Observers got out of the commission - Newspaper Kommersant No. 180 (7381) of 09/29/2022

Observers got out of the commission - Newspaper Kommersant No. 180 (7381) of 09/29/2022



In Russia, one of the most massive rotations of members of the PMC, public monitoring commissions that protect the rights of those arrested and convicted, interacting with the prosecutor's office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Investigative Committee, is coming to an end. The results of the campaign drew criticism from human rights activists. Kommersant's interlocutors, in particular, note the "unprecedented" number of representatives of law enforcement agencies in the composition of the PMC. The Public Chamber of the Russian Federation (OP), which carried out the rotation, called the criticism unfounded.

The rotation of supervisory commissions this year affected 43 regions, becoming the most massive in recent years. Alexander Kholodov, deputy chairman of the commission of the Chamber of Commerce of the Russian Federation on security and interaction with the PMC, told Kommersant that the council of the chamber (approves members of the POC) received 1,036 applications from candidates, of which 142 “were drawn up with violations and were not considered.” In 2019, he noted, the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation appointed 700 members of the PMC (1155 applications), this year - 751 people.

Recall that PMCs were created since 2008 to "monitor the observance of the rights of prisoners in places of detention." The rotation of the PMC in the region takes place every three years. Depending on the subject, the PMC includes from 5 to 40 people whose work is not paid. Public associations (registered and operating for at least five years) can nominate candidates for the POC, except for political parties, religious denominations and NPOs from the registers of foreign agents. The selection of candidates for the PMC is a closed procedure. Executive Director of the Moscow Helsinki Group Svetlana Astrakhantseva and human rights activist Zoya Svetova are suing the RF OP in an attempt to achieve publicity.

The lists of new members of the RF OP were published on Monday late in the evening (the lists of candidates were traditionally not published), in the morning they caused a heated discussion among human rights activists. HRC member Eva Merkacheva (part of the PMC of Moscow, her third term in the commission expires this year) drew attention to the fact that Valery Borshchev, the founder of the POC institute in Russia, and a member of the HRC, the former head of the Committee against Torture (CAT, provided assistance victims of violent actions of law enforcement officers, 22 years old; liquidated after being recognized as a foreign agent) Igor Kalyapin, as well as Vice-President of the International Committee for the Protection of Human Rights Ivan Melnikov. “In addition, all journalists were removed from the PMC of Moscow,” Mrs. Merkacheva told Kommersant.

Not a single member of the “Team Against Torture”, created on the site of the committee recognized by a foreign agent, made it to the updated PMC, Georgy Ivanov, current member of the Moscow PMC, specified. He himself, being a member of the CPT, also did not get into the commission. “Only in Moscow three people were put forward,” he told Kommersant. In his opinion, “the ranks of the commissions have been cleared out, including loyal people,” and this may complicate the access of observers to detainees and those arrested on high-profile political cases.

Criticism of the rotation is connected with the absence of the critics themselves in the composition of the PMC, Alexander Kholodov believes. “We were faced with the fact that people filed applications, indicating that they had no criminal record, and when checking at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it turned out that there was a criminal record for forging documents,” said Mr. Kholodov. foreign agent. Now is not the time to stand on ceremony with such people.”

Several members of the capital's PMC, commenting on the rotation to Kommersant, called human rights activist Boris Klin "the absolute record holder in attendance at pre-trial detention centers and temporary detention centers" for Kommersant. His lack of inclusion in the new composition was considered "incredible" by the interlocutors. Mr. Klin refused to comment on Kommersant's rotation. One of Kommersant's sources noted that the commission at the same time included members of previous convocations who "never visited the detainees and those arrested."

The executive secretary of the PMC of Moscow, Alexei Melnikov, was unable to promptly provide Kommersant with statistics on visits to the pre-trial detention center and temporary detention center by the current members of the commission, explaining that he was on a business trip in the Donbass. However, he emphasized that "those who rarely or did not go at all did not make it into the new squad."

Eva Merkacheva points out that in other regions where the PMC rotated, the commissions included "siloviki who covered up torture." As an example, she cites the Perm Territory, Saratov, Kirov and Irkutsk Regions. She points out that she knows some of the new members of the POC in the regions from joint inspections of colonies (she traveled there from the HRC), and describes these meetings in a material published in MK: one of them was a witness to interrogations where the convicts announced rapes, “but wrote that there were no human rights violations,” two others blackmailed the prisoners with the necessary insulin.

In the Nizhny Novgorod region, Kommersant found out, the new PMC included 28 people. The aforementioned checkpoint was created and worked in this region, so the absence of members of the “Team Against Torture” in the new composition of the PMC caused indignation among regional human rights activists. “In the last convocation there were four of us, today there are not a single one, although there were more than a dozen questionnaires,” Sergei Babinets, head of the checkpoint, told Kommersant.

Vyacheslav Bashkov, a former member of the PMC of the Sverdlovsk region (30 people were selected), also noted that the new composition included "mainly members of public chambers representing the interests of law enforcement agencies."

The PMC of Bashkiria now consists of 18 (previously 15) people at the expense of members of the regional public organization Search for Children-Ufa, volunteers, the head physician and the head of the legal department of the center for the prevention and control of AIDS and infectious diseases. In Dagestan, instead of 10, there are now 15 members of the PMC: four retained their mandates, the rest of the human rights activists were elected for the first time. According to the head of the commission, Omar Omarov, the PMC included a pool of lawyers and university professors, as well as three employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service and a former deputy minister of internal affairs of the region.

In St. Petersburg, the number of members of the PMC has not changed - 40 people. 16 of them retained mandates. And in the Krasnodar Territory, the PMC, on the contrary, has been halved - to 20 human rights activists. The chairman of the commission, Anzaur Akhidzhak, told Kommersant that the new composition included three employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service, two representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, five lawyers and four representatives of the region's OP.

Five new members have appeared in the PMC of the Penza region, among which is Yuri Mazhachkin, a member of the Council of Afghanistan Veterans, an employee of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Penza region. Of the 15 members of the commission of the Voronezh region, only four retained the mandates of the previous convocation. In the Belgorod region, 17 people were elected to the PMC (five from the previous convocation), including members of human rights NGOs.

It should be noted that the rotation in Moscow and the regions will end on October 7, on this day the members of the PMC acting today will resign, and the new ones will receive mandates. On the same day, the commissions will re-elect the chairmen.

Maria Starikova; corset "b"



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