Bad example

On February 23, the human rights organization Amnesty International published its annual report on the human rights situation in the world. Russia got it hard.

The human rights situation in Russia has deteriorated noticeably over the past few years. The Kremlin has clearly decided that any criticism of the actions of the authorities is a risk that cannot be taken. The restriction of civil liberties began even before the Ukrainian Euromaidan, but the pressure intensified especially after the return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency in 2012. Freedom of expression and peaceful protest are severely restricted in Russia. Media freedom in Russia is severely restricted through direct state control and self-censorship. The editorial policy of the majority of the mass media consists in verbatim reproduction of the authorities' point of view on the events of domestic and foreign policy. NGOs are subject to increasing harassment and repression under the “foreign agents” law, and their access to foreign funding has become even more restricted following the adoption of a new law banning “undesirable” organizations in Russia. A growing number of people have been arrested and convicted for criticizing government policies.

Anything that can disrupt a system that is run by a very small group of people, anything that threatens the status quo of that system in any way, all of which the authorities have decided not to tolerate anymore, even if it is a modest and mild criticism. This pressure will continue to grow as the problems in the Russian economy deepen, which arose after the Russian annexation of Crimea and Russia's participation in the military events in eastern Ukraine, and after that - deeper involvement in the military operation in Syria.

This tangle of problems is becoming more and more confusing, the nervousness of the authorities is growing, it can be assumed that the voices of critics of the authorities will become more and more rare, and the Kremlin will crack down on them more and more harshly.

Of course, the situation in the former Soviet Union in Russia is not the worst situation, alas, there is still someone to compare it with. Take, for example, a member country of the Council of Europe like Azerbaijan, where anyone who opposes the government is arrested for human rights violations, perhaps even giving it a head start. Or Türkiye, where the human rights situation has also deteriorated markedly...

The main problem, however, is that Russia, being a very important country in this region, sets a bad example for other countries. It sets a certain vector, or, so to speak, a motive, which is then picked up by other countries. We see how the changes being made to Russian legislation are copied by the states of Central Asia. Kazakhstan, for example, has legislation related to the financing of NGOs and other conditions for their work. That is, NGOs in Kazakhstan are becoming the same "undesirable element" as in Russia. Russia sets a bad example for others.