Farewell to rights

The HRC will be a showcase for human rights exuberance

Changes in the Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC) can be viewed as a separate phenomenon, something like a small political freeze. It's the old entertainment of the public in an authoritarian regime: to look for signals coming from the authorities and calculate whether it's about liberalization or tightening. Some of the innocent in the "Moscow case" were released - this is a thaw. Well, replacing Fedotov with Fadeev is a counterplay so that no one strengthens. Moreover, the surnames are similar, so for an outsider the difference is not too noticeable. If so, then the story about the update of the HRC is worthy of only news and slight regret.

However, as far as one can judge, the situation is now completely different. Power not only transmits a signal, but mutates into a new quality. A new level of authoritarianism is responding to public resistance during the summer struggle for political rights and competitive elections. The reshuffling of the HRC in this sense is not just another piece of bad news, but a serious symptom.

Structures like the HRC generally exist not because the rulers are distinguished by broad philanthropy and attention to the problems of citizens. Modern society is complex, it always has conflicts. The ruler is interested in having an objective picture of what is happening. Officials, especially in authoritarian regimes, on the contrary, are not interested in reporting the whole truth to the top: they pursue their own interests and embellish reality.

The political tradition is well aware of the ways in which rulers can fight for their information. The main one is precisely to create special structures whose task is to tell the unpleasant truth. This explains the paradox when consistent critics of the current government, such as political scientist Ekaterina Shulman or lawyer Pavel Chikov, sat in the presidential council. Moreover, for them, participation in the work of the HRC was an opportunity to seek justice and help people, so the deal, perhaps, can be called fair.

But by the fall of 2019, the authorities no longer want to leave their comfort zone and listen to criticism.

The idea that in our wonderful Russia, which has been under wise strategic management for many years, there are at least some problems at all, is beginning to be seen as wrecking.

Accordingly, the new composition of the HRC is selected for solving a different problem. Valery Fadeev is definitely not the kind of person who would say unpleasant things to the president. The HRC will rather become a showcase for the West: it will be possible to go to PACE, where Russia so solemnly returned recently, to talk there about the successes of Russian state human rights protection and criticize from the rostrum the horrendous violations of human rights in the European Union and the United States. The mechanics of such hypocrisy was well developed in Soviet times, so now you just need to pull out the old training manuals from the special stores.

The hypothesis that

The HRC will turn into a kind of Beryozka store,

confirms the appointment to the new Council of Kirill Vyshinsky, a journalist and former Ukrainian political prisoner, who was exchanged for Oleg Sentsov. Vyshinsky has already stated that he sees his task as protecting the rights of journalists abroad, and this threatens to become an incredibly fruitful idea. It is clear that the rights of journalists within the country are already in full order, as are the rights of prisoners, demonstrators, state employees, and so on. So the new members of the Human Rights Council will have nothing left to do but to restore humanitarian order where a person still has some problems. For example, in Ukraine, in the European Union and the USA.

The path to the right SFC is being paved rapidly. Valery Fadeev has already stated that demonstrations like those that took place in Moscow in the summer have no place in the capital, and that international practice is to punish such rallies as harshly as possible.

Those who are obviously not ready to play by the new rules have been removed from the presidential council: in addition to Shulman and Chikov, this is also law professor Ilya Shablinsky, one of the most active and professional participants in the HRC in recent years. Legendary lawyer and former judge of the Constitutional Court Tamara Morshchakova said she was leaving the council of her own free will. According to Tamara Georgievna, if the structure is called the Human Rights Council, and some other tasks are solved in it, then it cannot participate in this.

Taking into account the fact that in parallel with the enthronement of Fadeev, the defeat of human rights NGOs took place, everything is moving towards the recognition that human rights are a value alien to us, which it is time to give up. It is most likely too late to convince the authorities in this sense, but the policy of curtailing the last working public institutions is striking in its short-sightedness. Even a complete cynic, far from human rights rhetoric, admits that with a real HRC, the authorities can navigate a little better what is happening in the country than with a set of Fadeev's adjutants.