In the course of the entire year of my incarceration in the colony-settlement of Ust-Kamenogorsk city (a custody place for people that have committed a reckless crime) the colony administration has been undertaking all possible measures for my illegal political isolation from the outer world. Regardless the fact that this colony-settlement is an institution of a semi-open type, in which inmates are not under safe-keeping or under the guard but only under the overseeing and out of 130 convicts more that 100 work outside the colony I am deprived of all that, as I believe on political reasons.
The major aim of the administration is not to allow me forwarding information, in other words, to prevent me from making statements, appeals or addresses and from developing articles. To that end a special procedure has been set up in the colony in terms of search of my wife and my lawyer Svetlana Vitkovskaya to detect computer flash sticks or documents and materials I might develop. It is quite obvious that the target of this procedure is not fire-arms, drugs or correspondence with criminal groups. The purpose is to try and cut me off of any information channels or in any case to limit my activity as a human rights activist and a public figure. Actually it is a political censorship in the colony, in which other convicts spent the major part of their time outside the colony being absolutely free from this kind of control.
It is with these aims that I’m prohibited to work outside the colony and I’m not allowed to leave its territory without the escort of a colony employee regardless my destination – a hospital or the court. This is the reason why I am not allowed to leave warrant on week-ends and am not granted any incentives. Though I have the possibility to make a call in the presence of the colony employees, to make statements and dictate articles I develop I consider such acts on the part of the colony administration as politicization of my stay in the colony-settlement and as a political pressure upon me.
It has nothing to do with crime control or with ensuring regime in the colony given that more that 90% of convicts work downtown free from any political control of this sort. I declare my protest against such acts on the part of the colony administration and consider them to be a direct violation of the UN Declaration on human rights activists and an attempt to force me to give up my human rights and public activity – an attempt that will remain futile.
Yevgeniy Zhovtis
Ust-Kamenogorsk city, penitentiary institution OV 156/13
November 19, 2010
