A Few Words About Methods
By Viktor Shenderovich
December 7, 2010
Yezhednevny Zhurnal
Translated from the Russian by The Other Russia
I intentionally waited a few days – would anybody speak out?
Nope. All is quiet…
Impudence is bliss.
“The methods of our security services differ in a good way from the methods used by United States security services,” Putin told Larry King. “Thank God… the officers of our intelligence services and other security services are not noted as having been involved in the organization of secret prisons, kidnappings, or the use of torture.”
They were noticed, naturally, and more than once.
The difference between Russia and the US is that the people who used torture in Guantanamo are in prison, having been convicted by American courts, and the Russian citizens, kidnapped and tortured by FSB officers, won’t get justice from anywhere closer than Strasbourg.
The second difference is that the American journalists who investigated Guantanamo won the Pulitzer Prize and are all alive, and Politkovskaya and Estemirova, who investigated the filtration camp in Chernokozovo, have been murdered, and their murderers have not been found, and Putin still managed to publicly spit on Politkovskaya’s grave.
So that’s it about the methods. And not those of the security service, but of Putin and his propaganda. They are simple, like a stick: lie through the teeth, nobody will notice!
It doesn’t go unnoticed there – here it definitely goes unnoticed, because 99% of Russian citizens simply don’t hear the objections. Ekho Moskvy, a couple of uncensored magazines with a two-kilometer radius… The sweet joys of our liberal ghetto.
And on television, Putin makes a universal smear to Larry King.
La Russophobe 
Sadly Putin didn’t invent this method of piling lies upon lies, it’s been an integral part of how Russian society functions since times immemorial. The battle of Borodino comes to mind here, Kutuzov lost it hands down but then sent a letter to Moscow reporting to the tsar a great victory and even to this day there are people in Russia who’ll tell you that the Russians won at Borodino and they’re not even bothered in the least bit by the fact that right after being ‘defeated’ Napoleon went on to occupy Moscow.
And then in a little while Moscow “went to occupy Paris”.
Yes she did occupy Paris but that does not mean Napoleon lost at Borodino or that his taking Moscow was nothing. He won the battle but lost the war; still he did win that battle
Actually Russia occupied Paris in conjunction with other major powers of the day, they being Britain, Prussia, Austria.
sent a letter to Moscow reporting to the tsar a great victory
***
People who know everything are not bothered by the fact that the capital of Russia at that time was St. Petersburg.
my point was not what the capital of Russia was at the time, my point is that Russians in positions of power at least for whatever reason are pathological liars and Putin’s denials of the FSB’s complicity in numerous kidnappings and murders are just more evidence to support my point
And the sad fact Larry King proved to be ignorant and/or cowardly (missing a chance for Putin to go into a crazy mode and respond with something like this below, so millions of Americans would see a madman) AND everyone everywhere ignored it as always, and it was not a first such a comment from him.
Get circumcised, angry Putin tells reporter
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/13/chechnya.iantraynor
Visibly enraged at being lectured and questioned about his policies in Chechnya, the Russian president rounded bizarrely on a journalist from the French daily Le Monde who implied that his troops were killing innocent civilians by sowing mines indiscriminately in Chechnya.
“If you are prepared to become the most radical Islamist and are prepared to get circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. We have specialists that deal with this problem,” he told the reporter.
Mr Putin has repeatedly become tense and aggressive when asked about Chechnya.He famously vowed to wipe out all Chechen rebels after they had been “cornered in the ****house”.
Well Boba, St Petersburg may have been the political capital, but the spiritual capital was still Moscow.
It is very much like the claim that Russia will be democratized through the internet.
Have a look at this pic which shows the links between facebook users around the world.
Where is Russia?
Actually it’s a rather weird picture. It looks like Russia was just deliberately omitted from it (or maybe no data on Russia was provided), I have a facebook account, I have several friends from Russia, at least three from the US, one from Belgium and one from Holland.
It’s true though that the impact of the Internet on Russian society is overrated. The Internet is just a tool, you need the right kind of people to democratise things, the kind that’s few and far between in Russia.
Well not according to facebook, it shows the links between facebook users. There are a few in Russia, some of the cities show up as faint dots, particularly Moscow and St Petersburg.
So there are users in Russia of course, but far fewer than elsewhere.
That’s probably because the Russians have got http://vkontakte.ru/. It’s essentially the same sort of social networking portal as facebook only it’s all in Russian, thus facebook is not as popular here.
Yeah after looking at that pic a second time I did notice the ‘faint dots’
It has to be said though that facebook has some rather fascist policies about political correctness. My first facebook account got deleted, they never told me why, I suspect it might have been because I used a WWII era Waffen SS recruitment poster as my profile pic, I thought it was cool and they (facebook) took offence and wiped my account, bastards
Igor,
I guess fascists would rather like such stuff, so maybe FB is run by communists who have stopped in track your RONA recruitment drive. Seriously though, such pic is actually quite tasteless and I don’t know why would you use it.
@The difference between Russia and the US is that the people who used torture in Guantanamo are in prison, having been convicted by American courts, and the Russian citizens, kidnapped and tortured by FSB officers, won’t get justice from anywhere closer than Strasbourg.
PARIS, December 21 (RIA Novosti)
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) fined Russia a total of 130,000 euros ($171,000) on Tuesday for the abduction of a Chechen man and inefficiently investigating the death of two Chechen children in a missile attack.
The court ordered the Russian government to pay 73,500 euros ($96,528) to the relatives of Khamid Mukayev, who was abducted by Russian servicemen during an unacknowledged security operation in Katyr-Yurt (the Chechen Republic) in September 2004.
The other case involved two boys who were killed by a missile while walking home from school in Chechnya in 2000. The court ruled that “no effective investigation had been carried out into the killing.”
http://en.rian.ru/world/20101221/161875144.html
One of the disappearance cases earlier this month is quite interesting, as it mentions the ringleader of a not-illegal armed group involved in the crime to go on “a business trip” during which he got killed in some gangster dispute. And it also (once again) highlights how the so-called “federal servicemen” used to treat even the local “police officers”, as here to the one who got randomly abducted and killed – like several others in the earlier cases.
7. On the morning of 30 December 2002 the first applicant, Ruslan Taymuskhanov and Mr Z., a police officer, were driving home in a UAZ SUV vehicle. At some point they passed by the village of Starye Atagi, where the special task force units of the Chechen Republic and the Russian federal troops had been carrying out a special “sweeping” operation.
8. At the military checkpoint near Starye Atagi federal servicemen stopped the UAZ SUV car. Some of the servicemen were wearing masks and camouflage uniforms; they all spoke Russian. The servicemen ordered the first applicant, Ruslan Taymuskhanov and Mr Z. to get out of the car, searched them and tied Ruslan Taymuskhanov and Mr Z.’s arms behind their backs.
(…)
14. At some point Mr D., Mr Z.’s uncle, suggested that the first applicant contact Mr G., the head of the special task force unit who had been in charge of the special “sweeping” operation of 30 December 2002 in Starye Atagi. Mr G. promised to release Ruslan Taymuskhanov, but then left for a business trip; at some point he died. Later Mr G.’s deputy denied that Ruslan Taymuskhanov had been arrested.
(…)
64. On 25 March 2009 the investigating unit requested information concerning the death of Mr Z. It turned out that his dead body had been found on 2 January 2005 and that an investigation into the murder was pending.
http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentId=878695&portal=hbkm&source=externalbydocnumber&table=F69A27FD8FB86142BF01C1166DEA398649
And geez, the Wikipedia’s sorry excuse of an article on Chernokozovo “filtration camp” shows you how just everyone is not at all interested in such things when there was no involvement whatsoever by neither Americans nor Israelis.
“Welcome to Hell”: Arbitrary Detention, Torture, and Extortion in Chechnya
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,HRW,,RUS,,3ae6a8750,0.html
The 99-page report, titled “Welcome to Hell,” describes how Russian troops have detained thousands of Chechens on suspicion of collaboration with rebel fighters. Many of them were detained arbitrarily, with no evidence of wrongdoing. Guards at detention centers systematically beat Chechen detainees, some of whom have also been raped or subjected to other forms of torture. Most were released only after their families paid large bribes to Russian officials. To date, Russian authorities have launched no credible and transparent effort to investigate these abuses and bring the perpetrators to justice.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/inside-the-hell-of-chernokozovo/257840.html
Chechens who do not have proper identity papers, who share a surname with a Chechen commander, who are thought to have relatives who are fighters, or who simply “look” like fighters, continue to be detained and abused on a daily basis in their communities or at Chechnya’s hundreds of checkpoints. Many “disappear” for months as Russian officials keep them in incommunicado detention. Some are eventually released when relatives pay a bribe. Others never come back.
(…)
In some cases, the male population of a village was rounded up, taken to an empty field, and subjected to beatings while Russian officials looked for suspected rebels. Those rounded up in mop-up operations are treated especially harshly: Russian forces beat them mercilessly, sometimes to death, and have summarily executed others.
(…)
The EU has sharply criticized Russia’s actions in Chechnya. It sponsored a resolution at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights urging Russia to launch a national commission of inquiry that would establish accountability for abuse. Six months after the resolution’s adoption, the Russian government has failed to launch a credible investigation into human rights abuse in Chechnya, including torture at detention centers. So far, the EU has taken no steps to press Russia to form the commission.
(“So far” applies here as much to October 2000 when it has been written as to December 2010, today.)