Russian prisoners

30 October 1998 09:02

The following letter has been sent to me by a young Salesian priest working in the middle of Russia in a tiny little Catholic parish. He has constructed a web site providing information about this parish and also offering a good deal of information about the Orthodox and the links between Catholics and Orthodox in Russia. The site address is provided at the end of his letter. It is included on the links page of the TLIG site.


Here in Russia we are worried about the prisoners. The Government does not have any money to allocate to the prisons and consequently the prisoners are suffering from the lack of food and warm clothes.

Last week I was in Moscow and the Orthodox Bishop, Bishop Saba, responsible for the pastoral care of prisoners and soldiers, asked me to try and organise humantarian help in the way of food for the prisoners. He is very worried and really so.

Two days later I went to the prisons which I visit and entering one prison I noticed that all the guys were unusually sad and depressed, even the ones of a joyful and hilarious character. So I asked them what was wrong and they said the food, they have nothing to eat except water and bread.

They receive a small slice of bread three times a day and hot water with a few leaves of cabbage in it, which although called soup is actually just hot water. There is no nutrition and no vitamins, and yet they must now face the hard winter and demanding physical work. In the next months their sad faces will become even more frightened as the food will get even worse and the temperature will drop to minus ten and twenty. As you might know there is also a serious situation of tubercolosis in the prisons in Russia and this has its causes in bad nutrition, depression and tiredness.

Is there any chance of helping to feed the prisoners, because they are not free or able to feed themselves?

Although these people are in jail for crimes committed it does not mean that

they ought to be put into situations in which they are in danger of
death. I met one prisoner, Joseph from Zaire. He is now in the
hospital prison with a serious case of developed tubercolosis. He is

subjected to the same type of food, he has no winter clothes and neither the hospital nor the worried doctors have got the equipment or the medicines to treat his TB properly. Jospeh received a two year sentance for stealing a 100$ coat in Moscow. He stole the coat to keep himself warm in the Russian winter two years ago. In his two years in prison he has contracted TB, soon he will be released, but without proper help he will be set free to die.

To feed the prisoners we need large quantities of foods, to be used in the prison kitchens rather than to be given to individual prisoners.

The types of foods ought to be that which will not go bad and that can be stored easily,

Dried Milk
Tea
Rice
Soup bases
Oat flakes for porridge
Salt
Vegetable oil
etc etc.

Do you think that we could get help from the food producers,from the food suppliers etc.

Can we give the prisoners a nice meal for Christmas?

A container could also contain warm clothes, if outer clothes they ought to be of dark colors (black or navy— not light colors or green). Shoes, large sizes 42 – 48).

With special prayers

Fr. Philip

[email protected]

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