ALL-RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS CONGRESS

Theses of the speech at the Congress

S.A.Kovalyov

1. The reason for the convocation of the Congress is a very serious concern about the development of political situation in the country. The initiators of the Congress called it "extraordinary". Some regard Russia's political evolution itself as extraordinary - unusual, catastrophical. Others suppose that tragic events are, on the contrary, natural and inevitable in a country on its way from the club of superpowers to the "third world". Let's not argue. Whoever is right, obvious dangers threating us fully justify the extraordinarity of the Congress. What are these dangers?

2. There is no doubt that in Russia - for the present within the framework of existing constitutional system - a new political regime is emerging, a regime genetically connected with its predecessor but not identical with it. In my opinion, the present power is organically hostile to liberal values of contemporary democracy including the priority of human rights and freedoms in comparison with the superiority of the state. The alma mater of the present Kremlin's team is in the place of previous service of its key figures, the service of which they are not ashamed, of which they are proud. From there they adopted fundamental principles of the ideology they are introducing: the etatism (the state is a super-goal to which all society and each citizen serve); the order, i.e. "manageable democracy"; the responsibility, essential element of which is "information security" - in common parlance, the control over the press; the patriotism consisiting in search of outside enemies and the "fifth column".

3. These principles and methods of their realization are well matched. The latters also leaved a sad memory behind. The retreat to the Soviet "commanding administrative" system has been planned and started with silent technical methods. The parliament is obedient again, its upper chamber is being formed by appointments; the Central Election Commission, judicial power, prosecutor's office are becoming more and more politicized and manageable. In these conditions the legislative activity of the Kremlin is increasing quickly and inevitably.

The draft of the bill "On the Constitutional Assembly" constructs actually appointed constitutional power, i.e. the Constitution made to order. The same trend favourable for the power is reflected in many provisions of the drafts of the Labour and the Administrative Codes, Civil Processual Code, Criminal Processual Code, the bill "On the Administrative Courts" etc. It's clear what is to be expected in the practice of applying the laws and other regulations. New laws and, what is the more important, unwritten habits of applying these laws will become a norm of behaviour of the police state in all its phenomena.

4. For this year and a half the power (with the accompaniment of declarations about the dictatorship of the law) has made a series of steps leading to serious and mass human rights violations. I'll limit myself with a brief enumeration of some of them.

It is: the second Chechen war that is dangerous not only by itself but as well for the future of Russia, because the forces that came to the power on the tide of antiterrorist hysteria are supported by the majority of population.

It is: the persistent and not unsuccessful attempts to establish control over mass-media and private business, over civil society as a whole, down to the criminal proceedings against those who denounce breaches in such spheres as ecology, transparency of information, arbitrary rule of law enforcement bodies.

It is: the liquidation of the State Committee for Nature and the Federal Migration Service, the threat to the independence of the State Committee for the Control over Atomic Energy - relatively autonomous and more or less successfully interacting with the NGO state structures that were destined to defend citizens' rights from the actions of agencies, in the first hand of force ones.

It is: the increasing "independence" of the maintenance of the rule of law and human rights in the bodies of the Ministry for Interior, prosecutor's office, Federal Security Service which don't accept any form of indepedent civil control over their activities.

It is: the foreign policies of Putin's administration that actually mean rapprochement with non-democratic regimes which violate human rights and political freedoms, reject main priorities of the open society.

5. However, for us is more important not to expose the threats to the rule of law but how to withstand these threats. Therefore the most important is not the question about what the power should do, but the question about what we should do. The most necessary is that the human rights community react to the political process much more actively than before. The politics isn't our business? The law is beyond and above the politics? Of course, but only until the moment when the politics begins to jeopardize the fundaments of the law and democracy, while it accepts the primacy of the law and doesn't try to convert the law into a serving apparatus. If such threat emerges, the human rights community has to "politicize" itself.

Of course, every time we have to decide anew to what degree and in what aspects human rights activists should turn on to politics. A natural criterion is: whether "purely political" events jeopardize constitutional bases and civil society, superiority of the law and human rights. However, this criterion is too general. Thus, we are inevitably faced with frequent discussions.

What forms can take this "politization"? Nothing unusual, nevertheless these forms are not quite traditional, at least for last years:

The first requires a serious expert work: we must organize a systematic monitoring of events in the political sector (in particular, the votings in the Duma) infringing on human rights, analize and evaluate them and then distribute our conclusions and recommendations as wide as possible. You will find more details in the proposals distributed on my behalf.

Another type of "political work" is non-violent civil resistance in different forms: collection of signatures under petitions, pickets, manifestations, boycotts, complaints to the courts concerning replacement and bringing to account the high-ranking officials, disobedience actions and political strikes. Today these actions are rare and not numerous, their influence is limited with separate social groups or single gross human rights violations. When traditional methods of human rights work are unsufficient or are not united in a concerted obstacle to the "pinochetism", it is necessary not only to carry out discussions and to cope with information technologies, but to prepare ourselves to organize initiative groups and committees of civil resistance and "to go into the streets" without giving occasion for the charges of infringement of law.

6. Nevertheless, we will turn into politicizing Philisters if we ignore the "routine human rights work". In this work there are many difficulties, especially concerning interaction with the power. It is clear that this work can't be ceased only because we have, in my opinion, to become a civil (not political in the narrow sense of the word) opposition to Putin's regim.

It brings us to two conclusions one connected with another. It was already said about the "politization". The other conclusion is that human rights organizations are a small but a prominent part of the third sector and that of acting structures of the civil society as a whole. They are our natural allies in our stand against authoritarian tendencies of the power that threaten the routine, "lower" work not only of the human rights activists but of all the NGO. Of course, it isn't a question of any association; we need a system of horizontal connections, ones being constructed around concrete deeds and initiatives, and not from the center but locally.

It is obvious that the society is mostly ready for consolidation of the authoritarianism and for formation in patriotic lines supporting the President; the society itself encourages the power to point out "what is to be done" - without reverse connections with the citizens and without taking into consideration the dissent. Therefore it is so important to demonstrate by our deeds that we stand not only for political freedoms but for the rights of everyone including those violated everywhere. And we should indicate how the power's vertical at all its floors perceives and "enriches" wide-spreading fluids of the "new old" national idea.

7. Finally, the last one. Our Congress was called an extraordinary one but it doesn't mean that in current situation we should become hysterical. It's the easiest way to compete in screams, denounciations and scathing epitets addressed to the power since for the present it is still practically safe for the denouncers and, what is the most important, doesn't require any systematic work in the future. In this case one will be able to say for sure that we failed. I call the Congress in no case to follow this way.