DUTCH PAPERS DON'T COVER PUBLIC EXECUTIONS?
There is a slow public execution taking place in Russia. Ex-Vice President of the destroyed YUKOS oil company Vasily Aleksanian is dying from several diseases and is denied proper care. That is unless he signs testimony against the YUKOS creator Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the testimony Aleksanian and many others say is completely false.
Against the worldly accepted ethics, it has been openly announced that Aleksanian suffers from AIDS. He has also caught tuberculosis in jail and developed lymphoma (cancer). Every day he has fever and unbearable pains. Yet, up until 6 February he had been forced to attend the court hearings. Today the court has taken a “merciful” decision to allow Aleksanian stay in the jail hospital ward instead of attending the hearings. According to Aleksanian's lawyers, the jail hospital is completely unequipped for heavy retrovirus therapy that he has to undergo, a therapy that is in itself almost lethal. This means that Aleksanian is basically left to die in the ward.
Meanwhile, Aleksanian should have been out of jail on bail in June 2006 already, when it turned out that his eyesight had dramatically deteriorated during the two months he spent in the unsanitary conditions behind bars. According to the official Russian law, if a convict's eyesight drops to below 0.05, he should not be held on the premises of a penitentiary unit. Aleksanian's eyesight dropped to 0.01.
In November and December 2007 the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg twice ruled that Aleksanian should be set free and get proper medical treatment. The court's rulings have been neglected.
Khodorkovsky and several young activists are on hunger strike in support of Aleksanian.
There is no rational explanation to what happens to Aleksanian, who is not even convicted yet, his guilt not even proven, Russian newspaper Vedomosti writes – one of the few media daring to speak about the case. The Aleksanian case has not even reached any major Russian TV channel, which is not surprising.
What is surprising to me is that no Dutch newspaper has written about this case, except for Trouw (that devoted two short news items to Aleksanian).
There is plenty of English language articles about him, so it is not like the information in an available language is missing. Besides, the larger Dutch papers all have their own correspondents working in Moscow .
What would be their problem then?
Correction 7 February: On 7 February Aleksanian was allowed to be relocated to a specialized clinic, outside of the jail.
The several Russian activists fighting to allow Aleksanian proper medical treatment finished their hunger strike, but say it would be dangerous to speak of an end to the struggle or of true success. Obviously, the more humane decision regarding Aleksanian was taken thanks to the arrival of a new judge, and therefore depended on a purely subjective factor. Thousands of Russian convicts remain in unspeakable conditions, living in overcrowded tuberculoses-infested cells.
In the case of Aleksanian, the Russian society has acted particularly fearfully and reluctantly (only some 150 people demonstrated on the street). In a case of a non-public figure it is possible that no one would act at all. Meanwhile, the lawlessness and cruelty are spreading and may one day come to the homes of those pretending to stay indifferent.
In the Dutch press there is still little notice of the developments around Aleksanian. Besides Trouw , only the NRC Handelsblad has mentioned Aleksanian's name, devoting just two sentences to him in a report on Khodorkovsky on 7 February.
I asked an NRC Handelsblad editor, who used to work as correspondent in Moscow for the past 7 years, why was there almost nothing written about Aleksanian in the Dutch papers.
- Aleksanian? Is that the guy who has AIDS and cancer?
- Yes.
- We had something about YUKOS just recently. And about Aleksanian I don't really know much.
In the jail where Aleksanian was not getting medical treatment, another detainee (about whom it was also known that he had AIDS) died on 9 February.
Correction 11 February: On 11 February Drew Holiner, Aleksanyan's representative at the European Court of Human Rights, issued the following statement:
We are able to confirm that the hospital where Vasily [Aleksanyan] currently resides is not a specialist AIDS clinic. Therefore, his transfer was not compliant with the decision of the ECHR that Vasily must be transferred to ‘a hospital specialised in the treatment of AIDS and concomitant diseases'. Moreover, the fact that Vasily has yet to be granted access to either his lawyers or independent doctors is a further violation of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Correction 18 February: Only 9 days after Aleksanian was hospitalized were his lawyers allowed to briefly see him. As it turned out, Aleksanian's conditions have only worsened: he has only been able to shower twice since he was moved, there is round-the-clock guard by his bed and, in those unhygienic circumstances, he is permanently handcuffed to his bed.
Speaking of the situation his client now faces, Drew Holiner, Aleksanyan's legal counsel for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said: ""He told us he had been desperately trying to contact us but was refused access to a phone or a means to get a message to us. He is very, very isolated. We have no idea when we can next meet with him and he has no idea when he will next be able to see us. This is very troubling as we know that he has consistently been under pressure to give false testimony against former colleagues in return for some form of deal".
Only one more article and a couple of brief references to Aleksanian have appeared in the Dutch press since this column was furst published.
Further updates can be found at Drew Holiner's website: