Murmansk, police, 7x7

On the evening of May 21, or even better to say at night, although what a night it is in Murmansk, we flew to this venerable city. Utair even provides wine on the Moscow - Murmansk flight, and the food is very filling and there is a lot of it. Upon arrival, we went to bed. In the morning we had breakfast and split up. Pavel and Leonid went to a seminar for women journalists, and I went with Nikolai, a psychologist and former police major from Yoshkar-Ola, to the Murmansk police escort department to conduct a seminar on human rights. About 20 police officers gathered, mostly heads of temporary detention centers and special detention centers in the Murmansk region.


Photo taken here

Nikolai worked very well until lunch. He based his seminar on the fact that people were asked to go through the process of creating a norm to punishing people who do not comply with the norm. Then there was a good entry into the history of modern human rights through the Second World War.

Then we went outside, and it was snowing and raining and the wind was cold. We talked to one policeman on the way out.
- Why don’t you wear a badge?
- They don’t give
- By law it is necessary
- They do, we have badges and tokens. First of all, they distributed it to those walking the streets.
- This is correct, but here in Komi the police say that they will be given new badges along with a new uniform.
- They brought us a new uniform for the authorities. It's strange, it turns out it can't be washed.
- It seems like it will take a long time for the form to reach you?
- It will come by winter or next year.

We got to the hotel through the snow and waited there for the 7X7 bloggers’ meeting to begin. About a little more than 25 people came. Mostly young people. Outside the circle sat a police representative who introduced himself as an “outside observer” and filmed everything with a video camera. What he managed to find out from the police a little later.

We managed to take a video about the meeting of 7X7 bloggers in Murmansk here

The conversation turned out to be very constructive. We talked about topics and people. We finished sometime after 20.00. Then Irina asked me to conduct a short training on fundraising. It seems like it turned out well. Then we went to a local eatery, Kruzhka. A very strange place where they play movies and serve food. But it was possible to talk, so we talked about 7X7 for a couple more hours.

Around 23.00 we finished everything and sat down in the room to talk about Murmansk and 7X7.