At the same day as the Russian Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Yury Fedotov, opened the 54th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, the Novosibirsk District Court passed a sentence on the chief of one of the rehabilitation centres of Novosibirsk against Drugs.
Albert Sazhin was sentenced to a two-year probation term, reports ITAR-TASS News Agency. He was found guilty of the illegal detention of drug addicts and heavy drunkards whom he kept at the rehabilitation center.
Novosibirsk against Drugs is just one of the many foundations in Russia that treat drug-addicts. The City without Drugs fund based in Yekaterinburg was inspired by Evgeny Royzman. The activities of the organization began in 2001 with the motto “We will win a victory against drugs together with the whole world!” But it is their method of treatment that gives cause for concern: “They take a very aggressive approach towards rehabilitation. They can come through the kitchen window and kidnap you and take you to the rehabilitation centre, where they will chain you, because they need to break the addiction and think that they can save you from yourself,” – explains Daniel Wolfe, Director of the International Harm Reduction Development program, an Open Society Foundation program.
The staff of the Yekaterinburg foundation says that they prefer the relatives to bring the drug-addicts to their centre: “We used to have chains, but because of too much attention from media and police, we had to change this practice. However, we only used it for safety reasons, otherwise patients could harm themselves” says Yevgeny Malenkin. Once the addict is at the centre, their ‘treatment’ begins with starvation.
Fedotov underlines during an UN meeting: “There is growing recognition that we must draw a line between criminals, drug traffickers, and their victims, drug users; that drug dependence is a disease not a crime; and that treatment offers a far more effective cure than punishment.” Yet the question remains of what exactly the UN consider as treatment.
“I can’t imagine any other disease where they would kidnap a person, unless they suffer from a serious mental illness. The truth is that we are talking about drug users aspeople not capable of making decisions, but in fact they make them all day long: how much money to spend on drugs, who to use drugs with, when to use and when not to,” comments Daniel Wolfe on The City without Drugs work.
Severe measures are popular and are believed to be the fastest way up the political ladder. For example, Royzman, after 2 years of work at the foundation, was a deputy at the Russian Duma. As a result of public protest, the prison sentence for Albert Sazhin was changed to a suspended punishment with one year of probation. It’s not the first trial of the same kind for the members of these foundations – there were several court cases lately. Wolfe says, “I will say that it’s clear that what ‘City without Drugs’ is doing is against international accepted principles of drug treatment.”
The speech of Fedotov, who hosts the UN meeting for the first time, was questioned for its inconsistency: “Some critics say the Convention is out of date, but I disagree. […] I urge the international community to rejuvenate the Convention, and I encourage member states to rededicate yourselves to implementing its provisions” he said at the opening session. And while officials in Vienna were deciding on how to go on with the War on Drugs, NGO activists were pleading for more humanity.
