Only once a year

Vladimir Putin met with human rights activists on International Human Rights Day

In connection with the International Human Rights Day, which was noted on December 10, Vladimir Putin met with human rights activists. The meeting took place immediately after Putin’s visit to the Ministry of Defense. This gave the president to say that he was "all day dedicated to a meeting with the defenders of the Fatherland."

Among the invited were not a member of the PMC of Moscow to comply with human rights in the places of conclusion of Valery Borshchev and the leader of the “human rights movement” Lev Ponomarev. According to Ponomarev, it is not worth expecting specific results from such meetings, but there is still a certain meaning in them:

- These, of course, are strange meetings, they are once a year. I have never participated in such a meeting, but I know for sure that my law enforcement officers tell them the truth, I know for sure. The president must hear the truth at least sometimes. But there is another problem here - what's next? And we see that such meetings are held (both under Putin and Medvedev), but there is practically no result. There were even such moments when the president said, “yes, I support, you are right, you need to make orders,” but then this was never implemented in any specific decrees. In a word, there were no manifestations of some kind of political will from the president.

According to the Commissioner for Human Rights, Vladimir Lukin, an instant solution to all human rights problems should not be expected:

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- There is a conversation between human rights activists and the president. And on each issue that the human rights activist affects, does the president automatically make the final decision? It looks like some kind of Persian sofa. There are a lot of issues that relate to the court, the judicial system that relate to complex procedures that need to be solved by discussions, discussions. The president in the course of the conversation gave an order, including he asked me and Mikhail Alexandrovich to deal with questions in specific cases that were mentioned, and we will do it. So talking about the automatism of presidential unambiguous decisions is to believe somewhat in the "Tale of King Saltan", I would say. Some consequences will be, I hope. But I will not talk about it, because there are consequences. To shake the air and solve problems is not the same thing.

In anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution, everyone is concerned about the issue of a wide amnesty. Vladimir Lukin at a meeting with the president touched this topic:

- I said in my speech that an amnesty is a situation in which 22 thousand people are either released from prisons or their position improves in one way or another. This is a good thing, this is a plus, and I support this plus. At the same time, in civil society, human rights community there are different opinions on this subject. Then, later, during an informal conversation with the president, these issues, this dilemma was considered in a more detailed version.

At the meeting of human rights activists with the president, specific cases of violations of citizens' rights were affected. Lyudmila Alekseeva, in particular, spoke about the revision of the sentence to former Senator Igor Izmestiev.