"You confused agents!"

The day of the Russian press, May 5, I met in court. I was reported and accused of "protest activity" for articles about people who came into trouble for my work of a journalist. Representatives of the two state departments - the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Ministry - said that Lyudmila Savitskaya - a foreign agent, and I tried to appeal to common sense. Here's what I said:

“You confused agents, gentlemen from the Ministry of Justice. You are not at war,” I explained. “I am an agent of Russia, an agent of my wonderful fellow citizens. I am struggling for them, for their right to live normally, in every news on the Radio Liberty. There is no one else to come with their trouble, because the first channel,“ Russia 1 ”, NTV and everyone will never tell with the TV, will never tell with the TV. Screens about the real problems of people, because they cannot, because they have “stop lists”, because the electorate should not know the truth about what is happening in the country, otherwise everything will understand and will vote incorrectly in the elections.

You call me a “ino-agent” and attribute me to me a certain political activity-for articles about the civilian activists, about my colleague Svetlana Prokopyeva, about the ecologist-activist who fights with a pig farm for the right to breathe fresh air, about torture in the Bryansk colony, about blocking communication next to prisons in the Pskov region, although in all these texts I simply inform About facts. This is my job, this is the task of the journalist - to honestly write about what is happening. To write in order for the authorities to pay attention to the troubles of people and solve their problems.

In your objection to my lawsuit, you made an interesting selection of my texts, trying to introduce me to a politician, and slyly forgot to include my reports about veterans who survive in rotten huts, about prisoners of concentration camps, which, by the will of the state, huddled in the station closers, about children-diabetics, which the authorities do not give out supplied medicines, about the Pskov paratrooper, about the Pskov paratrooper who voted for Putin all his life, crashed on military mission in Syria, and his wife was left without a pension. You and this will name with "texts with a political agenda" and "protest activity"?!

They understand everything. Just today they did not come for them

You turn everything upside down, gentlemen from the Ministry of Justice. A person who helps people with his work, you call the "foreigner". But real foreign agents are not here, not in this room. They are in the Kremlin and in the State Duma. These are those who adopt repressive laws every day, take away from citizens the right to normal life and freedom, forbids to tell the truth under pain of prison. These are they-agents of some alien to us all a totalitarian state. They. Not me. I am a journalist, and I will stay. "

“Emotional speech,” said Judge Tatyana Semenova thoughtfully. The head of the department for non -profit organizations from the regional Ministry of Justice Stanislav Rafalsky faded displeasedly on a chair (I looked directly into his eyes). And the metropolitan representatives from the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Ministry shielded something about the "scope of powers and the performance of duties." They tried to justify themselves for the obstruction of my legal activity of the journalist as they could: they were shocked by the letters of the prosecutor’s office and the reports of the EU employee, whose unnamed Commissioner with a flashlight (yes, he separately mentioned artificial lighting in the report) read my texts on the Radio Liberty sites, reproachfully talked about the fees and how I dare to write about problems about problems about problems People! The lawyer and I asked for documents. “These are papers with a vulture for official use,” it sounded in response.

"Which country agent do you consider me?" - I asked the representative of the Foreign Ministry twice. "The question you asked is incorrect and is not related to the essence of the case under consideration. Within the framework of the Code of Administrative proceedings, the Ministry as the coordinating body on the side of the administrative defendant as part of the distribution of the burden of proving submitted documents that he decided within the framework of the competence provided to him," the diplomat answered me.

Judge Semenova made me a “foreign agent” of an unknown power for one meeting on the basis of mysterious official documents. We passed the day, but I can’t come to terms: in the 21st century, a journalist is recognized as an enemy of the country only because he writes the truth and works in an international corporation, which has been considered a symbol of freedom of thought since the USSR. People in mantles, uniforms and in titles are seriously taken under the visor and tirelessly bow to the saturated power, but an insatiable cooperative. The law is over, fear remained.

"Do you think this regime is forever?" I asked in court. Three in uniform and one in the mantle said nothing. They understand everything. Just today they did not come for them.

Lyudmila Savitskaya - freelance correspondent of the Russian Radio Liberty Service ( North Railway Project ) in the Pskov region

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