06.06.2006 The Remains of Stalinism Found Government and Justice in Modern Russia

The Remains of Stalinism Found Government and Justice in Modern Russia

УAnd falsehood all aroundФ.
B. Pasternak

March, 31, a civil action was launched by YHRG against the appalling and critical situation in Russian army. We advocated dismissal from office of the Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov, abolition of universal military service and called for contract-based military forces. In Germany, for instance, with its strong democratic traditions, human rights and liberties stand in the first place, thatТs why for the Germans any obligatory service Ц military or civil Ц means a rude intervention into the life of a person and its plans and therefore, a violation of human rights. In the new Russia we still face the Soviet inertia, when a citizen is treated like a serf. We had got the local administrationТs consent for the action beforehand.
The start was all right. Active citizens, who support us, journalists, TV reporters, people from papers, magazines and Internet editions gathered to the place. The passers-by, who joined the activists, helped us morally. We were handing out to the pedestrians our bulletin УChas NolТФ, collected signatures under an appeal to the president with the demand to sack the defense minister and abolition of obligatory service. All this time I was trying to convey our ideas to people, using an old, out-of-hand megaphone to outcry the roar of the cars. For 15 minutes, while we were in sight of video cameras, the law enforcement supervising the action took no attempts to apprehend us. But, having caught a moment, when I walked a little aside to prepare further operation (we planned to dress an activist as a defense minister and make him Уfall anТ work outФ thus representing out attitude towards the miserable high official in a non-standard way, and also to tear a call-up paper) the cops, without identifying themselves, rounded up me and Maxim Efimov, and, pushing us in the backs and elbows, ordered to get in the car. They actually ruined the action by taking away the coordinators. They must have received an instruction from their superiors. All energy, resources and efforts spent to organize it, were all in vain.
УI am sure, our rights were violated because we were members of an independent non-governmental and non-commercial organization Youth Human Rights Group, which openly speaks of dedovschina in the army, the heavy casualties in the time of peace, demands the sack of the defense minister, the investigation of crimes in the military forces and the abolition of obligatory service. Besides, the police state has found a УlegalФ way of blackmailing citizens. After the things the government has done to the people, they no more trust it and want to make no more investments to the countryТs economy. The disabled power, thinking that people have bulks of spare money, plainly wants to seize it, or put on the citizensТ neck the burden of communal payments etc. Being so good at punishment and oppression, it can invent nothing to pump the money out, but violence and brutal extortion. We have nothing to expect in this things, no real or more or less serious changesФ , says M. Efimov, leader of YHRG.
The formal ground of oppressing civil activists was the ban on the use of loud-hailers during pickets, according to the normative act of 2004. This absurd law contradicts not only the Constitution of 1993, but also common sense. When the people of Russia adopted the Constitution confirming the right to gather peacefully, without arms, on assemblies, meetings and demonstrations, they could not imagine that picket would be made a silent grimacing in public. The federal law УOf assemblies, meetings, demonstrations, processions and picketsФ can be but considered turning the screws on our liberties. The government uses laws to gain profit, in the ways convenient for itself, ignoring the Constitution. Why cannot we use a loud-hailer, if it doesnТt interfere with anyoneТs rights and liberties, public tranquility and order? Can they, then, violate our right to freedom of speech and public organizations? A striking hypocrisy and blatant and blind bureaucratic formalism press on our freedoms and rights!
The unfair game was not through, though. In the central police department, smelling much the same as homeless sick people, we were kept about four hours. We feel sorry for the law enforcement agents, who work in such conditions, and entreat the Karelian administration to pay attention to these conditions, if the agents themselves donТt care about that. The apprehension of civil activists of a human rights organization has once again reminded us how dangerous and difficult is the work of the police, for the justice caught not simply hardcore criminals and highly aggressive antisocial elements, but young advocates of human rights, who dared to revolt against sadism and fascism in the army and the antidemocratic system of military service.
УThe situation in our country resemble 1930-40s in the Nazi Germany. The civilians then knew nothing of what happened on the city outskirts, where death camps were already set to work. Today each year 3000 young guys die in the army, but the society doesnТt care a bit about it. Are we, then, better, than the brutes who control the army and see no tragedy, when young men die: women will bear moreФ, says M. Efimov.
After the records were executed we were brought, right from department, to the court of peace. With three persons present on our side and two Ц on the side of accusation: a law enforcement agent and a judge, there followed a decree, imposing a fine totally amounting to 15 minimum wages. The speed of carrying out justice, unwillingness to consider the circumstances of the case, the closed process remind one of Soviet terror and famous УtroikasФ, which fulfilled the law, judged according to it and punished. In my opinion, our power is still afflicted with the same disease, though in a lighter form. Judicial power cannot, in a democracy, depend on the executives and legislators. Otherwise it means corruption and conspiracy. Russia is going down to the level of some mafia-controlled banana republic. The Judge must abide by the Declaration of Human Rights, Russian Constitution and the principle of fairness, not follow blindly the letter of the law. Otherwise, he is no longer judge, but a judicial marionette, a remnant of the Soviet punitive system. The symptoms of the illness of power we see every day, walking out into the street or facing bureaucracy, beginning with spiritual and economic degradation, finishing with corruption and filthiness of the most of state institutions. Maybe, it is not the symptoms that must be cured, but the very cause of the disease Ц a crisis of the system of rights and peopleТs indifference in solving their own problems?

Dmitry Loschinin,
YHRG activist,
PetrSU student,
Department of political
and social sciences, 3rd year.