Magomed Mutsolgov, head of the Ingush human rights organization “MASHR”, has published a letter on his blog from an Ingush father who argues that his son and other Chechen-Ingush prisoners are under pressure in penal colonies.

The applicant is Magomed Akhmedovich Oligov, a resident of Ingushetia. According to the letter, his son, Ruslan Magomedovich Oligov, born in 1978, was convicted and is now serving his sentence in the penal colony IK-33 in Abakan, Khakasia Republic of the Russian Federation. The prisoners from this colony say that they are subjected to harassment on religious and national grounds. Prisoners from Chechnya and Ingushetia are in the most severe conditions. They are punished without reason, and almost all of them either receive harsh treatment or are held in special cell-type units where they have limited rights, for example on meeting and correspondence issues.

According to the letter, Ismail Shamilovich Osmanov, born in 1975, and Alikhan Movsarovich Khamuradov, born in 1982, are in the same penal colony and they also asked to draw the attention of human rights defenders and journalists about the strict regime. They said that residents from Chechnya and Ingushetia are subject to constant pressure, physical violence, and moral pressure from the administration of the colony. At the same time, prisoners are brutally beaten, tortured and humiliated by the security officers. The colony’s administration gives Muslim prisoners pork to eat, which is forbidden in Islam and they do not let them pray.

*Text was translated by Waynakh Online and edited by Michael Capobianco