Emergency at a Ryazan girls' penal colony
According to Igor Adamovich, a representative of the prisoners' rights organisation ‘Gulagu.NET’, a mass brawl occurred among inmates at the ‘Ryazan Educational Colony’ on 27 April.
Since then, all the convicted teenagers have refused food. Igor Adamovich has appealed to the Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) with a request to investigate the situation.
“A member of the Federal Penitentiary Service staff told me about this incident,” Adamovich reported to Life News. “At the moment, it is impossible for either me or other human rights activists to even approach the colony; the access routes are blocked by people in civilian clothes.”
He emphasised that the management of the Ryazan regional FSIN department is carefully concealing the fact that there are disturbances.
“There is no proper public oversight in the region,” explained Vladimir Osechkin, head of the working group for the creation of the ‘ONK.RF’ portal. “Instead of constructive criticism of the FSIN, we see absolute inaction on the part of the members of the Public Monitoring Commission (ONK) and the commissioners for human rights and children's rights.”
Young female criminals are guarded by women
The ‘Ryazan Educational Colony’ houses young female criminals aged between 14 and 18. As there is no communication with them, it is impossible to say with certainty what caused the mass unrest.
According to Adamovich, the cause of the hunger strike was the dismissal of the colony’s warden, Colonel Aleksandr Davydov. On 26 April, the deputy head of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), Aleksey Velichko, and the head of the FSIN for the Ryazan region, Sergey Ushakov, arrived at the facility and announced the change in leadership.
“The children are demanding the return of Davydov and are threatening to slash their wrists if the FSIN leadership does not meet their demands,” Igor Adamovich stated.
The press service of the FSIN for the Ryazan region assured Life News that there is no riot in the colony.
“This is the first I am hearing of this from you, but I am certain that this information will not be confirmed,” a press service employee said.
“The girls are very troubled; the majority are imprisoned for murder,” says Adamovich. “But they are children nonetheless, and we do not know what is happening to them in the colony right now, without observers and behind closed doors.”
This is not the first case in recent months where personnel decisions by the FSIN have been accompanied by mass disturbances in colonies. In early March, a hunger strike at IK-3 in the Kursk region lasted about a week. During that event, several hundred prisoners slashed their arms.