Day: October 31, 2021

Hunting Season

Since no one wants to ask me to comment on [Valery] Rashkin and the moose, I will tell you myself.

This is punishment for disloyalty. Rashkin flirted with the Navalnists and now, after the elections, he is being punished. Punishment is the only means available to the authorities to react to disloyalty and it concerns everyone involved in the process, not just the opposition. Remember what happened to Poklonskaya.

I emphasize that, in this situation, talking about Rashkin’s personal qualities, alcoholism or hunting is simply meaningless, or rather inappropriate, because talking nonsense diverts the conversation away from the main point — the political terror practiced by the authorities.

Anyone who pokes their head up even a little bit is immediately pulled out, strung up and skinned real good. This is a metaphor for animal husbandry, not hunting. Don’t say that I’m exaggerating — it’s still terror, intimidation and the destruction of even minimal nodes of [anti-regime] organization. The authorities don’t need to engage in mass killings yet, because the opposition is peaceful and manageable.

P.S. Hunting should not be banned, but the use of weapons in hunting should be prohibited. if you want to kill a moose, go ahead: you have teeth and two legs.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Valery Rashkin, pictured during a Russian parliament session in March 2020. AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin/Euronews

Valery Rashkin: Russian MP accused of illegal hunting after elk carcass found in car
Euronews
October 29, 2021

A Russian MP has been accused of illegal hunting after the remains of an elk were found in his car.

Valery Rashkin, a politician for the opposition Communist party, told Russian media that he was stopped by police while driving in Russia’s Saratov region.

Rashkin has stated that he and his companion did not shoot the animal and had planned to report the matter to the authorities.

“I believe this is a provocation,” he told the independent broadcaster RTVI on Friday.

Russian police said they were alerted to gunfire in the Lysogorsk district, 900 kilometres east of Moscow, and found a car at the scene of the incident.

“During the inspection of the car, the police found fragments of an elk carcass, an ax, and two knives with traces of blood,” they said in a statement.

The two men inside the car said they had only found the animal’s shot carcass and had “decided to butcher it,” police added.

The driver of the vehicle also refused to undergo a test for alcohol at the scene. Authorities later discovered two weapons cases, hidden in a bush near the remains of the elk.

“In one of them there was a hunting rifle with a night vision sight, and in the second there was a tripod and cartridges,” the police said.

“In addition, the cases contain a weapon permit and a hunting ticket issued in the name of V.F. Rashkin.”

“A criminal case was initiated on the fact of illegal hunting,” the regional interior ministry said in a statement.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said they had taken over the case following “great public outcry”.

“The involvement of the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Valery Rashkin, in the incident is being verified,” they added in a statement.

As a Russian MP, Raskhin holds immunity from prosecution but lawmakers can be stripped of that privilege by a vote in parliament.

He could also be dismissed by the Duma if found guilty of hunting without a license, which carries a maximum prison sentence of two years.

Rashkin recently took part in several demonstrations, claiming that the Russian parliamentary elections were marred by electoral voting fraud.

Doppelganger

“It’s kind of a dystopia. In some respects. Of course, it has nothing to do with reality. The world is shrinking and becoming cramped. Something or someone is always offended in close quarters. And there’s always someone pointing a gun at your head. Sometimes it’s you.”

Masyanya, Episode 152: “Doppelganger.” (Toggle the “CC” button for English subtitles)

____________

The caste of those deprived of their civil rights — foreign agents, undesirable organizations, extremists of all stripes — will constantly expand. Social stigmatization will be strongly encouraged. The number of persons on different registries and lists, and under police watch will grow exponentially. Legal restrictions — bans on participating in elections, serving on various public councils, founding mass media, attending football matches, working in certain areas, and so on — will be supplemented by defamation campaigns. The separation of the estates in terms of legal and social status will be vigorously encouraged by the authorities.

Source: Pavel Chikov, “Not a Tyranny Yet: A Prognosis for the Rest of Putin’s Fourth Term,” Republic, 19 October 2021. Translated by the Russian Reader

____________

 

Artist unknown, Russian National Guardsmen in Their Free Time. Posted by Dmitry Vrubel on Facebook. Thanks to Sergei Damberg for the heads-up

____________

Security forces raided a gathering to write letters to political prisoners at the Vogel Bar. They showed up along with Rospotrebnadzor officials for a surprise inspection on the evening of October 24. After managing to tally forty-five people on the premises and not find markings on the floor mats, the officials sealed the establishment prior to a court hearing. The bar’s management fears bankruptcy and plans to open a new bar in a new location.

The latest gathering to letters to political prisoners at the Vogel this time ended with a visit by regulatory authorities. The police officers who arrived twenty minutes after the event started immediately stated that the 76th police precinct had received a complaint alleging that the bar was not in compliance with the mask mandate. At that moment, the gathering, at which attendees were to write letters to the performance artist Pavel Krisevich, jailed on charges of disorderly conduct after a performance on Red Square in which he pretended to shoot himself, had just begun. That evening, Krisevich’s friends and acquaintances, as well as former political prisoners, were to speak to the guests. One of the bar’s co-founders, Valentin Khoroshenin, told Zaks.Ru that the complaint claimed that a “meeting of anti-covidniks” was planned for that evening at the Vogel. He believes that this was just an excuse to find non-existent violations and close the bar.

The inspection report indicated that more than forty-five people were present in the room at the time. The bar’s management are adamant that this was not the case. The Vogel’s owners have already studied surveillance camera tapes and counted less than forty people on the premises, including the police officers.

Other violations included the absence of markings on floor mats and an insufficient supply of medical masks. According to regulations, such establishments should have a five days’ supply of personal protective equipment. The available supply was only enough for one day. Rospotrebnadzor officials did not enter the kitchen. According to Khoroshenin, they claimed they were too tired to do so.

Vogel Bar has been in business since March 2021. From the very beginning it advertised itself as a venue for activists: political lectures, discussions and debates were held there. During this entire time, Rospotrebnadzor never carried out inspections. But the Interior Ministry regularly sent its people there. For example, Center “E” officers attended the debates. The security forces showed up for other letter-writing gatherings, but everything had ended without trouble.

Text & photos: Konstantin Lenkov, Zaks.ru, 25 October 2021. Translated by the Russian Reader

____________

We have been preparing an investigation into torture in Russian prisons for almost a year. It took a lot of time to track down, earn the trust of, and obtain testimonies from former inmates of the penal colony in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, thousands of kilometers from central Russia. Simultaneously with The Insider’s investigation, Russian human rights activists published an archive of video footage depicting torture being inflicted on prisoners across Russia. The clips, obtained from the FSB and FSIN secret archive, show prisoners from Irkutsk, Saratov, Belgorod, Rostov and other Russian regions being raped, beaten and humiliated. Torture victims explain their torturers’ motives by their desire to break their will in order to obtain material for blackmailing other prisoners, make them confess to crimes, pay tribute, or even to start torturing other prisoners themselves. This all takes place in the modern world, in a country where there is no war, where torturers are not tasked with extracting valuable military information from prisoners at any cost. Torture is rampant in Russia, a country that has signed a number of human rights and anti-torture conventions and seems to enjoy a peaceful life. We have long known that in Russia, prison is not a place of correction, but rather a strange world separate from everything else, where guards and inmates resurrect on a daily basis the practices of the Stalinist Gulag. This has not always been the case. As early as ten years ago there was serious talk in Russia about the need to reform and humanize the penitentiary system. Now things are different. The authorities have been clearly and unambiguously showing how they prefer to rule the country. That is mainly by fear. Investigations into torture have hardly been a revelation, but in a split instant, they made it impossible to ignore torture and pretend it only concerns those behind bars. Of course, the situation will not change overnight, but one thing is certain – this knowledge has now become an integral part of our society. In the following article, we bring you the raw testimony of people who have experienced torture in Russian prisons. They share their thoughts on why it is used, the impact on them, and recount the involvement even of doctors in their ordeal.

Source: The Insider, 19 October 2021. Thanks to Antti Rautiainen for the heads-up