The Horrors of KGB "Filtration" in Russia

Filed under: Europe ~ Russia

At undoubtedly significant risk to his own life given the manner in which significant critics of the Kremlin have fallen by the wayside during the Putin years (as Publius Pundit has previousy documented), Mikhail Khodorkovsky's attorney Robert Amsterdam has been doing yeoman work on his blog to bring Russian accounts of the neo-Soviet crackdown in Russia into English and before the eyes of the world. This has included, for instance, a variety of significant analytical pieces by hero journalist Grigory Pasko and an elaborate scholarly review of the legal irregularities in the trial of his client.

In Amsterdam's most recent installment, he translates an article by human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov (pictured), whom Amnesty International has identifed as a victim of official oppression, regarding the ghastly KGB process of "filtration." The article begins like this:

After the end of the case of the Cadet, OMON officer S.V. Lapin, sentenced for the first time directly in the city of Grozny of the Chechen Republic to 11 years of deprivation of liberty for a crime against a peaceful citizen, I came into the case of the mass beating of peaceful citizens in the city of Blagoveshchensk of the Republic of Bashkortostan by officers of the police, as the lawyer representing the side of the victims. The "Blagoveshchensk case" turned out to be the most prominent and largest example of the spread of the Chechnya syndrome throughout other regions of Russia. Along with the length and the mass character of the crimes, the beating lasted 4 days, had an unmotivated character, extended to the entire city and nearby villages, and involved significant police forces, including some that had previously served in Chechnya. A very large number of victims (officially 342, realistically over 1000). A punitive mechanism known as "filtration," which has been widely encountered in Chechnya, was officially used during the course of this "mopping up operation."

Read the rest here.