Julia Suntsova

Lawyer Irina Biryukova reports on the next brutal beatings of prisoners in one of the high-security colonies. In a closed prison system, official crimes often go unpunished.

As practice shows, only the publication of the atrocities of the jailers gives prisoners at least some hope of initiating criminal cases against their tormentors — officials of the FSIN. Without video evidence, the administration of the colonies denies the facts of torture, prison doctors do not record injuries, and investigative authorities refuse to initiate cases.

But human rights defenders and lawyers cannot always name a specific institution based on the principle of «do no harm» — prisoners are in a vulnerable position every day.

Irina Biryukova wrote an emotional statement about the feeling of powerlessness — you have the status of a lawyer, you know that torture continues, you read descriptions of bloody atrocities, but you can't stop them.

— I often don't know how to do it. Where to go, to whom, what to ask, what to demand, what to write. There are no laws now, and we lawyers have the main rule — do no harm. Every doctor has his own cemetery. Every lawyer has his own colony, morgue, mental hospital, pre-trial detention center, prison. And this is a responsibility. Sometimes I do not know how to cope with it, — says Irina.

In critical situations, while you are thinking about what to do, the simplest human instincts turn on: to comfort, to feed.

— In one of the colonies of one of the regions, many convicts were beaten. The right people warned me that I should not go there. Otherwise it will get even worse for them. And so, everything will get better now, we have already created a lot of attention, we have to wait. Here you don't know what to do… I made some pizzas. Different. Then they told me — some prisoners said that these were the most delicious pizzas in their entire lives. You can imagine how I cried, » Irina said.

Torture of prisoners