Russia is still a secret society

The climate of secrecy in Russia is alive and well - as the lack of  information on the gas in the Moscow theatre siege shows. One problem, campaigner Alexey Simonov tells Judith Crosbie, is that the Western media are less concerned about Russian human rights abuse since the fall of Communism.

As a former KGB agent, Russian President Vladimir Putin knows a lot about keeping secrets. During the recent Moscow hostage crisis, when he chose to withhold important information from the public, he put these skills to the test.

Alexey Simonov, who campaigns through the Moscow-based Glasnost Defence Foundation for access to information and media rights has seen it all before, during and since the days of the Soviet Union.

"The habit of special services people is to keep as many secrets as possible for as long as possible; their real meaning depends on how many secrets they have," says Simonov.

The decision not to release the name of the gas used to knock out the Chechen rebels in the theatre until several days later cost civilian lives and shocked Russia's Western allies, whose citizens were among the 115 who died from the gas.

The treatment of the former hostages in the hospitals, whose families were not allowed to see them, further raised suspicions about the openness of the Russian authorities. Some of the Moscow newspapers reported that even numbers given out for relatives to seek information turned out to connect to shops in the city. "It might be just a bureaucratic mistake but it shows the attitude of the state towards its citizens," says Simonov.

The tendency to keep information from citizens is illustrated in the treatment of the media in Russia, according to Simonov. Journalists are hampered from investigating the authorities through a lack of openness and legislation to back up their right to information. "The problem of Putin, as was the problem of his predecessors, is that they believe sources of information for the public should not be the press but the special services," he says. Those who try to break through this system can be faced with intimidation, jail and even murder. Between 10 and 15 journalists are murdered each year in Russia and most are killed because of their jobs, says Simonov.

Cases the Glasnost Defence Foundation is involved in include that of Grigori Pasko, jailed by a military court for spying after he filmed the Russian navy dumping radioactive waste in waters close to Japan. "Instead of an outcry among the authorities about the waste being dumped there was an outcry about how he could be allowed to shoot the film," says Simonov.

The consequence of a weak press which is fearful of delving too deep into government activities is that human rights are neglected. A new report by Amnesty International, to kick-off a campaign on human rights in Russia, documents torture and ill-treatment in police custody.

"Methods of torture commonly reported include beatings, electric shocks, rape, the use of gas masks to induce near suffocation and tying detainees in painful positions," the report states. Thousands of children are among those kept in insanitary and overcrowded prisons.

The war in Chechnya is another area highlighted by the Amnesty report with Russian forces reported to be involved in attacks on civilian homes as acts of reprisals. "Russian forces have been responsible for widespread human-rights violations such as 'disappearances', extra-judicial executions and torture, including rape," the report says. "They beat me again and said, 'Let's cut off his head'," Alaudin Sadykov, a schoolteacher from Chechnya, was quoted in the report as saying following his detention by a special division of the Russian police force known as OMON. "They took a large knife for slaughtering animals and cut off my left ear completely. Then they said, 'We'll cut your head off later'."

While the Glasnost Defence Foundation puts pressure on the government for a change in the law, Simonov says that, more importantly, there needs to be a change in mentality in Russia, which, he says, could be spurred on by international pressure.

"When we were opponents, the international media were more intense in finding out the faults of our president and government. Now, as soon as we are allies, they are very vague about it. Coupled with this, the war on terrorism also makes it easier to violate human rights."

During his visit to Ireland last week, Simonov met Michael Woods, chairman of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee, to explain the need for attention from Ireland to human rights in Russia when it takes over the presidency of the European Union in January.

The events in Moscow during the hostage crisis meant Simonov didn't have to work hard to show the committee the shortcomings of the Russian administration and that, 10 years after the Soviet Union's collapse, old habits die hard.