Wiring

“Sitting with shulers at the table is not the best activity” is the old rule, although I understand that someone else's experience does not teach anyone. I'm talking about a meeting of Mr. Putin with members of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation on the development of civil society and human rights

November 12, 2012. President Vladimir Putin (in the center on the back) holds a meeting of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation on the development of civil society

I must say right away: the Council has many of my friends and colleagues. And I consider their participation in this enterprise a mistake. How can you become members of the advisory body at the very president who came to power as a result of manipulations and elections, whose legitimacy is under a big question? How can you sit down at one table with Putin after the death of Sergei Magnitsky and the authority of the authorities to truly investigate this matter, after the arrests in the “swamp business”? What can be advised to a person who authorized all this?

I myself was a member of the Presidential Council for Human Rights during the first Putin term. Then there was a Chechen war, and I entered the Council, trying to use it to improve the situation in the North Caucasus. The only thing I managed to do: Svetlana Gannushkina and I handed over to Mr. Putin a whole package of materials about terrible crimes in the North Caucasus. And now Putin cannot say that he did not know what was happening there.

I left the council immediately after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006, when Mr. Putin said these ugly words that her murder "causes the current government much more damage and damage than her publication."

Let's see what the current advice is. People in the presidential administration, which were responsible for its formation, acted in their own way reasonably: they included real human rights defenders, and pseudo-lawyers, and people from spheres, who are simply opposite to the ideas of human rights. There is a State Duma deputy from United Russia Alexei Pushkov, who voted for all the Draconian laws of recent times, including for the Law on NPOs, and nearby - those who can be soon recognized as a foreign agent.

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It was the benefit of the president, the PR campaign prepared by his administration. And I must say, the action was a success

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The Council in this composition will never be able to make a single intelligible decision. The first meeting of the Council (November 12) in this sense was indicative. None of the 62 members of the Council asked the question about the arrested who would sit in the case of the so -called riots until March 6. No one asked the question and the legitimacy of the criminal term for the soloists of Pussy Riot. It was the benefit of the president, the PR campaign prepared by his administration. And I must say, the action was a success. After the meeting, they talked about some “new edition” of Mr. Putin - that “Putin softened and drew”, “Putin is ready to interact with civil society.” What did he say? Just: “Yes, yes, we will consider this. Yes, yes, and we can think about it too. ” And it was quite mockingly sounded: "Make a position with a consensus and send me a proposal." Putin knows very well that this advice will not be able to develop anything with consensus - it is no coincidence that such different people were gathered there. From my point of view, Putin simply divorced my comrades and colleagues.

I'm afraid the fate of the Council is deplorable. Firstly, they will be manipulated. People will disperse into individual commissions that will sit and make some recommendations. The authorities will nod, as it did before, to promise what he will consider, analyze, as it was with the same expert report on the second case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Plato Lebedev or with a report on death in the pre -trial detention center of Sergei Magnitsky. And then - with ease, the opinion of human rights activists will send to the basket. Naturally, the commissions are formed, some of them will play along with the authorities - exactly as it happens in the Public Chamber, from whose activities there is nothing but an empty couple.

I have no doubt that a little time will pass and many of my colleagues will be disappointed and understand the void of this venture. They will understand that the authorities use the Council as a screen, a decoration covering reality - the authoritarian nature of the system.

Photo: RIA Novosti