RUSSIA: Brutal treatment of a young conscript, who lost both his legs, has thrust army bullying back into the spotlight, writes Peter Finn in Moscow
A horrific case of "hazing" at a Russian military academy has catapulted the brutal treatment of conscripts back into the public eye and led to demands that the defence ministry finally deal with a problem it has been accused of ignoring for years.
A 19-year-old private was allegedly tied to a chair and beaten on his legs for three hours by drunken superiors on New Year's Eve. The conscript, who was unable to stand after the beating, received no medical attention until January 4th, but by then gangrene had set in. Doctors were forced to amputate his legs and sexual organs.
Eight other recruits were also allegedly assaulted, but not as badly as Pte Andrei Sychyov, who remains in critical but stable condition in a hospital. Senior officials in Moscow said they were not made aware of the incident until last week.
On Monday president Vladimir Putin called the assault a tragic event and a crime. In televised remarks, while speaking to government ministers, he ordered defence minister Sergei Ivanov "to submit proposals on legal and organisational matters to improve educational work in the army and navy".
Human rights groups have for years complained about violent bullying in the Russian army. "The vast majority of army officers either choose to ignore evidence of the abuses or to encourage them" because they see the attacks as "an effective means of maintaining discipline in their ranks", Human Rights Watch said in 2004, when it issued a major report on the problem.
"Throughout their first year new recruits live under the constant threat of violence for failing to comply with second-year conscripts' arbitrary demands, from polishing their shoes to procuring food and alcohol."
All Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 are supposed to serve two years in the armed forces, a requirement that will be reduced to one year by 2008. Many parents go to enormous lengths, including bribery, to shield their sons from the draft. Only about 9 per cent of eligible men are actually drafted, according to the defence ministry.
The army insists that it is tackling violent bullying. It said last week that 16 soldiers were killed as a result of hazing incidents in 2005. But human rights groups argue that the figure is much higher if soldiers driven to suicide by hazing are included. According to the defence ministry, 276 soldiers killed themselves last year.
Doctors in the city of Chelyabinsk, where Pte Sychyov was beaten, called the local branch of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers to alert them to the incident, but it only became public last week. The soldier's family was not informed until he had already undergone the first of a number of amputations.
Mr Ivanov, who is seen as a possible successor to Mr Putin, at first played down the incident when reporters asked him about it during a trip to Armenia last week.
"There is nothing serious there, otherwise I would certainly have known about it," he said. But he backpedalled as the scale of public revulsion in Russia became known.
Mr Ivanov dispatched a senior general to the Chelyabinsk academy east of Moscow, to investigate the incident. He also fired the academy's head - (LA Times-Washington Post Service)