Press release, 29.05.2015

On May 27, a discussion on “The practices of underage forced marriage: the role of journalists, mass media and civil society in the straggle for children and women’s rights observance” took place in the Central House of Journalists (DomZhur), Moscow. The meeting was moderated by Nadezhda Azhgikhina, Secretary of the Journalists Union, and Natalia Bitten, coordinator of For Feminism initiative group.

Chair of YABLOKO Gender faction Galina Mikhaleva, member of Presidential Council of the Russian Federation for human rights Svetlana Ayvazova, the editor-in-chief of the Internet newspaper Kavkazsky Uzel Grigory Shvedov, lawyer Mari Davtyan and others participated in the meeting.

The reason for the round table came the occurrence which caused a broad public resonance – the wedding of 17-year-old Luiza Goylabiyeva and 57-year-old Nazhud Guchigov, Chechen police chief.

Natalia Bitten

Natalia Bitten analyzed the main tendencies of the coverage of the “wedding of the millennium” within pro-government mass media.

“There are three theses. First, everyone who tries to speak about minor’s rights abuse is pronounced a hypocrite. Second, the conditional slogan is “Traditions are more important than the law”, therefore when in Rome do as the Romans do. Finally, the third one, which, in my opinion, is the most curious thesis, the support of the wedding boosters from the point of view of resistance to the colonial trend within the framework of enforcing western values to the East on behalf of Russia,” said Natalya Bitten.

Nadezhda Azhgikhina

Nadezhda Azhgikhina emphasized that mass media focused its attention on the wedding itself not practically taking into consideration the violation of Elena Malashina’s rights. Elena Malashina is a human rights defender and journalist of Novaya Gazeta who was actually banished from Chechnya. At the moment Elena is being threatened.

“One mustn’t keep silent and twist a finger to one’s temple [a gesture signaling that someone is “crazy”], when lawlessness takes place one mustn’t stand off,” said Nadezhda Azhgikhina.

Grigory Shvedov

Grigory Shvedov focused the attention of those present on the ways of protection of correspondents who face persecution.

“I think that the protection of journalists can be of intellectual nature not only of physical one. The YABLOKO party have a large resource and provide support to journalists including our correspondents in the Caucasus,” noted Shvedov.

Svetlana Ayvazova emphasized that “it’s impossible to save those who don’t want it”.

“Malashina claims that she doesn’t need support and doesn’t take the threats seriously. Though everything always starts with the threats,” she said.

Svetlana Ayvazova

When speaking of Ramzan Kadyrov’s role in the “wedding of the millennium”, Galina Mikhaleva emphasized that “Kadyrov seems to be challenging the system in search for the limits”.

Galina Mikhaleva

“The authorities already behave like three Buddhist monkeys – they see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” said Galina Mikhaleva.

Chair of YABLOKO Gender faction stressed that the situation with women’s rights protection was becoming worse in the light of latest laws. As an example Mikhaleva gave the bill on the family education ethics at school which calls for propaganda of virginity and having many children, recent legislative attempts to ban abortions. The [Parliamentary] Committee for women and children protection under Elena Mizulina plays a negative role by constant proposing of odious bills.

“I’m not optimistic, in terms of legislation as well. We should resist the odious initiatives of the authorities more actively,” noted Galina Mikhaleva.

Svetlana Ayvazova mentioned that the stance of the Committee is not a fluke: representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church dominate among the number of experts and there are no subject experts. The State Duma rejects a large number of legislative initiatives in support of women’s rights. In particular, the law against home violence hasn’t been adopted in Russia. According to Ayvazova, the things in the Former Soviet Republics aren’t in a better way.

“Since 1990 all the gender equality rates are on the downward trend and it’s a big problem,” said Ayvazova.

The participants of the discussion also mentioned the indirect influence of the ISIS which habe made the half-slave position of women a norm.

As a result, the participants of the round table took a number of decisions on activisation of gender equality protection including the examples of a certain violation of a woman-journalist’s rights, initiate a public discussion on women’s position in the Russian society by making a number of publications is mass media.

“We are going to propose the presidential Council for human rights to conduct an expanded hearing on women’s rights protection, upholding of women’s rights and we’ll make a report on true state of things. We hope to involve experts in this field, politicians. We are going to address the Public collegium for complaints against the press and bring to responsibility those editorial offices that publish misogynic materials,” summed up Nadezhda Azhgikhina.

“We are going to resist the patriarchal tendencies and comeback to Domostroy [the Household Management Book] ,” concluded Galina Mikhakeva.