Policies targeted at discrimination of human rights
organisations represent one of the specific traits of Putin’s
era. Since 2004, when Vladimir Putin stated that many non-governmental
organisations worried only about their financing from foreign
funds and could not “bite the feeding hand”, the Kremlin
propaganda has been promoting a simple thesis: human rights activists
are those who get foreign money and work it out by “harming
Russia’s interests”.
A recent poll “Do you trust human rights activists?”
conducted by one St.Petersburg television channels demonstrated
that 75 per cent of those calling the studio answered “no”
to this question. The same programme also showed a piece when
St.Petersburg residents were interviewed in the street about where
they would go to seek protection of their rights – to human
rights organisations or the militia. Most of the polled answered
that they would turn to human rights organisations. Obviously,
mass-scale propaganda considerably changed public opinion.
This was proved at the meeting by the Solovetsky Stone (a traditional
meeting place of human rights activists in St.Petersburg) the
day after Natalya Estemirova had been murdered. Only about a hundred
people came, mainly those who always come to such meetings. Neither
high rank city officials nor deputies of the legislative assembly,
nor Governor Valentina Matviyenko appeared. Earlier they had neglected
the meetings in memory of Anna Politkovskaya – but that
could have been explained by their fear: such a “disloyal”
step would have been reported to the “very top” immediately
(especially considering Vladimir Putin’s attitude to Anna
Politkovskaya). This time the “fear factor” did not
work, but the reflex had already been formed.
It should be also noted that on the federal level the murder
of Natalya Estemirova did not provoke the same reaction as three
years ago the murder of Anna Politkovskaya had done. In spite
of the fact that one of the versions of Deputy Interior Minister
Arkady Yedelev was that Estemirova was murdered because she “got
hard currency and grants for implementation of some missions”,
President’s message was much more important. President expressed
his condolences stating that the murder was attributed to Estemirova’s
professional activities, and then he said an incredible thing
- that the activities of human rights organisations were important
for the country and that in spite of the fact of being uncomfortable
for the governments, they were albeit necessary. However, this
statement was made in its “export variant” in Germany,
and Vladimir Putin also had made his first statements on Anna
Politkovskaya murder in this country too. But he had said quite
different things – there is need to repeat all this again…
Federal television channels showed news items on Natalya Estemirova
murder, and this time they managed to do without their traditional
reference to human rights activists as the “agents of influence”.
Almost all the key printed media covered it as the most important
news. And the Freedom House report on Freedom in the World in
2009 which happened to be released in the same period and once
again rated Russia very low was not encountered with the usual
retort from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its voluntary
aids from the State Duma, the Federation Council, the Public Chamber
or the Media-Union that Freedom House was allegedly implementing
“a political order” and this was a “provocation”
and that “we can not put up with incompetent preaching in
the field of human rights”.
And we should also bear in mind here that earlier President Medvedev
had introduced into the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights
Development a number of persons well-known for their independent
stance. At the meeting with the Council he stated that “the
notion of protection of human rights was largely distorted in
Russia”, and that “considerable part of state officials,
which in my view is very dangerous, have a feeling that any non-governmental
institutions are enemies of the state and should be fought against
so that to prevent infecting the state with some detrimental ideas
leaking via these organisations”...
This sounded in such sharp discord with the previous Putin’s
rhetoric, that a logical question about what was happening arose.
Was it a real change of the political vector, even in one narrow
field, or a good old game into “the good and the bad police
officer”? Whether President really wanted to abolish “Putin’s
paradigm” which envisaged treating human rights activists
as “domestic foes” and “traitors” or was
he playing a liberal before the Western (in the first place) and
the Russian (in the second place) public opinion? Was President
interested so that real fight against violation of human rights
should be held or was he simply using human rights for his own
purposes? And how all this may end: whether the attitude to human
rights activists will be changed or more “pocket agencies”
imitating civil society and protection of human rights will be
created?
Certainly we would like to rely on the “optimistic versions”
here, but is also hard to ignore the rising wave of attacks against
human rights activists. Searches and documents “withdrawals”
in the AGORA centre, Kazan, criminal case against Igor Averkiyev
for “extremism” in Perm and murder of human rights
activist Andrei Kulagin in Pertozavodsk.
Are all these pure accidents? Or this is the way to remind Medvedev
(and the society as well) that his “presidential contract”
does not give him, despite formal division of powers, any control
over the hawks? Or is it a part of the plot where every “liberal”
action by the authorities is immediately “outbalanced”
by a reactionary counteraction?
See also:
Human
Rights
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