The Department has refuted itself

OPEN LETTER

“DONETSK MEMORIAL”
No. 141 dated 12 October 2008
To the Head of the State Department of Ukraine
for the Execution of Punishments, Mr. V. V. Koshchynets
Melnykova St., 81, Kyiv, 04050
Copies to: Minister of Justice of Ukraine
Commissioner for Human Rights
European Committee for the Prevention of Torture

Dear Vasyl Vasylovych!

On 1 July 2008, I sent you letter No. 93 with an information request regarding the Department’s claims that invitations were extended to representatives of our organisation to visit any penal institution and familiarise themselves with the real situation therein.
I have already reported that I received response No. 1/1-129 dated 17 July 2008, signed by the Acting Head of the Department for Organizational and Analytical Work, Mr. V. V. Promohaibenko. The response, in particular, stated that “considering the large number of citizens' associations in Ukraine, the Department is not in a position to invite representatives of these organisations personally and therefore appeals to them with proposals for cooperation publicly, without giving preference to any of them.” The letter contains no information about any personal invitations.
Therefore, in my letter No. 121 dated 19 August 2008, I noted that “this, in fact, confirms that “Donetsk Memorial” itself did not receive any invitations to visit the colonies.”
In response to this letter, we received answer No. 1/1-228 dated 17 September, in which different information is presented, stating that “during 2007-2008, you visited only 4 institutions: in February 2007 - Yenakiieve Penal Colony (No. 52); in June 2007 - Mykytynska Penal Colony (No. 87); in July 2008 - Western Penal Colony (No. 97); in January 2008 - Donetsk Penal Colony (No. 124).”
I inform you that during this time, in addition to these visits, I carried out a number of other visits – to the Makiivka Penal Colony No. 32 in the summer of 2008; another visit was to the Western Penal Colony No. 97 in May 2007; I also visited the Donetsk SIZO (pre-trial detention centre) during a meeting of the local supervisory commission in January 2008. I was invited to the “Chervona Kalyna” festival at the Mariupol Penal Colony in August 2007 and even spoke there with Ms. N. H. Kalashnyk. Throughout 2006, I visited all three SIZOs of the Donetsk region several times – information seminars for the institutions’ personnel were conducted there; I also visited the Dzerzhynsk colony, the Selydove and Torez colonies, the Priazovska women’s colony, and several times the Mariupol Penal Colony.
But the point is not how many times I actually visited the colonies during 2007-2008.
It is worth returning to the key phrase posted on 25 June of this year on the Department’s website in the “Official response of the Department to the accusations of some human rights organisations”, which caused my first request on this topic, namely:
“Invitations from the Department’s management to visit any penal institution and familiarise themselves with the real situation therein are being ignored by representatives of the said organisation.”
Instead, in your latest response, you provide examples of my visits to colonies; therefore, the representatives of our organisation are not actually ignoring the Department’s invitations, but are periodically visiting institutions and familiarising themselves with the conditions of detention of convicts and the working conditions of the personnel. The facts cited in the last letter actually refute the statement in the “Official response...”, which means it does contain false information, and therefore the call to you, Vasyl Vasylovych, expressed in my previous letter remains relevant:
“Either provide written confirmation of our organisation ignoring your invitations to visit colonies, or post a refutation of the false information about such ignoring on the agency’s website. In case of refusal, I will be forced to consider the issue of appealing to the court.”
You did not provide confirmation of the ignoring of your invitations; on the contrary, you provided examples of visits to colonies. So, now I ask you to officially refute the false information.
I would like to focus your attention on the fact that in public speeches, I always emphasize that the situation in the system is gradually improving, that the ill-treatment of convicts is not of a total nature, and that the staff’s attitude towards convicts is often quite acceptable and complies with legal standards. However, such an assessment does not exclude the fact that there are cases, and unfortunately not isolated ones, where prisoners' rights are violated and the attitude of the staff is brutal. Such reports of ours are either ignored by you and your colleagues, or inspections are carried out formally, and the true state of affairs is hidden behind untruthful replies. And it is precisely this side of the activities of the administration of institutions and the management of the agency that is the subject of public statements by representatives of our organisation.
Our initiative to work more closely with the management of institutions and agency bodies, in order to try from the very beginning to distinguish reports about genuine human rights violations from attempts by convicts to imitate such violations and provide false, distorted information, did not find a response from you. You replied that the agency allegedly does not possess the right of legislative initiative, and therefore any cooperation procedures cannot be applied, other than those defined by law. This is an overt unwillingness to cooperate in reality. Perhaps this is caused by your fears of exposing the true scale of human rights violations in individual institutions of the system and the need to then bring the system’s employees to justice. And to avoid such cooperation, you repeatedly publicly accuse representatives of human rights organisations of what they do not do (for example, of ignoring invitations to visit colonies), and some of your colleagues go as far as accusing human rights defenders of carrying out orders from criminals.
I would like to emphasize that the mistakes of some human rights organisations in highlighting violations of convicts’ rights, and not always correct actions in making public the alleged facts of violations, cannot be grounds for you, as the head of a respected and responsible agency, to ignore the initiatives and appeals of all or many human rights organisations. And this is exactly what has been observed over the last three and a half years. It is precisely your unwillingness, and perhaps inability and incompetence to cooperate constructively, that forces human rights defenders, including our organisation, to appeal to you publicly, and when you do not wish to react – to appeal to the higher leaders of the state or to the court.
As for the Department’s proposal to “optimise the ways of our further cooperation... to provide the Department with copies of the constituent documents of “Donetsk Memorial” or to report the sources where, in accordance with Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On Citizens’ Associations”, the main documents of the organisation, the composition of its management, as well as data on sources of funding and expenses, were published”, this information is contained on our organisation’s website at http://prison.memo.ru. In this context, it is worth emphasising that detailed information about our organisation was sent by us to the Department back in 2006 by letter No. 104 addressed to the executive secretary of the editorial office of the newspaper “Zakon i Oboviazok” (“Law and Duty”), Kostyantyn Piasetsky, for publication in the newspaper “Zakon i Oboviazok” (a copy of the letter is attached). Judging by the reaction at that time, i.e., complete ignoring of our appeal, it seems there was no need for the Department to optimise the ways of our further cooperation then. And even now, I have great doubts about the sincerity of the cited statements, because exactly the same information was requested in the court process following my lawsuit against you, Mr. Koshchynets, by your lawyer. And the lawsuit, by the way, concerns the non-provision of information by the head of the agency regarding the events in the Iziaslav Colony No. 31, when the rights of convicts were massively and brutally violated. So, perhaps the Department really needs the requested information specifically for the defence of the head of the agency in court?
Summing up, I can repeat again: the “Official response of the Department to the accusations of some human rights organisations” contains false information aimed at baseless accusations by the agency against two human rights organisations. These statements mislead readers and visitors of the site and create a negative image of human rights organisations. Such actions by the management of the agency are essentially an attempt to hide their true attitude towards leading human rights organisations and are a reflection of the closed nature of the system and the insincerity of the assurances, including yours, Vasyl Vasylovych, about being inclined to cooperate. You cannot build cooperation on untruths, if not to say more accurately.
You are mistaken if you believe that by empty accusations of human rights defenders regarding the problems of the system, you will be able to convince society that everything is fine in your agency.
You will not be able to.
You will only succeed in leaving behind a sad reputation for yourself after you step down from your post as head of the agency. I am confident that time will put all accents in their places, and the truth cannot be hidden for long, no matter how much someone would like it to be.
I am bringing to your attention that this letter will be published on the “Prison Portal” website.
Appendix. Letter to the newspaper “Zakon i Oboviazok” dated 31 August 2006.
With best wishes,

Oleksandr BUKALOV
Chairman of the Board of “Donetsk Memorial”,
Chairman of the Penitentiary Society of Ukraine