RUSSIA: MORDOVIA: PRISON FOR FOREIGN OFFENDERS

(18 Nov 1996) Russian/Eng/Nat

The Russian gulag is not just for Russians. On the bleak and chilly plains of Mordovia province stands Russia's one and only prison for foreign offenders.

Convicts from some thirty nations live at the penal colony, in the village of Leplei , nearly 600 kilometres from Moscow.

During Stalin's time thousands of innocent foreigners passed through the Soviet Union's infamous labour camp system.

Now, the not-so-innocent find themselves imprisoned in the Russian hinterlands, hoping their respective governments will do something to lessen their sentences or get them back home.

The landscape is bleak and the language is foreign. Autumn and spring are dominated by mud and rain, winter by ice and darkness.

If you're a foreigner and you commit a crime in Russia you just might find yourself here at penal colony number 22.

Gone are the days when foreigners would be ferried back to their homelands.

Now, more are putting in their time where they did the crime. And life in the Russian gulag isn't easy.

While conditions at the prison are better than at the average Russian gulag, prisoners still face a host of difficulties as a foreigner in land as harsh as Russia.

Many of the colony's inmates are from countries in the south or east -- where a flake of snow has never fallen.

Six years of hard labour in Russia's interior is a far cry from the sunny skies of Africa or the lush jungles of Vietnam.

Prison food has never been gourmet cuisine. And with the taste buds of more than thirty different nations sharing the same prison cafeteria, the situation becomes even more complicated.

Inmates dream of home cooking -- ranging from curry to sweet and sour pork to humus - - and are rarely pleased with the standard rations of Russian porridge or cabbage soup.

But officials agree that it is the Westerners that have the most difficulty adjusting to life in the Russian gulag.

The foreigners' colony has seen the likes of Italians, Germans, French and Dutch, to name a few.

Currently, Australian Daryl Bending is serving a six year sentence at the colony. He was arrested at Moscow's international airport for drug smuggling.

After a year in one of Moscow's crowded pre-trial detention centers, he was tried and sentenced. Daryl didn't understand much of his trial as it was conducted in Russian.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Maybe I can't settle in here as well as some other people. A lot of people say to me the secret is just don't think, and it goes quickly, you'll be fine. I find it difficult not to think, I'm forever remembering what real life is like."
SUPER CAPTION: Daryl Bending, Australian citizen serving 6 year sentence in Russian labour colony

Some of the foreign prisoners were students studying at Russia's many institutes and universities when they were arrested.

During Soviet times, countries such as Afghanistan, Vietnam and Angola often sent students to Moscow for free education and political training.

Now those same students, having committed serious crimes, are subjects of the Russian government again, only this time behind bars.

And then there's the problem of language. Many of the inmates can't speak Russian. But they soon learn.

New inmates communicate to each other either in broken Russian or English or with the aid of unofficial inmate translators who have already perfected their Russian.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"They learn. My advice, I always advise them to learn Russian because they should know, once they have to stay here they must know the language, its good for them."








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