Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches (44 page)

Novaya gazeta
has discovered, however, that there are prisons in this world where Russians are liked, which is not the case in our homeland; where the warders look forward to seeing us, and will do their utmost to help us with any problems. These prisons are in Denmark, an entirely democratic, modern kingdom, and the inspectors of the Council of Europe deem them satisfactory.

“Personally I like Russians very much.” Warder Ani, a large Danish lady with a stylish shock of fair Baltic hair, happily tells me about herself and her world. Admittedly, she paces to and fro out of habit with the military deportment of someone accustomed to discipline, her hands clasped behind her back. “We don’t have to tell your people anything twice. They immediately carry out all instructions. They don’t go on about their rights. They aren’t picky about their food. They are happy to work.”

Ani is in charge of the first floor of the pre-trial facility, here known by the old-fashioned name of “The Bridewell,” in the coastal town of Esbjerg. She energetically demonstrates her work to me, and I can see that this is also the way she does it. She explains that the matter of gender equality is not left to resolve itself in Danish prisons, and that there is a strict quota established by the Ministry of Justice. In closed prisons and pre-trial facilities not less than 45 per cent of the staff should be female. This is believed to foster gentler attitudes and to create a favorable atmosphere. In open prisons the quota is 30 per cent. The Bridewell in Esbjerg is a closed prison, which means that the inmates are awaiting a court sentence or serving brief periods of less than six months’ detention. The entrance doors are firmly locked
and you can’t go out for a stroll in the town. We will come to Danish open prisons shortly. Meanwhile, Ani continues:

“As soon as we are brought a Russian who has been detained on a court order, we give him a book in Russian to keep. The book’s title is
A Guide to Serving Custodial Sentences
. It describes all the minor details of life, the law, and the prisoner’s responsibilities.”

While we are talking somebody leans against the wall outside cell No. 6, and immediately an indignant-looking prisoner emerges. They had accidentally leaned against the light switch for his cell. No. 6 puts it back on and silently goes in again.

“I expect we stopped him reading,” Ani comments. “Many of our inmates are highly strung, which is understandable. Here is our billiards room to help them relax. Here is the gym. Unfortunately the prisoner currently using it has asked not to be disturbed, so we can’t view it. We shall have to wait until he finishes. Here is the exercise yard. Here is a special room for drug addicts suffering withdrawal symptoms, and also for violent alcoholics or mentally ill people undergoing a crisis. It has a bed with restraining straps. There are no spyholes in the doors of the cells, and surveillance is forbidden. There is clean linen on all the beds. Each has its own washbasin. They have to ask to go to the toilet. A fridge? Of course, but you have to bring your own television. There are aerial sockets all over the place. Any more questions?”

Ani, for all her evident good-heartedness, has the cold eyes typical of a screw. She is strict and direct and is, ultimately, a warder, but in the course of our conversation I start having doubts. Whose side is she on? Whose rights is she defending? Is it not the rights of her own prisoners? The first, obvious comment which occurs to anybody used to living not in Denmark but in, say, Moscow, is, “But for heaven’s sake, this is a holiday home, not a prison!”

“I don’t agree. We have strict rules. We are not an open prison. Everybody here is obliged to work daily in the workshops. If you are in prison you have to work all right.” Ani has an iron Danish logic, and a similar manner of social interaction. Nuances, such as her implication that people do not have to work in the world outside prison, completely escape her. “The staff are required to find work for the
prisoners. We talk to companies and point out the benefits. The prison workforce is, after all, cheaper.”

Together, Ani and I leaf through the
Guide to Serving …
She is clearly proud of it, and indeed of the entire Danish penitentiary system. The chapters are headed, “Free Time,” “Dental Treatment,” “Letters.” Finally we come to the icing on the cake: “If you have difficulty reading, please report this to the staff who will help you to record your letter on a tape recorder.” And in the chapter on “Religion”: “If your religion forbids you to work at a particular time, you will be excused from working at this time.” Or in “Visitors”: “If you have no family members or friends to visit you, you can ask the staff to arrange for you to meet members of the Society of Prisoners’ Friends. You may meet representatives of the press.”

Well, that’s enough, indeed too much. I give up! It is only too obvious why Russians are so well behaved here, like children from a good family, and why nobody tries to escape. The Esbjerg Bridewell not only looks from the outside like the better sort of Russian school, but inside its cheery navy and light blue colors, its dinners, billiards and facilities would be the envy of many a Russian kindergarten. And to top it all, they understand that the most important thing to show a prisoner is that, no matter what happened in the past, they are still a human being and should never forget it. What Russian would be unmoved if someone told him, “We know that you are not shit”?

Ani’s boss comes to help her out, as she is increasingly nonplussed as to why we are so amazed by what she is showing us of life in a Danish prison. The senior official in the Bridewell is the District Chief of Police, Jørgen Ilum, a man who looks like a highly paid and very established lawyer and not in the slightest like a provincial militia chief. Jørgen, we are pleased to find, is not fazed by anything. He is a professional and ponders long and deeply, listening attentively to our uniquely Russian questions.

“Do investigators in Denmark torture the accused to extract testimony?”

This admittedly causes some consternation, followed by a lengthy discussion we can’t understand between Mr Ilum and the Deputy Chief
of Police, Sten Bolund. Sten is wearing a modish, grey, regally elegant suit with a sparkle in the cloth, set off with a bright super-modern tie. They seem genuinely unable to understand how such a question can arise if the investigators’ salaries are paid by taxpayers. They finally reply, “No.”

“When was a policeman last found guilty of brutality in Denmark?”

Again consternation, and another long discussion in Danish, this time bringing in Nils Hedegger, Head of the Esbjerg Police Association, their trade union. Trade union representatives are required to be present in every police station. The three of them reply that in 1993 there was a complaint against two policemen in the neighbouring district. A man in a bar (the plaintiff) had been behaving aggressively, others in the bar asked for him to be removed and the owner called the police. The aggressive man considered that he had been removed too effectively. The district court found against the policemen but the appeal court acquitted them on the grounds that the force used was justified in order to protect the interests of the other patrons of the bar.

“But we really can’t remember any claims of brutal behaviour during an investigation,” all three confirmed. As both Jørgen and Sten are pushing 50 and Nils is about 40, their collective professional memory must go back at least a couple of decades.

“What are the criteria for assessing your work?”

The policemen smile with relief and start telling us about things which are as clear to them as the sea and the sun. Every three years there is a public opinion poll in Denmark and citizens are invited to say whether they feel safe in their homes, secure in the streets, and whether they find the police courteous, neatly dressed and well trained.

The survey is their performance assessment. If the results are bad the Chief of Police will be replaced and some officers sent for additional training, while others might be fired. There are no targets for solving a set percentage of crimes, statistics which in Russia have to be inflated by fair means or foul and result in such painfully familiar dialogue as, “Confess, you bastard, that you murdered …, stole …, fenced …, or else …”

In another, less direct survey the population are asked which of the public sector employees, paid from their taxes, they rate most highly: doctors, teachers, municipal bus drivers or policemen?

“In recent years,” Mr Ilum informs us proudly, “policemen have come first.”

The police are subject to sanctions if they work too slowly. At the present time, for example, Danish society is making a concerted effort to eradicate violence on the principle that, while stealing is of course bad, physical violence is wholly unacceptable. The Danish Parliament has decided that the police must give priority to investigating violent crime, and such cases must be brought to court within 30 days. If the police fail to meet the deadline, the suspect will receive a reduced sentence even if subsequently found guilty.

“You’re kidding?”

“The public require us to work very quickly,” Chief of Police Ilum adds.

“And do you often have to release criminals on these grounds? For failure to produce the evidence in time?”

“Occasionally.” Sten Bolund, the Deputy Chief of Police, spreads his hands. “But that is our problem. We are held responsible, and the democratically approved laws are not tampered with.”

Travelling on from Esbjerg, you reach the village of Skærbæk. You can enter the village just like any other, although it also hosts the Renbæk Regional Open Prison with 110 inmates and 62 staff. It comprises a group of cottages (cells of a sort), a small shop (the prison store), workshops, a byre, a football field, a golf course and a bus stop. Anybody at all can come here. A wife? A girlfriend? Yes – every day if they like, if you have finished your work. There are no fences or bars here. The only restriction on your freedom is that the houses – ordinary, cosy Scandinavian caravans – are locked at 2200 hours, and unlocked at 0700 by a supervisor who stays overnight with the prisoners. If you are not back by 2200 hours, that counts as an escape attempt. Nobody, however, will go running to look for you. This is considered to be an area of your personal responsibility, and nobody else’s. If you run away, when you are caught you will be transferred
to a closed prison, where you will not be free again for a long time and will be allowed visits only once a week. And your sentence will be extended. You will lose the football, the golf, the privilege of personal responsibility and your subsistence allowance. In the open prison you have to feed yourself; each prisoner is allotted 40 kroner a day [£5] and has to buy food, prepare it, clear up and wash up in the kitchen of his little house. The logic behind Danish open prisons is that everything has to be worked for. Is that sensible? Yes. After all, you are not being sent on holiday for committing a robbery.

But here is the Governor of Renbæk, a pink-cheeked giant called Eric Pedersen. It is difficult to distinguish him from the prisoners walking through the village as none of them wear a uniform. The Governor invites us into the conference room, lights candles on the table, and, offering tea and coffee, tells us about his prisoners so that we should be under no illusions: the people walking these streets, playing football and tennis, are genuine criminals.

“The man who was happily playing table tennis when we went past murdered his wife. Fifteen per cent of the prisoners here are in prison for sexual crimes, 25 per cent for violence, and only 25 per cent for robbery.”

“Then isn’t this rather too soft? Perhaps they really are a danger to society and should be isolated?”

“What would be the sense of that? And what should be done with them afterwards, after they had served their time? Work is an obligatory part of being here. Or study, if you don’t already have secondary education. Studying in the classrooms is considered equivalent to working in the prison workshops. We regard this as an attempt at re-education.”

So much for Hamlet and “Denmark’s a prison.” Under the pressure of total democracy, prison, let alone the entire kingdom, resembles anything on earth before it resembles a prison.

Finally, we Russians are constantly hankering after being admitted to Europe. Not in a geographical sense, but as a fully valid European state in the Strasbourg sense. We talk and write a lot about this admirable
ambition, and occasionally even fantasise that we are already there. However, it is time now to seek not just the forms but also the content, and that means we need to address our total lack of due legal process, and raise our game to the level of Denmark! To the level of Renbæk, of the gentlemanly Chief of Police, and of the Esbjerg Bridewell where they wholeheartedly like Russians.

PS. This article was prepared with the support of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.

THE SECRET OF CLARIDGE’S. WHAT DID THE PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN AND
Novaya gazeta
’S COLUMNIST TALK ABOUT OVER LUNCH?

May 14, 2001

London, April 30, 2001. The city was unwelcoming. People waiting for spring were still faced with driving rain, a cold, bitter wind, a never-ending twilight, an autumn that couldn’t be shaken off despite the May tulips lining the avenues in the park.

The weather was a fitting background to the task I had set myself: having flown to the British capital, how was I to get the answer to a question I wanted to ask Tony Blair, Prime Minister of this influential island kingdom? Why, for some time now, has he been on such good terms with President Putin? What are the qualities in Putin he finds so appealing?

Any Russian journalist knows that to get an interview with a head of government you need the patience of a saint. In Moscow, miracles do not happen – such is the nature of the Kremlin – but in London on the morning of April 30 I received a personal invitation to the traditional annual lunch of the London Press Club, founded in 1882, with the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Remarkably, I had not made a huge effort to get this invitation. I was just handed it. For 12.30 at Claridge’s, a grand old London hotel. So why not go?