I have just spoken by telephone with my good friend and leading Russian human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev, founder of the All-Russia Movement «For human rights» (see my earlier interview and translation). As you have probably heard, Lev has been having quite a month. Some time back, he began telling the world about the re-emergence of “torture colonies” within the revived Russian GULag. These colonies, many of which seem to be centered in the Republic of Mordovia, have a special regime that involves unconstrained violence against inmates by prison staff and a bizarre and illegal form of violent “policing” by “grass-roots initiative groups” of privileged prisoners known as “Sections of Discipline and Order”. Naturally, all the wielders of truncheons, be they guards or prisoners, are fully confident that they act with total impunity. Prisoners who refuse to “confess” to “crimes” are brought to these camps from isolators in other regions, and within a week or two they’re singing like canaries.