Most pitiful was the white plug on the head of one of the suspects, where his ear had been. In photos of the four men brought to trial on suspicion of the terrorist attack at Moscow’s Crocus Theater, the marks of torture hit you straight in the face: bruised faces, bruises, one in a wheelchair, and thus that ear.
Just as morbid as those images is the fact that the authorities made no effort to conceal the fact that the four had been severely beaten. Russian media showed videos of the interrogations, in which one suspect received electric shocks in his lower body and another had to eat part of his ear. A sinister Post Box 51 message from the Kremlin to its own population and potential rebels: this is what awaits you. In Hollywood terms it was reminiscent of the sadistic sheriff in the western Unforgiven who kicks a gunfighter half to death in the street to set an example.
Still learned something from the West.
Well, not exactly. American authorities went out of their way to deny or conceal that, for example, torture took place at Guantanamo Bay, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. The Kremlin is clearly beyond that shame – it must be part of the decadence of the softened West. That doesn’t bode well.
Not that such display of brutality is ‘typically’ Russian. In the spring of 1944 it was featured on the front page of the American magazine Life, an institution at the time, a vaguely smiling young woman. One hand under the chin, the hair in a cheerful bun. She stared at the skull of a Japanese soldier. Big black holes where the eyes once were. According to the caption, she sent it as a present beau, “a handsome lieutenant in the navy.” He had promised her “a Jap”. She has a pen in her hand to write something back. A sweet thank you?
At the very least, that is a side note to the cheerful idea that people are actually good. But: that photo also led to disgust. The US Navy severely disapproved of this type of correspondence with the home front. Of course also for the image, in the Pacific recruits were simultaneously encouraged with the slogan Kill more Japs. Democratic societies have a brake on sadism, but it is never a guarantee. See the TikTok videos of Israeli soldiers in Gaza. Or everything under the heading ‘colonial wars’.
Putin’s Russia did not have that brake anyway. But with these photos the regime brazenly shows what it stands for. A military-political criminal cartel that always considers itself ‘defensive’ and innocent and therefore has no trouble displaying its own crimes.
Sjoerd de Jong writes a column here every Thursday.
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