PRISON TYRANNY.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1971, 30 January 1914, Page 11

PRISON TYRANNY.

■; , •IN RUSSIA; A 80RRY STATE OF AFFAIRS. The barbarous treatment- of political prisoners forms one of the standing charges against the- Russian bureaucracy, says a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian.". Every day th-o press, tho courts, the discussion, in the Duma bring to light now facts which, with tlio. same harrowing monotony, tell tho old tale of overcrowding, starvation," disease, tyranny, torture, and guicido which first Bliook the nerves of fiuropo tncnty-fivo years ago when it reached her from the pages of Mr, George Kennan.

.Russia's prison accommodation is vast-. It is sufficient to held a population of. 100,000 at any given moment. But on January 1, 1910- —to go no further back—the prisons contained 171,413, and on January 1, 1011, -177,017 persons, excluding those who were kept in custody in the police lock-* up, in th© houses of correction, or were detained while on march from one prison to another. Altogether there must have been on January 1, 1911, a prison population of fully 200,000, that is, double the number provided for by the existing accommodation. Tlio resuit is overcrowding, with the attendant physical and moral deterioration. Tlio foremost legal roview in Bussia, the "Pravo," recently described in detail tho conditions prevailing in some of the prisons, taken as a sample, where eighty, ninety, and oven a hundred prisoners are kept- in cells constructed for forty of fifty, and have to intermix and breathe the same foul air for almost the wfeolo twenty-four hours, having no accommodation sot only for sleep but oven for sitting, so that roost of theiii pass -eighteen hours a-, day standing or, at best, in perfect immobility. In those places tlio limiMd sleeping accommodation.is often used bytwo shifts, olio resting from nine in the evening till two in the morning, and the other taking their place fruin two in the morning till seven.

THe Effeot on Hoaltli. The eifoefc of these conditions on tiio health of tlio prisoners can well be agined. Infectious and opidemie disease, and especially' tuberculosis, rage constantly among tho prisoners, invalidating, in many welUautheiitidated cases. 00 and even 70 per cent, of their .total number. In addition, tho cells in many cases, even in the capitals, suffer ffoiii want of light and warmth, and tho lack of tho niost elementary sanitary arrangements. _ "Jly ceil is dark, damp, and full of dirt, and vermin croep along tho wall"—so says a Finnish Magistrate irom among tlioso who had been-recently arrested aml thrown into a St- Petersburg prison. In these circumstances Oven forced labour in tho mines or on tlio railways, which used to bo tlio rule but- is now tho exception -in Siberia, is regarded as a kind of salvation, and prisoners often dispute) this chance of getting out jinto tho fresh air. The food is as bad as tho accommodation. Itjs inadecjujit-d both in quantity and in quality, consisting for the most part of cabbage soup with a small pieeo of indigestible meat oiieo a da,y, and dry black bread, mouldy and stinking, twice a day. Often even tlio hungriest prisoners cannot toueh the food, .and throw it a.way; and recently at tho celebrated Butir'ki Prison in Moscow the food gave rise' to terrible dysentery, which caused a number of deaths. One prisoner there, rather. than touch the food, lived several months oil sugar and small bificuits. In former times prisoners bad still, the right to receive money from- their relatives and. friends.,- with which tlibv-t'o'ild biij'-'tliej'r necessaries; At present tlre.V m'iiy only got 6s. a month, formerly, also, they Were paid QOTletbiniJ— from a halfpenny to a pwwy a day—when doing forced labour.' Even this niagnificeiit. sum lias now ili many places br"-?!i -cut down to ono penny—a month! '

111-Troattnonf. But worse tha,u the insanitaty condition of tho prison?, worse even than the abominable fowl, is the treatment meted out to the prisoners.. "My name is Vnssili Ivanovitch Sakroyski, and I, am your Tsar and-your God"—in tl»st> words the chief warder of tho Kaluga prison, a nau-commissioned officer, espcliiid from tiio army, described to tho prisoners his position as regards thorn. This was perfectly • true. The prison eiffie'era aro the Tsars ffld tho Gods in their little kingdom, and can do whatever they like. If a prisoner does not tep-ly to their greeting' in tho exact manner prescrihoa by tire custom, if they complain of their food, if tllpy protest against being placed m tho same cell with tho infectious srek, or with ft raving maniac, tlioir fate is flogging, beating, and the dark cell. In-the Pskov prison the beating and the torture of prisoners, with or without pretext, was carretl on on such a refined system that ■ultimately over ft. hundred prisoners declared a hunger-strike, whereupon a number of them \vere flogged with the birch and others were put into the celh The scandal finally became so groat that the Government had to order an inquiry. The same story has just been repeated in the Orel prison, Tlift prisoners wero repeatedly stripped naked and mad© to pass between two rows of warders, who heat them with sticks and keys. One night sixteen ward&rs broke into a. eoll and beat tho inmates almost to death. Fifty prisoners ultimately declared a hunger-strike, and only consented to receive food after two of them had been carried ftw'ay to the infirmary and tho Governor had pledged his word to ceaso tho horrible practices. But on tho very next day a number of the hunger-strikers wero placet! in the dark cell and terribly beaten. Thereupon one committed suicide by hanging himself, and another went mad. These facts havejust come to light,- though they took place last year. The dark cell, it may be observed, is an underground dungeon.*, without light, veutijatimii or heating, where, as the rules prescribe, it prisoner may not bo kept more than soven days. As a matter of fact they are kept for wholes and oven months, and' some of tho Orel prisoners wero kept ini chains there for over a year, Theso are not' exceptional instances of abuso of power, but tho rale, the system, tho unwritten but well-understood law, practised far the purpose of breaking the body .and spirit or tho "politicals.'' It is part aild parcel of the irresponsible autocratic and bureaucratic regime at present obtaining in Russia.