Russia revives Soviet-era tactics to quash dissent, says UN expert
By Olivia Le Poidevin
The BM expert on Monday, Geneva (Reuters) -rusya, opponents and anti -war voices in a more oppressive environment to silence the Soviet period, such as forced psychiatric treatment plays.
Right groups said that President Vladimir Putin’s government has been further bent into authoritarian since the full -scale occupation of Ukraine more than three years ago, but rejected and blamed the west of a Smear campaign of Moscow.
This month, a report of the UN’s Rights Special Rapporteur in Russia Mariana Katzarova found that state -supported pressure has become increasing and systematic through national security laws and other measures.
“Punishing psychiatry returned as a tool against anti -war sounds,” he told journalists in Geneva.
The Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva, Reuters, said that Moscow did not recognize his mission by the Foreign Minister and did not call his work illegitimate. Moscow previously called the criticism of rights records as unfounded.
Since the occupation of Ukraine, more powerful laws have passed to punish the opponents and the perceived traitors.
Katzarova, torture, criminal prosecution and challenging psychiatry is among the measures used, he said.
“Receiving opponents former Soviet vehicle, in this case anti -war activists, also journalists,” he said.
Scarring experience
In March, Reuters reviewed the case materials of two female activists who define the wound ordeal of being sent by the court order to make psychiatric assessments at a Siberian hospital.
Some of the challenging psychiatry measures are considered open -ended as an invasive and unnecessary tests and a psychiatric patient.
Katzarova gave an example of journalist Maria Ponomarenko, whom he said to be ordered to receive compulsory psychiatric treatment to protect his anti -war stance.
Ponomarenko was imprisoned for spreading “fake news” about the war in Ukraine in 2023 and in March he submitted an additional penalty for 10 years.
Russia, maintaining internal stability and Western intelligence agencies accused of trying to destabilize the country, he said.
Katzarova, the spread of foreign agents and false news, journalists, political opponents and anti -war activists as enemies of the state as the enemies of the opposition and critics to suppress the “mass”, he said.
According to the Russian Group OVD-info, more than 20,000 people have been arrested since the full-scale Ukrainian invasion began to express an anti-war position.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin, Editing by Miranda Murray and Andrew Cawthorne)
