Test for the President

Human Rights Council strikes a 'double line' for civil society and NGOs

On December 8, the Kremlin hosted a meeting between Vladimir Putin and the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, the fourth of those in which I took part as a member of the Human Rights Council. Finally, I can formulate, including for myself, the answer to the question of what this advice is about and what it is for.

For 4 years, starting from 2012, the HRC in this composition has turned into an informal institution, pursuing its own and quite distinct political line. But politics is the art of the possible, and this is well understood by Mikhail Fedotov, who not only proposed (informally) a certain number of candidates for the council, but also arranged its work in such a way that everyone inside did not fight with each other.

Informal institutions are bad because they are fragile: one signature of the boss - and he is gone. And they are good because there are no others in Russia today, and formal institutions perform some functions only insofar as they adhere to certain informal practices. If we stick closer to the topics of the meeting, elections in Russia are not quite elections, and the court is not quite a court or not a court at all, and all participants in these practices are aware of this.

These two factors: informality and “the art of the possible” dictate the format of the president’s meetings with the HRC that is understandable to all participants and, if you like, decency. Everyone here knows perfectly well who thinks what, but not all thoughts need to be expressed aloud so as not to spoil the mass. The “Institute” differs from the gathering in that its members are placed within certain limits, and this is its merit.

“The state and civil society are natural allies,” Vladimir Putin defined their relationship in his opening speech. It’s already good that in his picture of the world it’s not the same thing, but then everything is more complicated - very complex and mobile.

Unfortunately, the real practices of state institutions have led to the fact that today we live and act in a permissive order: only what is not prohibited is allowed. If you want to do what is not allowed, then it is somewhere else, but the subject of this meeting is careful testing of what is not prohibited, plus an attempt to push these boundaries a little.

Thus, the president himself spoke about the elections in his opening speech, thanking the HRC for its contribution to their transparency and for "cooperation with the Central Election Commission." It’s enough for those who understand: among others, Lilia Shibanova, “foreign agent No. 1” (the law “on agents” and was initiated primarily for the sake of defeating the “Voice” observer movement she created) also received the floor at the meeting. It is important that the observers are returned to the playing field.

Indicative was the discussion of the recent defeat of PMCs (public monitoring commissions in places of detention) by the Public Chamber, which, when reassigning the composition of regional commissions, replaced real human rights activists in them with veterans of law enforcement agencies. In response to the speeches of Lyudmila Alekseeva, Elena Masyuk and others, the president did not say a word in defense of the Public Chamber, but promised to “ask” its chairman to discuss this issue with Moskalkova, Fedotov and Kiriyenko.

Tamara Morshchakova spoke about judicial errors, which previously caused only a formal reaction from Vladimir Putin: they say that the court is the court, and no one has the right to interfere in its activities. Morshchakova proposed (so far in the first approximation) to create an institution of special prosecutors or commissioners, endowed with the rights to get acquainted with the materials of criminal cases "in relation to individual cases that raise doubts among the authorities, public institutions and, if you like, the head of state."

In a veiled (and appropriate to the genre) form, this is a requirement to allow a certain public control in areas that are now generally devoid of any control, except for departmental ones. In response, the president promised to "think": apparently, the information that reaches him about mistakes and arbitrariness in the justice system is already reaching a critical mass.

Hopefully, the border of the very concept of “political activity” will shift a little when NPOs are included in the category of “foreign agents”: Putin shook his head in response to the examples of Dmitry Zimin’s Dynasty and the Levada Center. On the other hand, the full approval of the report by Sergei Tsyplenkov from Greenpeace means that environmentalists from now on "do not engage in political activity" and their human rights work can be given, with some reservations, the green light.

Yevgeny Bobrov's proposals to soften the migration policy were generally accepted. Maxim Shevchenko spoke about the practice of "preventive accounting" in the North Caucasus - the reaction was cautious, although the president agreed that the instructions of the "E" centers, the use of which leads to violations of citizens' rights, should at least be published. But Putin did not react to the question raised by Andrei Babushkin about expanding the practice of pardoning, which probably means: I’ll figure it out without you.

I gave the president a letter from the mother of Mavlud Kerimov, who was saved by his sister from “participation in an unidentified illegal armed group” in Syria, but convicted of “assassin” by a Russian court (see Novaya Gazeta, 5.12.2016 ) . In this example, the theme of “repressive political culture” was raised: it seems that the state has forgotten how to talk to people in any other language than coercion. The letter was accepted by the addressee, and we, of course, will follow the consideration of Mavlud's case in the court of appeal even more closely.

Before the meeting with the HRC, Vladimir Putin presented the first established State Prizes in the field of human rights and charitable activities to Lisa Glinka and Archpriest Alexander Tkachenko, director of the first children's hospice, respectively. When asked who else was recommended on the lists of applicants, Fedotov did not answer me: the members of the selection committee undertook not to disclose them. Both laureates are undoubted, but this is also a marker: which, from the point of view of the signatory of the decrees on awarding, most of all corresponds to the concept of “human rights activity”.

The concept of “socially oriented NGOs” is becoming the key to separating “rams and goats” in the non-profit sphere – the president promised to support them, including financially. However, the normative meaning of this term is far from clear, and testing the president's reactions to various types of NPO activity was supposed to reveal signs of "socially oriented" (but in such a way as not to run into too much). In subsequent bureaucratic games, these reactions will play the role of trump cards, but on the condition that they can be clearly interpreted.

This time, Putin listened to everyone who wanted to speak to the last. Lawyer Yury Kostanov said at the end of the day that after last year's order to resolve the issue of unimpeded admission of lawyers to their clients, investigators and pre-trial detention center staff began to refuse lawyers this even more illegally and arrogantly.

This is how the “systemic opposition” appointed by the president to himself works in today’s conditions (in particular, in the conditions of its actual absence in parliament), which does not refute the possibility, and often the need, to put pressure on the authorities through the “non-systemic” opposition. It is often represented by the same people who spoke in a different role at the meeting in the Kremlin, and in this, in my opinion, there is no insoluble contradiction.

The moral problem of cooperation between the individual and power (or the refusal of such cooperation) is far from new; there are such stories in the Bible. It can be discussed with those who take risks, but not with those who dare only on Facebook.