First year as a lawyer

Human rights defenders acknowledged their victories and defeats

2009 was a period of social upheaval, high-profile murders, man-made disasters and an economic crisis. At the same time, this was the first year of Medvedev's presidency, from which many expected confirmation of his liberal intentions....

2009 was a period of social upheaval, high-profile murders, man-made disasters and an economic crisis. At the same time, this was the first year of Medvedev's presidency, from which many expected confirmation of his liberal intentions. This year there were important and precedent judicial victories in cases on the protection of human rights and freedoms, there were also unfortunate defeats.

victories

The Sagitov case is the loudest trial of the year about army arbitrariness. On March 5, 2008, Radmir Sagitov, who came to study in Novosibirsk from Bashkortostan, was found in a bathroom with cut veins in one of the apartments of Akademgorodok. As a result of the investigation and trial, seven cadets, two junior sergeants and a senior sergeant were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment in May of this year.

The court issued a private ruling to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces to eliminate the reasons that contributed to the commission of the crime at the Novosibirsk Higher Military Command School.

The illegal practice of enrolling natives of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into the command school without exams and despite the negative conclusion of psychologists was revealed. An unprecedented compensation was awarded to the family of the deceased cadet from the budget of the Ministry of Defense - 3.5 million rubles, at the level of the “prices for living” accepted in developed countries.

Awarding the first compensation to the victims of the police purge in the Bashkir Blagoveshchensk. From December 10 to December 14, 2004 in Blagoveshchensk (Bashkortostan) a “preventive special operation” was carried out by the Blagoveshchensk GROVD and OMON fighters. As a result, 342 people were injured, 197 of whom received bodily injuries of varying severity. The murdered lawyer Markelov was a representative of several victims. The case could not be buried, the principle of the inevitability of punishment triumphed. A large role in this was played by the prosecutor of Bashkiria appointed after these events, now Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov.

In the same row are the decisions of the Lazarevsky District Court of Sochi on 10 victims of a police raid. In July 2006, during a special operation illegally carried out by OMON officers in the city of Sochi, vacationers and residents of the village of Nizhnee Makopse, including minors. More than 30 people were beaten by riot police and illegally taken to the Lazarevsky District Department of Internal Affairs. On January 15, 2009, eight OMON officers were found guilty and sentenced to various terms of actual imprisonment.

The case of the social and environmental organization Planet of Hopes, accused of "non-payment of taxes" on foreign charitable grants, has had an impact on the entire segment of the country's non-governmental organizations implementing international programs and joint projects with foreign partners. Hundreds of organizations due to the legal uncertainty of the current tax legislation for several years were under the threat of tax claims for tens of millions of rubles in tax on income from donations. The decisions of the arbitration courts in the Planet of Hope case, which rejected the claims of the tax authorities and coincided with the most favored nation regime declared by the president for charitable activities, can put a barrier to undermining the economic foundations of NPO activities, spy mania and international isolation of Russia.

Case of the Kazan AIDS Center. From April 5 to June 26, 2009, the Republican Center for Prevention and Control of AIDS of the Ministry of Health of Tatarstan illegally did not provide HIV-positive children of the republic with free antiretroviral drugs. In total, about 50 children were affected. For the first time in the country, a court declared illegal the interruption in the distribution of medicines to HIV-positive children, and the leaders of the AIDS center responsible for this were fired. The decision in the case affects the interests of the 500,000 Russians living with HIV, and especially the 70,000 of them who receive daily life-saving antiretroviral drugs. There are more than 22,000 children registered with AIDS centers in Russia.

Condemnation of neo-Nazis for numerous murders and violent crimes. In St. Petersburg, the organizers of the explosions at McDonald's and on Vladimirskaya Square were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. In Moscow, representatives of several neo-Nazi groups were condemned for attacks and murders of people throughout 2009. A court in Izhevsk sentenced neo-Nazi Alexander Krinitsin to three years and one month in a penal colony for beating anti-fascist Galina Shutova.

Novorossiysk Committee for Human Rights. In August-September 2009, the prosecutor's office of Novorossiysk tried through the courts to recognize it as extremist and close the city's human rights organization. The reason for the persecution was the slogan used by civil activists at the picket: "Freedom is not given, it is taken." At the end of September, the case fell apart in court - the prosecutor asked the court to leave his own application without consideration. Thanks, among other things, to this case, state expertise in cases related to accusations of extremism has been compromised. It is the dubious conclusions of various "experts" that often form the basis of court decisions and sentences in extremist cases.

It is also necessary to note the activities of the working group on reforming the legislation on non-profit organizations, created by the President's order. Thanks to it, administrative barriers for NGOs have been reduced, amendments have been introduced to facilitate the registration procedure, and the frequency of inspections of organizations has been set at 3 years (not more often). These changes were introduced against the backdrop of a generally decreasing pressure on public activists from the side of the justice authorities.

It is necessary to evaluate the “change of appearance” of the armed forces that was going on throughout 2009 and the modernization of the penitentiary system that began in the autumn as an unconditional positive. Of particular note is the start of the police reform given by the president on New Year's holidays.

An important symbolic role was played by the decision of the Constitutional Court of Russia to extend the moratorium on the death penalty until Russia ratified Protocol 6 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. True, this positive was smeared at the end of the year by the departure of two of its members from the Constitutional Court, admittedly for criticizing the judiciary.

Defeats

First of all, we are talking about the sudden activation of President Ramzan Kadyrov in the legal space. This year, Kadyrov initiated judicial and criminal prosecution of Oleg Orlov, chairman of the Memorial human rights center, for his statement about the possible involvement of the President of Chechnya in the murder of Memorial employee Natalya Estemirova. He is also trying to prosecute the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov.

At the same time, murders of civil activists and politicians remain unsolved in the North Caucasus. In general, the work of the legal community in this region and related cases can be described as the failure of the year. This is both an acquittal on formal grounds of those accused of especially serious violent crimes, and an incredibly low efficiency in the investigation of official crimes - torture, murders and kidnappings - committed in the republics of the North Caucasus. In the same row are the unconvincing for the public results of the investigation of some high-profile cases, in particular the death of the Ingush opposition leader Magomed Evloev. The almost daily killings of representatives of law enforcement agencies and religious figures in the region sharply reduce guarantees for the protection of life and health of people. Together with the terrorist attacks, they demonstrate the inability of the federal and regional authorities to ensure the security of Russians in this region.

In the outgoing year, Tatarstan was marked by a series of persecutions of public and political leaders. This includes the conviction of Tatar nationalist Rafis Kashapov for extremism, the actual imprisonment of journalist and former press secretary of the President of the Republic Irek Murtazin, and the criminal prosecution of another supporter of the Tatar national idea, Fauzia Bayramova, who seeks political asylum abroad. A separate line is the scandalous and ineffectual attack on Kazan human rights activists.

As a result, the year turned out to be extremely eventful in general and symbolic judicial victories and failures in particular. The country confirmed its heterogeneity geographically as well. The North Caucasus is again pulling the country towards authoritarianism. There has been a punitive trend in the actions of the authorities in other national regions as well. At the same time, the Urals, the Volga region and Siberia, being remote from the center and hot spots, demonstrate bolder decisions in favor of a person where he opposes the arbitrariness of power.

In preparing the article, materials from the cases of the Interregional Committee against Torture, the Mother's Right Foundation and the AGORA Interregional Human Rights Association were used.