igorcharkovsky

Signatures are now being collected in support of the letter to the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev protesting the imprisonment and barbaric treatment of Elena Ermakova, a home midwife and the director of the Center for Parental Culture, Saint-Petersburg. Elena, 40, has five children (the three youngest are 2, 4 and 8 years old) and is in her ninth month of pregnancy.

The decision to imprison Dr. Ermakova was made by the court judge S.
Komaretskaya, St. Petersburg, Primorskiy district, on March 30, 2009 (case
1-123/09) based on Elena’s failure to attend court hearings on that day due to illness. A written statement from Elena saying that she was unwell and had to seek medical help was presented to the Judge by Elena’s husband and her attorney, but did not influence the court’s decision. A medical document from Elena’s obstetrician confirming Elena’s illness didn’t help, either. Elena was taken into custody right from the doctor’s office.

In prison, besides insufferable conditions, Elena was abused, both verbally and physically. She is in a very poor state, undernourished, suffering from cardiac pain and expressing suicidal thoughts. Prison doctors cannot be trusted here, for they are part of the system and the case strongly smells with politics. The justice system in Russia is corrupted as ever. The local Human Rights representative, Mr.Mikhailov, did not responded to a letter send by Elena’s husband and co-signed by 500 people who knew her personally.

We have less than one week left before we submit the letter.

Please sign and pass this information on to any potentially interested parties, be it organizations or private citizens.

For those who speak both English and Russian, you are more than welcome to sign twice. Please leave your name, the place of residence, professional occupation and any comments you may want to add.

The Russian text of the letter is here:

http://community.livejournal.com/rodi_doma/242352.html

The English translation of the letter is below:

Mister President,

Hereby we ask you to protect the rights of Elena Ermakova, a mother of five children (three of whom have not yet reached the age of 9) and eight months pregnant, who was taken into custody on March 30^th, 2009. She has been in prison (Saint-Petersburg, Arsenalnaya str., 11) ever since.

Elena Ermakova is the Director of the Center for Parental Culture, Ltd. “Cradle,” Saint-Petersburg, Russia.  She is charged with holding illegal medical practice, namely assisting in home birth. The prosecution claims she is guilty of death of six babies and causing of heavy birth traumas to another two. A case against the “Cradle” was open in September 2007.

 Since Ermakova’s current pregnancy was going with complications and her youngest children were sick, she had to miss several court hearings. She submitted all covering documents to the court in time.  On Marth 30^th, 2009, Ermakova was arrested in her gynecologist’s office, where she was seeking medical help. Although Ermakova’s doctor insisted on her urgent hospitalization, the court’s order has not been changed.

At the last hearings (May 13^th, 2009) the court announced that there will be no sessions till the 3^rd of July, 2009. Meanwhile, an additional forensic medical examination was ordered following the victims’ petition. Ermakova’s appeal to change her preventive punishment from imprisonment to a written undertaking not to leave the city was dismissed. Ermakova is still in jail, the break in court hearings notwithstanding.

An imprisonment of a mother of many children, who is in her last month of pregnancy, is a direct threat not only to her life but also to the life of her unborn child. Such violation of human rights is taking place these days not only in Ermakova’s case, but in case of hundreds of other pregnant women awaiting courts’ decisions.
  

We advocate a fair and independent court investigation. If the accused are guilty they have to be punished. But an arrest and detention of a pregnant woman in the absence of court hearings cannot qualify as fair. As a matter of fact, Ermakova is doomed to give birth to her baby in prison, although she hasn’t yet been convicted, and her unborn child is innocent.

We consider this punishment unnecessary brutal and inhuman and believe that it violates part 2 of Article 7 of the Russian Constitution which states that “In the Russian Federation <…> the state support is guaranteed to Family, Motherhood, Fatherhood and Childhood” as well as paragraph 1 of Article 38 of the Russian Constitution, according to which “motherhood, childhood, and family are under the state’s protection.”  We urge to commute Ermakova’s imprisonment to a more humane legal punishment.

We ask you to protect the rights of Elena Ermakova and her unborn child and assist in commuting her present preventive punishment to one of a milder nature till the court comes to the final decision regarding her guilt or innocence. There are no grounds to suspect that a mother of many children, who is about to give birth to another baby, may attempt to disappear or commit a new transgression.

We ask you to consider the violations of human rights of all pregnant women who are kept in prison before their sentence is passed and who are forced to give birth in prison hospitals, who are denied all civil and human rights, the right for humane birth assistance and the right for natural birth among others.

We ask you to consider the issue of conditions of imprisonment before trial for those pregnant women who absolutely cannot be released:

a)      Pregnant women must not be kept in common cells as it frequently happens now, as insanitary conditions and congestion are likely to cause tuberculosis, intestinal infections, flu and other diseases that are bound to influence the outcome of pregnancy and the health of the children yet unborn.

b)      Pregnant women must not be kept in the same premises with smokers, as passive smoking is even more dangerous than active one and is likely to cause miscarriages, premature birth and birth of underdeveloped children.

c)      Nourishment of pregnant women must conform to the medical standards for pregnant women.

d)     Pregnant women must not be subjected to medical interventions unless they authorize them, except for cases when the federal law (“On Patients’ Rights”) allows coercive medical intervention. In particular, examinations of a pregnant woman in gynecological chairs must not be conducted without permission of the pregnant woman as such examination may provoke a miscarriage or premature birth.

We hope that you will notice the paradox of the situation: our law does not forbid to give birth at home, but does not allow to provide women wishing to do so with adequate medical assistance, since a license to perform midwifery services at home cannot be obtained, and practicing without a license is illegal.

We ask you to help in ushering a legal practice of midwifery services outside of hospitals back to Russia, as it was here up to the 1960s and as it is practiced today in the European Union, the United States and other countries within the framework of the state system of birth assistance.

The Russian version is signed by:  657 people as of June 6^th, 2009, 23:15.