Posted on 01/27/2006 7:57:56 AM PST by wagglebee
MOSCOW (AP) -- Military prosecutors and top officers on Thursday pledged a thorough inquiry into one of the most brutal hazing incidents in the Russian military in years - an 18-year-old soldier whose legs and genitals had to be amputated because of beatings and torture by fellow servicemen.
Human rights groups assailed military officials for condoning rampant bullying and warned such crimes would persist until the nation abolishes the draft in favor of an all-volunteer army.
Doctors said Pvt. Andrei Sychev's legs and genitals were amputated after the New Year's Eve incident at the Chelyabinsk Tank Academy, in which older soldiers forced him to spend hours in an unnatural crouched position and brutally beat him.
At least seven other conscripts also were beaten, but they sustained less serious injuries, prosecutors said. Russian news agencies said eight servicemen - including several officers - were detained in the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk, about 1,180 miles east of Moscow.
Sychev was hospitalized several days after the beating, when he was already in critical condition and unable to stand, and investigators were seeking to determine why he was not treated immediately, a prosecutors' statement said.
Authorities failed to notify Sychev's mother, Galina, until after he underwent his first amputation. "Why didn't anyone tell me: come here, you son is in grave condition?" she said in televised remarks, wiping her tears.
Sychev, who is in grave condition and unable to speak, scribbled the name of his most cruel tormentor on a piece of paper, his mother said.
His sister, Marina, told Russian television he had pleaded with his family to come to Chelyabinsk and take him home for a New Year's leave.
When his relatives said they couldn't make the trip, Sychev said: "What shall I do here? I have got sick of looking at these drunken bastards," his sister said.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov promised to punish the culprits. "We won't cover anything ... or anyone up," he said Thursday in televised remarks.
But in comments earlier in the day, he appeared to play down the incident, saying on Ekho Mosvky radio: "There is nothing serious there, otherwise I would have certainly known about it."
His remarks sparked outrage from rights activists, who blamed military commanders for violating soldiers' rights and turning a blind eye to vicious bullying in the Russian armed forces.
According to official statistics, 16 soldiers died of hazing last year, but experts say the actual number of deaths is much higher, with many conscripts driven to suicide by abuse and other bullying deaths passed off as resulting from illnesses.
The Defense Ministry said 276 servicemen killed themselves in 2005, but didn't offer any details.
Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov acknowledged last year that the number of hazing incidents has risen in recent years. He said half of military suicides were caused by hazing.
Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have described hazing as one of Russia's biggest rights problems and have urged Russian authorities to move against the practice.
Hazing commonly involves forcing conscripts to perform endless tasks - buying alcohol, shining boots, making beds or obtaining money for senior soldiers. It also involves physical abuse, usually by drunken soldiers, such as beatings with stools or iron rods and sometimes even sexual harassment.
"As long as we have a conscript army, as long as kids are drafted there in handcuffs, as long as officers don't regard conscripts as humans and their lives, health and dignity aren't worth anything to them, such things will continue," Valentina Melnikova, head of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers, a leading advocate for soldiers' rights, said on Ekho Moskvy.
All Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 are required to serve two years in the armed forces - three years for the navy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly pledged to rebuild Russia's military, which has been demoralized and strapped for cash since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
By 2008, military officials plan to switch part of the armed forces from conscripts to volunteer soldiers and reduce the term of service by one year. But officials say this will require enlisting twice as many conscripts - around half a million per year.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent defense analyst, said underpaid and poorly trained officers are unwilling to carry out their duties and are ordering second-year conscripts to enforce discipline, which leads to abuse.
"Hazing is the only way of maintaining discipline in the armed forces," Felgenhauer told The Associated Press. "The situation with hazing will only get worse."
'beatings with stools' Wouldn't it be mushy ?
Wrong, and wrong.
In the book "A Mighty Fortress" are several stories about how glad the Europeans were that we helped in WWII. It brought tears to my eyes many different times. Those boys of the 1940's risked their lives, gave their lives, and often came back disabled for life. I believe the typical European still realizes this, but the propaganda machine (which Kerry, Fat Teddy, and Lady Macbeth feed) makes it seem otherwise.
Every German in WWII wanted to be captured by Americans, not by Russians.
My first weekend in the 82nd the group welcoming committee came by to initiate all the new cherries into the airborne way of life. When they got to my room the door was locked so they yelled to my roommate to send the cherry out. I looked at him while he thought for a second before saying I was out for the night, I could have kissed him. My experience has been that these initiations rapidly spiral out of control when alcohol is involved. When I was stationed at Ft. Knox a soldier was beaten so bad his spleen was removed and he almost died.
FYI Ping.
Reminds me of Vanya, a Christian soldier who was tortured to death:
http://chi.gospelcom.net/DAILYF/2003/07/daily-07-16-2003.shtml
Indeed, hazing is hardly peculiar to the Russian Army. In the U.S., hazing deaths of college students are not all that uncommon. High school sports teams, and boarding schools are also hotbeds of hazing. And there remains a hazing culture at our military academies.
It's mostly (though not exclusively) a male phenomenon, and as you pointed out, alcohol is nearly always involved in the most serious hazing. IMO we should have a zero-tolerance policy for hazing, and ruthless enforcement. The mentality needs to be stamped out. I think all states have laws against it, but enforcement is very lax -- unless somebody actually gets killed, the perps rarely get any punishment that will have a lasting impact on their lives. When it happens in high schools or colleges, an adult teacher or coach who knew or should have known it was going on, generally gets fired, and the perps get "counselling", and maybe a semester's suspension -- even when the acts they committed legally constitute criminal aggravated assault and kidnapping in the real world.
A lot of cases of long term, severe child abuse bear many of the hallmarks of hazing, and I wonder how many of the perpetrators were involved in groups that practiced hazing before they became parents.
See Napoleon and Hitler examples.
This is a must read book, by Myrna Grant.
A guy I know was in the Russian Army back in the 60's, when he has had a few he can be talked into Marching and rifle drills, its amazing how high he can get those legs up, the Nazis couldn't goosestep as well as the Russkies.
This is nothing new. Recruits were also tortured in the Tsar's army.
Sodomy and the Lash - British Navy.
That would be why they have Orthodox services for their soldiers killed? Or how about how we cannot have overt displays of Christianity, unlike there?
Think before you post.
Yes, but there was also rum.
All kidiing aside - hazing happens in all the world's militaries - I am not sure why the human psyche requires hazing but it seems a universal standard.
The best militaries of today tend to have less hazing.
But historians will tell you just a 100 years ago many Western military experts thought that the more hazing and brutal the training the better the soldier.
The Prussian army was also known for their brutal hazings.
>That would be why they have Orthodox services for their >soldiers killed? Or how about how we cannot have overt >displays of Christianity, unlike there?
Year, for 75 years their churches where turned in to CP HQs, and all priests killed others turned in to KGB informants.
>Orthodox services
Priests in Russia ride around in 600 Benzes while average folk is making $200 a month..
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