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	Outrage over prison ''torture'' footage sparks protests in Georgia by News wires   Sep. 2012   Georgia''s president has suspended the country''s entire prison staff, amid protests over video footage showing guards abusing prisoners.   Protests erupted after opposition television channels aired the footage, which appeared to show guards beating inmates and sexually assaulting one with a broom in a prison in the capital Tblisi.   The scandal has prompted the resignation of the minister responsible for prisons and comes less than two weeks before government elections.   In response to the footage, president Mikheil Saakashvili has deployed police in jails to replace prison officers.   He called the abuse on the video inhuman and said those who have committed any crimes will serve long jail terms.   He also demanded a complete overhaul of the ex-Soviet state''s much-criticised jails.   "We guarantee that we will eradicate torture in the penitentiary system. There must be zero tolerance towards rights abuses," Mr Saakashvili said.   Hundreds staged an angry protest and blocked one of the capital''s main streets in response to the abuse.   Some carried hand-drawn pictures of prisoners being beaten and others held photographs of relatives allegedly abused in jails.   "I am protesting against torture in prisons, which are under the strict control of the authorities. The authorities are responsible for what''s happening there," one demonstrator, bank worker Mikheil Javakhishvili, said.   "All of Georgia must take to the streets in protest against this horror," another protester, Sophia Gabichvadze, said.   Small protests were also held outside the prison in the Tbilisi suburb of Gldani where the alleged abuse took place and in several other Georgian towns, according to local media.   A government statement said some 15 alleged perpetrators had already been arrested. Visit the related web page
	For Russians, Corruption is just a way of Life by Transparency International Russia, agencies   For Russians, Corruption Is Just a Way of Life, by Misha Friedman. (NYT)   Corruption in Russia is so pervasive that the whole society accepts the unacceptable as normal, as the only way of survival, as the way things “just are.”   It is not simply about officials abusing power; it’s also about ordinary people comfortably adapting these principles to their daily lives.   Most Russians have grown so accustomed to a certain lawless way of life that they have come to view corruption as “Russia’s own special way.” They are unsure how their country’s economy, government or social sphere might function without it. Corruption is both a state of mind and a way of life.   Thousands of people in Russia’s large cities took to the streets, unhappy with President Vladimir V. Putin’s system of running the country. Under his leadership, they believe, Russia is steadily becoming a medieval country with corruption trumping all laws. However, Mr. Putin has been adept at tapping into strong Russian nationalism to maintain his popularity during election cycles.   Some people who have traveled abroad, often hide their nationality just to avoid being compared to their country’s ruling elite or asked questions that they cannot answer.   I was born in Moldova, then part of the Soviet Union, but moved to New York in the early 1990s when my parents immigrated here. For more than a decade I have been going back to Russia, noticing how the country has become more and more corrupt and lawless. I see corruption as more than something done to people; it is something they participate in. It involves both a resignation to and a justification of a state of iniquity, insecurity and mistrust.   According to Angus Roxburgh, former BBC Moscow correspondent and later a public-relations adviser to the Kremlin, there is one overriding reason why Russia is failing to achieve its economic potential and failing to attract outside investors: corruption.   "It is something the government acknowledges but seems powerless to combat, despite a regular stream of anti-corruption decrees and initiatives," he says.   "In fact, it gets worse year by year. According to official figures, the average bribe in Russia is more than $10,000," he notes.   Transparency International, which ranks countries according to perceived levels of corruption, says Russia has slumped from 46th place in 1996 to 143rd in 2011. That makes it one of the most corrupt countries on earth.   Bureaucrats in charge of state tenders routinely ask for enormous bribes from companies bidding for the contracts, which adds to the cost of the bills that the state pays.   "A year or so ago, three seniors officials were convicted - a rare occurrence - for demanding $1m to take the Japanese company Toshiba off a fictitious blacklist, which was preventing the company bidding for a contract," Mr Roxburgh recalls.   The case of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer employed by a western investment fund, who exposed corruption and then found himself thrown in prison by the very people he had accused, and who then died in prison, has served as a dire warning to all potential investors.   "Dozens of entrepreneurs are in prison on charges trumped up by officials trying to get their hands on their companies," says Mr Roxburgh.   The Central Bank reported capital flight from Russia in the first four months of 2012 of $42bn.   The answer seems clear: root out the corrupt officials. "But how do you do that if, as most Russians say, the fish rots from the head down."   The number of corruption-related crimes in Russia has risen by almost one-third during the first six months of 2012, year-on-year, according to Investigative Committee (IC) spokesperson Vladimir Markin.   “During the first half of 2012, IC investigators handled 15,800 cases on corruption-related crimes, which is more than 5,000 than in the same period last year (10,400),” Markin said, citing Committee head Alexander Bastrykin. Visit the related web page
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