Translated material
“I didn’t beat you, I wasn’t a member...”
The capital's police have come up with a new way to combat xenophobia
The capital's police officers came up with a method of combating skinheads that is non-standard from the point of view of logic and legal norms - with the help of general photographing and fingerprinting of young people. In this way, law enforcement officers responded to President Vladimir Putin’s promise to “constantly and constantly” combat manifestations of xenophobia , which he gave at the CIS summit on February 22. Then representatives of almost all friendly countries raised the question that in Russia their citizens are faced with xenophobia and criminal attacks, in connection with which Mr. Putin officially expressed regret and promised to do everything to ensure that the criminals were found and punished. The capital's law enforcement officers, apparently, took these words as a guide to action and began to take action even before the end of the weekend. One of these, as Vremya Novostei managed to find out, was an event held on February 25 at the Arbatskaya metro station.There, the law enforcement officers “invited” almost all the young people they met, taking away their passports, for a “conversation.” The conversation, however, was peculiar - the young people were photographed, their fingerprints were taken and they were “offered” to write an “explanatory statement” under dictation. In it, the authors had to admit that they were not part of informal groups, that they treated people from the North Caucasus “neutral” and had never beaten them. After that everyone was released.
What it was, the young people themselves, with whom the Vremya Novostey correspondent spoke, did not understand. Their parents, more experienced and wise in life, were outraged and demanded an explanation from the police, but they were told that “this is how it should be” and “there is an order from above.” Human rights activists and lawyers, whom we asked to comment on what happened from a legal point of view, unequivocally stated that there was a direct violation of the law and the rights of citizens. The leaders of the event at Arbatskaya themselves called it “preventative”, but refused to talk about the degree of legality of the methods used. The Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate stated that such events, if they took place, were the notorious “excesses on the ground.”
On Monday, two Muscovite friends (both 19 years old) were returning home from bowling at about 8 pm. The comrades went down into the metro to the Arbatskaya station on the Filevskaya line and began to wait for the train. At that moment a policeman approached them. Having introduced himself, he asked the young people to present their documents. Having taken them, the law enforcement officer invited the friends to go to the 3rd police department of the Internal Affairs Directorate on the Moscow Metro, located here.
“Besides us, there were about eight other young people in the department. After some left, the police brought others in,” one of the event participants, Alexey (last name not indicated at his request), told Vremya Novostei. - I was invited and asked to first write an explanatory statement that “I am not a member of any informal organizations, I only learn about attacks on Caucasians from the media, and I am neutral towards the Caucasians themselves.” Then the man in the sweater took pictures of all the guests on his cell phone, then, again explaining to us that “this is how it should be,” they rolled our fingers. What was happening caused confusion. We asked what was going on. The head of the department, Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Aturin, replied that exactly the same events were taking place throughout Moscow, and that such an instruction came from the head of the capital’s police, General Pronin.”
The press service of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate officially stated to Vremya Novostey that “this is the first time they have heard about this.” “Young people could come up with who knows what or distort the situation. Vladimir Vasilyevich Pronin did not make such orders. We do not rule out that this is another excess on the ground. This has already happened when some heads of the Department of Internal Affairs arbitrarily began to demand lists of Georgian students in the capital’s schools. Young people, if they have actually undergone such a procedure at the police station, should contact the personnel inspectorate. The culprits will definitely be punished,” the press service noted.
The Internal Affairs Directorate at the Moscow Metro declined to make any comments. At the same time, a number of the capital’s district police departments confirmed that, on the instructions of Mr. Pronin, preventive measures called “Teenager” began in the capital on February 27. Their goal is to identify, prevent and suppress crimes committed by minors, including as part of “informal youth associations.” “Instructions were given to conduct explanatory conversations in schools, organize sporting events under the auspices of the fight against xenophobia, identify skinheads, and report this to the authorities. Previously, on instructions from above, we dealt mainly with the drug problem,” said one of the capital’s police departments on condition of anonymity.
Yesterday, a Vremya Novostey correspondent managed to get through to the head of the 3rd department of the Metro Internal Affairs Directorate, Lieutenant Colonel Aturin. He said that the police department he manages actually held the events that the young people were talking about. “I am not authorized to talk about the rest. All questions to the press service,” he said. At the same time, the 3rd department clarified the meaning of the event: “Young people were trained for involvement in attacks on citizens from Central Asia and Transcaucasia. There was nothing wrong with that. They just took fingerprints and explanations. No testimony was extracted, no rights were infringed. If a person did not want to go to the department, he could refuse. This was a purely preventive measure to identify persons involved in informal associations - skinheads, football fans, punks, metalheads (however, the police could not explain how the last two categories were involved in attacks on Caucasians - Ed. ). - You understand that the preventive measure is also psychological in nature. So he gave his prints, wrote an explanatory note, and now he’ll think a hundred times about whether he should break a Tajik’s head in a dark alley.”
At the same time, lawyers called such prevention illegal: “From the point of view of the law, this is lawlessness. To detain a person, you need a reason. Either he is a suspect - then an interrogation should be carried out against him, or he is a witness - then an explanation should be taken from him. There is no reason in the law to take an explanation within the framework of preventive measures,” lawyer Andrei Stolbunov told Vremya Novostei. “At the same time, we understand perfectly well why the young man “voluntarily”, at the suggestion of a police officer, agreed to drop everything and go write an explanation, give up his fingers and take a photo.”
According to the chairman of the Association of Human Rights Organizations "AGORA" Pavel Chikov, according to the law, fingerprinting in our country is voluntary, except when it is performed on a person detained on suspicion of committing an administrative or criminal offense. In order to do so, a person must write an application. Accordingly, by writing another statement, he can withdraw his prints. “If people voluntarily agreed to all these events, then nothing can be done about it. However, if the police misled them about what they should do, then the law has been broken. Young people should file a complaint with the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor’s Office,” the human rights activist noted.
It is worth noting that the Law “On the Police” in paragraph 15 of Article 11 clearly states that the police have the right to photograph and fingerprint not everyone, but only “persons suspected and accused of committing crimes, subject to administrative arrest, as well as persons in respect of whom there is a reason to initiate a case of an administrative offense, if it is impossible to establish their identity.”