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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 11/21/2006 12:36 PM
20.11.2006 21:27 MSK
If you want to be healthy...
In the summer of this year, camp guards found two lemons in the personal effects of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. They judged that since the lemons could not have been received during visits, and he could not have acquired them at the camp store, the lemons must have been obtained from other prisoners. For this offense, Khodorkovsky received ten 10 days in penal isolation (SHIZO), or more simply stated, a punishment room.

It not was absolute arbitrariness on the part of the camp’s administration to punish Khodorkovsky. It was in line with the "Rules of Internal Regulation of Penitentiaries", introduced by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in November 2005. Paragraph 4 Point 15 of these rules forbids "selling, buying, giving, or in any other manner obtaining food products, objects, and substances for personal use".

This is erroneous from the point of view of federal legislation, and generally thoughtless from a practical point of view. No one in the camps and prisons will ever abide by these rules, however many sentences they are given to twenty-four hour punishment rooms. In the tradition of all normal people, they share food with their neighbors. In prison the only person who eats alone, is the person who sits alone. For all other cases, the camp world has a witty saying: "If you want to be healthy, eat alone under a blanket". Such a thing (not sharing) perhaps occurs somewhere in the immense space of our native land, but this is the exception.

Neither Russian criminal- executive legislation nor international law has any similar "Rules of the Internal Regulation" – which are a creation of the Ministry of Justice and General Procurator's office.

Khodorkovsky’s attorney Yuri Schmidt, presented an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, requiring that the 4th Paragraph 15th Point of these rules be recognized as ineffective. The prohibition on exchanged products contradicts Russian and international legislation, Schmidt argues. This regulation deprives prisoners of their inherent rights to lawfully acquire property. The prohibition on sharing cigarettes, soap or tea with neighbors in the barracks is not only absurd, but is also amoral. According to Schmidt: "It has no educational value since frankly it diminishes human dignity, and does not contribute, but, on the contrary, prevents rehabilitation"
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The cancellation of this prohibition will make it possible to revive "thieves laws" in the camps", objects the Ministry of Justice. This "will make it possible for prisoners to appropriate the belongings and food products of others with impunity ", stated the Justice Department. The position of the Justice Department can be represented as follows: In order, for example, to put an end to bank robberies, it is necessary to liquidate all banks. True, bank robberies will cease. But it would be even simpler to abolish the institution of money.

The General Procurator's office also brought into court objections, but, without knowing how to really object actually merely talked in circles. For example, it agreed that a direct prohibition of the donation of products and things is absent from the law as formulated, but asserted that obtaining them by established by legal standards "undermines the very institution of criminal punishment". Obviously, the two lemons presented to Khodorkovsky will destroy the Russian penitentiary system. < br>
Nevertheless, the Attorney General's Office wrote: "Prisoners are forbidden to give others things and food products for personal use, i.e., to commit an act of where the right of the transfer is given up, but this has nothing in common with sharing some belongings and food products with other prisoners, which is forbidden neither by law nor by the administration"
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Therefore, if the law was good and was simply erroneously interpreted, was Khodorkovsky not given 10 days in SHIZO illegally? Then why does the procuratorship not suppress this lawlessness?

On October 30, the Day of Political Prisoners, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation decreed its refusal of Schmidt’s complaint. This is their gift to Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other Russian political prisoners on a date which is memorable for them. Political prisoners of Soviet times can recall much about the terrible life in the colonies and the prisons of the Brezhnev years, and the gulags of Stalin’s time. But even then, there was no prohibition on sharing food with comrades.

Temporary instruction under the heading "Top Secret", "About the Regime of Prisoners of the NKVD of the USSR", of 2 August, 1939, signed by Division Commander Chernyshov, contains many orders such as "barbed wire must be installed", and orders that prisoners have no more than 50 rubles personal money. There is not a word about the prohibition to share food and products.

In the "Top Secret" "Instructions about the Regime of Prisoners in the Special Camps of the MVD of the USSR" of September 17, 1950, signed by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Colonel General S. Kruglov, and coordinated with the Minister of the MGB of the USSR Colonel General Abakumov, it is also possible to find numerous rigid prohibitions and orders. From the "categorical prohibition" on placing "women and men in one and the same production area" to the prohibition on approaching nearer than 10 meters to a guard. There is no prohibition on ZEKS sharing with other ZEKS.

Of course Stalinist camps, especially the “special camps", had numerous other prohibitions, but nevertheless there was nothing as misanthropic as the Russian legislation which was upheld on October 30 by the Supreme Court.

Aleksandr PODRABINEK
http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/articles/2006/11/20/37114.html