Who are human rights activists

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Ramzan Kadyrov received the Medal "Honored human rights activist of the Chechen Republic." “For outstanding merits in protecting the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens, courage and fundamental in matters of ensuring the national interests of the Chechen people, commitment to traditional values ​​and fidelity to duty” - this is how. And at the level of purely intuitive to us, as if to everyone understands that the human rights activist from Ramzan Kadyrov, like an astronaut from me. But let's define: why so? Who are such human rights activists?

In Russia, the concept of “human rights activist” has very blurry contours, and because of this there is a lot of discrepancies. We have a certain advice on human rights under the President with completely vague duties, there is an opposition whose rights are actually systematically violated, and if with those whom human rights activists call power, there are no questions and determines this status with an old joke about the protection of the rights of one particular person, then in the case of opposition I heard Alexei Navalny or, for example, Ilya Varlamova. Which is categorically wrong. The human rights activist is not equal to “just a good person”, it is not equal to the “fighter with the authorities”.

To begin with, what is human rights? They are enshrined in the second chapter of the Constitution of Russia and in international agreements ratified by the Russian Federation. The list of rights is quite long, we will not analyze it in detail. Take a special case on which the idea will be clear. So, there is a torture and a convention against torture ratified in the Constitution and ratified back in 1987. Suppose a man was tortured by a certain criminal - for example, in order to find out a password from his bank card. Was the human right to freedom from torture? No. Article 117 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was broken. A person turns to the police and requires the investigation and punishment of the criminal. If the police do their work, then this situation does not concern human rights at all. If not, then a person can appeal to the highest authorities with a claim that the state has not fulfilled its function of protecting a person from torture. In the same way, if a person is tortured in the police department and this is not investigated, the right of a person is violated, since the state turns out to be an actor of violence and does not fulfill its functions.

So, human rights can violate only the state, not a private person by action or inaction. Who is a human rights activist? A human rights activist is a person, most often a lawyer who is studying such cases where the state has not fulfilled its functions in relation to a citizen. Corruption investigations can be called human rights activities with a stretch, discussions about urbanism and news overview - too. Pavel Chikov - human rights activist, Varlamov - no. Human rights is propaganda and legal activity.

Why can't Ramzan Kadyrov be a human rights activist? In addition to the obvious, because he is literally a bearer of state power. It is impossible to protect a person from violation of his rights if you yourself belong to the system that violates these rights (or may violate). At least this has a clear conflict of interests.