‘What’s the problem?’: Russia’s human rights chairman on censorship, blocked apps, and musician arrests

In a new interview with RBC, Russian Human Rights Council Chairman Valery Fadeyev weighed in on censorship, wartime restrictions, returning offenders from the front, and more. Meduza shares several of his most notable remarks, translated into English.

On blocking messengers

What’s the problem? Yes, some people invested in their Telegram channels and built businesses around them — that’s true. But there’s a war on. And compared to a serious war with the entire West, what we’re discussing here is trivial. These restrictions are so minimal they’re hardly worth talking about.

On banning searches for ‘extremist’ content

If someone wants to read something or just happens to end up on some banned site, that’s still no reason to drag them off to jail. And I honestly don’t understand how this law is supposed to work.

On the arrests of street musicians

[Street singer Naoko] shouldn’t have been singing songs by “foreign agents.” She left the country. And the cynical question is: why did she sing them? To go abroad now with a story to tell? We’re in a difficult war with the West. After 13 days of jail time, she should have said: fine, I won’t sing “foreign agent” songs anymore — lesson learned. Our law enforcement system is quite reasonable.

On former prisoners returning from the front

People coming back from the “special military operation” who were convicted of serious crimes should be registered. There’s no violation of rights here. Let them come in, say what skills they have, what kind of work they want to do, where they want to live, what options exist. We need to make contact with them without violating their rights. These are people returning from war — and not simple people, you understand? […] When we’re talking about serious crimes, everyone has the feeling that they didn’t actually serve their time — they went to war. Everyone remembers that, everyone knows it, especially the residents of the place they return to.

On the far-right nationalist group Russkaya Obshchina (‘Russian Community’)

I haven’t looked closely into Russkaya Obshchina. As far as I understand, they do patrols. There’s probably nothing wrong with that. Ideologically, I don’t support it — it diminishes the meaning of our nation’s existence.

On ‘foreign agents’

I’m not going to throw books by “foreign agents” off my shelf. The main reason they were removed from store shelves was to prevent those people from making money. Some people are also being cut out of films. That’s not entirely right. If the books are good, then we should find some way to prevent [the authors] from earning money while still allowing people to read them. But it’s a different matter that, when you look at some of them, they really are enemies of Russia.

Cover photo: Sergey Bobylev / TASS / Profimedia