TITLE: PRESS CONFERENCE WITH SERGEI KOVALYOV, SERGEI GRIGORYANTS,

YURI SAMODUROV AND OTHER HUMAN RIGHTS SUPPORTERS

(PRESS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE, 15:07, NOVEMBER 22, 2000)

SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE

Moderator: I thank you for being so numerous today, for coming

here. I welcome you at the Press Development Institute. Our press

conference today is devoted to the extraordinary national congress

in defense of human rights. We have here members of the organizing

committee of this congress. The press conference is called: For the

First Time in Russia: A Congress in Defense of Human Rights.

I will introduce our guests. I believe you all know the State

Duma deputy Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov. And you also know that he

never comes on time. So, we do expect him. Sergei Ivanovich

Grigoryants, the Glasnost foundation, Yuri Vadimovich Samodurov,

the Andrei Sakharov Public Center and Museum... Oh, here is Sergei

Adamovich. As I said, he is always a bit late... Lyudmila

Vsevolodovna Vakhnina, coordinator of the Common Action Movement

and Svetlana Alexeyevna Ganushkina, who represents here two

organizations -- Memorial and Civil Assistance. We have here

another representative of Memorial -- Valentin Mikhailovich Gefter.

Ponomaryov: Ladies and gentlemen, I will say a few words of

introduction. I will explain how the idea to convene the congress

originated, who are the initiators. After that my colleagues will

make their own contributions.

The idea to convene the congress originated this summer. We

have a group called Common Action and it is its initiative. Common

Action unites most human rights organizations in Russia. I mean the

biggest that work on the federal level and individual human rights

activists.

On the initiative of Common Action we held a conference this

summer, an interregional conference of human rights organizations.

It was held on July 1. At this interregional conference, which was

attended by representatives of 20 regions of Russia, it was decided

to hold a national extraordinary congress in defense of human

rights.

Initially we were planning to hold it in October but because

of purely organizational problems we had to postpone it and now the

final decision has been taken to convene it on January 20 and 21 in

Moscow. This is already final. I am sure that the congress will

take place.

The main idea of the congress is not a chance one, I mean that

this is going to be an extraordinary congress. In the opinion of

our group Common Action, in the opinion of our member organizations

the situation in the area of various human rights is a very

strained one. This includes political rights, civil rights and

social rights. All these issues will be raised at the congress. We

hope that the congress will give these issues importance in the

eyes of society. Thank you.

Grigoryants: It is not just that the human rights situation is

drastically deteriorating in Russia. I mean all rights without

exception. Although there exists an extensive program that mentions

the Administrative Code, the Code of Criminal Law Procedure, the

Labor Code, that even mentions the destruction of civil society

even in the weak form in which it now exists in Russia...War has

officially been declared on civil society in Russia.

Common Action arrived at the idea of the need to convene the

extraordinary congress first of all because, the way we see it, the

political regime has changed and we are now living in a different

country. And this should be stated openly. The country, in fact,

has already turned into one huge Chechnya. In this country we may

find ourselves with a totally new Constitution only a few months

from now. Sergei Adamovich will speak in more detail on this. The

new Constitution will not include any articles dealing with civil

rights. The special services have come to power in our country. And

very soon our country may find itself isolated in the world.

It is this situation that made us decide that we need such a

national extraordinary congress. Indeed, no such congress has ever

been held. We expect to have at least 400 deputies from all over

the country, including deputies from Chukotka and Vladivostok. We

want the most diverse organizations to be represented, even those

who are not really close to us but actually do represent Russia.

I would like to specify. This will not be a congress of human

rights organizations. This will be a congress on human rights. This

is not an accidental wording. We will have environmentalists and

trade unionists, we will have journalists and representatives of

youth organizations. In other words, all those who uphold human

rights in Russia in a wide range or in some specific field. In

other words, those for whom a change of the political regime in the

country is a pressing problem. But I think this is a pressing

problem for the entire population of Russia.

Adamov: I think the quicker we start taking questions, the

better. After all, this is a press conference, a venue where

questions are asked and answers are given.

I will add only the following to what has been said. Indeed,

the congress is the initiative of Common Action. We are concerned

with the present political development of the country. We are not

in a panicky mood, but we are very concerned. This is so because

the vector of this political development is directed, as it seems

to me, not really straight back into the past... You see, mutually

exclusive processes are taking place in the country, processes

moving in different directions. But the present authorities are not

going to restore the glorious Soviet past. It is going to use the

ways and methods of the past and to restore it in a substantially

modernized way.

Let us look at what is happening in our internal and indeed

external policy. In internal policy we see a distinct trend toward

restoring the all-too-familiar vertical power structure from top to

bottom. Our flawed federalism becomes just a fiction. We see that

the decision-makers have learned to act without high-sounding

rhetoric, quietly by technical methods. So, nobody will tell you

that censorship is being restored in the country. And indeed it

won't be restored as an institution. There won't be anything like

Glavlit of the Soviet times. But the authorities clearly are

committed to taking the press under control.

And it is not accidental that they come up with the concept of

information security. I challenge the journalists present here to

tell me what "information security" means.

Another wonderful novel concept is "controlled democracy". I

submit that if democracy is not the ruler, it is non-existent. But

these cliches together with constant sounding off about the

national idea and the great power now dominate official rhetoric.

But it wouldn't be half as bad if it were confined to rhetoric. But

as I have told you we see quiet technical actions which make this

rhetoric a real new philosophy of government.

And we find the same in foreign policy. The talk about the

multipolar world interspersed with talk about the former grandeur

which should be restored -- and we see where the authorities are

looking for allies. A wonderful company -- North Korea, Iraq, Iran

and Libya and so on. And visits to Cuba are being planned. And all

this is done allegedly under the banner of "multipolarity". I

wonder what kind of multipolarity we would like to establish.

It is very dangerous. I repeat, the organizers of the congress

are not in panic. They are clearly aware that the democratic forces

should unite. The question is how to unite. I hope, and this is my

personal view, that we will not go for the creation of every new

organizations put together from heterogeneous pieces. Most probably

the idea of unification should be geared to fairly loose functional

unification based on a common awareness of danger and a common

awareness of the need to counter these dangerous trends with the

will of society which is the real resource of power. And the

authorities are no more than our servants, our mechanism. That is,

if it is a democratic form of government.

I think that the human rights community faces a very clear

task. To try not to be left on the sidelines as passive on-lookers

and to play an active part contributing to the choice of the

country's direction. I think that the human rights community should

learn to influence political forces, above all their own allies,

those associations, parties, and so on who profess to belong to the

democratic part of the political spectrum. That means the parties,

associations and blocs which claim that they are democrats.

But we observe very diverse patterns of behavior among those

who claim to be democrats. And the human rights community should

indicate very clearly what the price of its support is. It should

do so frankly and unambiguously so that the political elite should

understand when it can hope to get support from the democratic

forces in society.

Many would not find it a problem to meet that requirement, but

I don't think that far-sighted politicians will be indifferent to

the congress. We hope that the congress will be a factor that will

force the political decision-makers to give serious thought to the

course they are charting for the country. It's time I ended my

remarks there.

Samodurov: The Extraordinary All-Russia Human Rights Congress

was first the name suggested by Marina Yevgenyevna Salye. I must

give her due credit for this. There is no political opposition in

the country, not in the sense of contesting seats in parliament,

but in the sense of clear opposition to all the authoritarian

threats whose name is legion and which I could go on enumerating.

One of the main tasks of the congress is to work out and implement

general, one might say, national programs of action to counter some

of these threats.

One of these tasks is to prevent a legitimate constitutional

coup that is gradually taking place, to bring about an end of the

Chechen war and create a legitimate administration in the Chechen

Republic.

And I must say that in this context I am very much worried and

I think we are taking a great risk in calling such a congress. I

wonder if the people who will come to the congress will be capable

of working out a clear-cut and more or less united position on

obvious issues.

Needless to say we will appeal to the participants in the

congress in advance and put such projects and our proposed common

position to them and we will try to secure an answer from them. But

I would like to say that those gathered here are exposing

themselves to a great risk, but we are doing it consciously because

in our view we are witnessing a creeping kind of situation. Thank

you.

Moderator: Thank you. Svetlana Alexeyevna Ganushkina.

Ganushkina: I would like to draw your attention to two

dangerous trends that we see in our state. First, as has already

been said and I will speak about it in more detail. The first

dangerous trend is the shutting out of society from influencing

power. I don't mean pushing society out of power, I mean denial of

an opportunity to influence power.

This is happening by way of very strong pressure exerted on

non-governmental organizations. Organizations cannot secure

registration. We see waning interest in dialogue with NGOs. One

reason why we should speak up at this point in time is the danger

that our voice will cease to be heard. It is already not heard very

well.

I deal with the problems of forced migrants, with the problems

of refugees and I see this trend in the way the administration

works with us very clearly. While at parliamentary hearings in 1996

a representative of an NGO presented the third main speech on

Chechnya, this year in the course of such advanced hearings as were

organized by the Council of Europe, NGOs were only given the floor

when they remained alone in parliamentary hearings.

Advisory councils of NGOs under official power structures,

notably at the Ministry for Federation Affairs, Migration and

National Policy are being dissolved.

The commission, the government commission on migration policy

in the Russian Federation which included representatives of

ministries and agencies at the level of deputy ministers and two

representatives of NGOs, Lidiya Ivanovna Grafova, who is present

here, and myself, didn't have a meeting since last December. Nobody

consulted us when the Federal Migration Service was shut down and

when its structures were abolished. And now that commission ceased

to exist (in October) like many similar groups where we could talk

as equal partners with the official representatives.

The second and closely-related danger is the meaning that the

authorities read into its endless talk about vertical power

structure. In some ways we all want laws to be uniformly observed

throughout the territory of the Russian Federation, we are in favor

of compliance with federal laws. But this is not what the

authorities have in mind. The culture of administration built up

since 1993 -- and I am speaking about things I know well, the

control of migration, such structures have been abolished locally.

There used to be council, advisory non-governmental councils and

organizations of settlers operating under territorial

administrations. All this has been destroyed. The democratic power

structures is being destroyed. It's the very vertical power

structure that everybody is talking about and seems anxious to

impose.

So, the authorities when they speak about a vertical power

structure, mean directives issued from above when nobody cares what

people down below think about them. And the result is, and this is

the final sentence I will say, is total neglect of the individual

and his/her fate.

And we see proof of this in the area with which we are

dealing. Members of Memorial are just back from refugee camps in

Chechnya. It was a crime even to resettle people to an unsafe area,

to Chechnya where their lives are in danger every day. And besides,

nobody is interested in what is happening to them now. In the

village of Asinovskaya people are starving to death and they are

not getting any relief. We don't see any professional media

coverage of this, we don't hear anything.

And another proof. The first government documents on

compensation to these people who suffered during the hostilities in

Chechnya came out as early as May, 1995. This time around even a

draft document doesn't exist. The authorities think they can do

anything they like to their citizens and we -- all of us -- we

don't matter. It is starting in Chechnya and naturally it affects

all of us. I think the situation is extremely dangerous.

Moderator: Thank you. Lyudmila Vsevolodovna Vakhnina.

Vakhnina: I would like to add that practically all my

colleagues said is relevant to a situation which can in itself be

described as an emergency factor and that is the mindset of our

citizens.

Our citizens are not used to protecting themselves. They don't

believe it is possible. They wait for a tsar to come along to

punish the enemies, usually imagined enemies. But they are not used

to doing something for themselves. It may sound paradoxical, but I

think our citizens don't have enough healthy egoism.

However, there is a certain segment of our people which has

been able over these past years to establish structures intended

not so much to protect citizens as to teach them to protect

themselves. I think this is important. Without it nothing -- no

political parties, no vertical or horizontal power structures would

be any use -- as long as our citizens don't realize that they have

legal opportunity to protect themselves. And this is already

happening. It is happening in practically all the regions with the

help of human rights organizations and not only human rights

organizations, but those active in other areas, for example,

protection of children.

I hope that the congress that will bring together the members

of these organizations will help society to become aware of such

opportunities and of the existence of such people. They hopefully

will become aware that human rights activists are not just 10 or 20

people who are upholding, as we used to say, abstract values. They

are upholding day-to-day values and are addressing day-to-day

problems of people helping them to solve these problems and helping

them in emergency situations, for example, when they are jailed

without any grounds or are beaten by police.

There are ways, there are such forces and such people. And I

hope that the congress will help to bring it home to the citizens,

but this is only possible if the media contribute to it.

(THE PANELISTS THEN TOOK QUESTIONS)