from Chelyabinsk Public Oversight Commission group of observers led by Nikolai Shchur (D.A. Latypova, V.Yu Prikhodkina, N.A. Shchur, T.M. Shchur)

Disinformation of the Public by the Chelyabinsk Oblast Main Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service website regarding the visit to the Atlyan Juvenile Colony on 11 December 2012 by a group of the following inspectors: N.A. Shchur and T.M. Shchur.

The Chelyabinsk Oblast Main Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service website (www.74.fsin.su) post information about our visit to the juvenile colony in Atlyan yesterday. We consider this material to be disinformation of the public a deliberate attempt to discredit our work as members of the Public Oversight Commission.

As we reported yesterday, all of our movements at the colony were painstakingly recorded in photos and videos taken by the Main Directorate's press service. The only thing they did not record was our one-on-one conversations with the prisoners. It was was in these conversations that we received some shocking information which we clearly reported to the colony management and the Directorate representatives accompanying us. (A copy of our Inspection Certificate was given to both the colony and the Main Directorate yesterday.) These extremely serious claims of gross violations of fundamental human rights made against the colony by us were also recorded in full by the press service. I even gave them a special interview at their request.

Thus the suppression (hushing up) of our observations given to the colony management of these – and I repeat – extremely serious offences cannot be seen as anything other than the deliberate disinformation of the public.

An outside observer visiting the Main Directorate site would form a positive opinion on the situation at the colony, but this is a deception.

We believe in this vein that the information about our visit to Atlyan Juvenile Colony was deliberately given by the press service and this submission shows that the Chelyabinsk Main Directorate has no plans to stop the continuous deception of the public, which the longer it goes on becomes nothing more than flagrant and cynical lies.

For this reason we are posting the video of Nikolai Shchur's interview about the results of the inspection at Atlyan Juvenile Colony on 11 December online.

You can view it by following this link: http://youtu.be/_CF54HWENvA.

We have sent the summary of our visit to the Atlyan Juvenile Colony to the oblast Prosecutor's Office and the oblast Investigative Directorate.

Nikolai Alekseevich Shchur 
Member of Chelyabinsk Oblast Public Oversight Commission, 
Director of the Urals Democratic Foundation 

12 December 2012