him.

Having heard so many cases such as those I began to understand why so many people walk past corpses and bags. If you, yourself find a dead body in Moscow, the police might ask: "What did you do to this person?"

There must be thousands of innocent prisoners in Russia awaiting a trial where they have no chance of justice. Those cases have risen rather than gone away despite nonsense about how we have more law and order in contrast to the wild 1990's.

How do many people remain indifferent to those cases? They often just live in their own world. When you raise such questions they complain: "You are spoiling my mood," and "The Law is the Law. There is nothing to be done about it" or the trite cliche "This is Russia". Actually, it is not just Russia but Britain and America. Like in Russia, people will plead guilty to breaking laws they never broke because they don't have the money or the time to appeal to a lawyer. But something in deed can be done about things. Mass demonstrations, petitions and letters of protests have been known to be effective. It is often frustrating and endless hard work, taking even years. But prisoners have been released! We just have to keep knocking on the door hard enough until it opens!