By Vestnik Kavkaza
Internal contradictions go on in the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights (HRC). The HRC member Maxim Shevchenko told Izvestia that he decided to establish his own working group for the Caucasus, explaining it by the fact that the head of the Caucasus working group Alexander Mukomolov has a different view on the problem of Chechnya. Mukomolov states that Shevchenko is an emotional person and there is no split in the HRC. However, many people consider the HRC an ineffective structure. The HRC former member Emil Pain said that conflicts are unavoidable there, as the new structure of the organization is decorative: “It is a Christmas Tree decoration only. Working groups differ by interests and compete to each other, as some of them deal with one and the same thing, but from various points of view. It resembles the well-known story about spiders in a can.”
Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights
We have new working groups now, and some working groups that existed in the past have been restructured. For example, we have a working group on labor rights and social partnership. We had long been planning to create such a group, but have not done so yet, because there were not enough Council members. There were simply not enough for creating a working group. Now it exists. There is a new working group on human rights abroad. A working group on migration policy and civic engagement in the field of international relations has been created; I think it is a very important area. We have a working group on freedom of information and journalists' rights. The working group on the case of Sergei Magnitsky also remains, but now it will be titled a little differently "On the case of Sergei Magnitsky and other cases of precedent." For us the case of Sergei Magnitsky is important because it set a precedent on the basis of which changes were introduced to the Criminal Procedure Code, and human rights guarantees of people in pre-trial detention, suffering from serious illnesses were strengthened.
Mara Polyakova, head of the working group of the Presidential Council for Civic Society Institutions and Human Rights
The group on the case of Magnitsky and other cases of precedent had already been created, although under a different name, during Medvedev's presidency, and was headed by Lyudmila Alekseeva. Despite the fact that she withdrew from the Board, she is ready continue working as an expert in the Presidential Council. And a part of the group that has withdrawn from the Council before, including Lena Panfilova and others, too, is ready to participate in the work of the group as experts. There are new members of the Council who have been experts in that group - most probably they will also be involved in this work. We have been often criticized earlier that we are working only with one or two cases. In fact, even then we were de facto dealing with many other cases. We are cooperating with all human rights organizations in Russia, with all commissioners for Human Rights in Russia, and the Council received so to say, flashy cases of such serious violations that could not have be ignored, including at the presidential level. We conducted their examination, summarized them and based on our research and generalizations offered proposals and bills to the President. I hope that now we are going to continue this work and, despite our name, will conduct large-scale work on all such egregious cases occupying society and us, of course. I hope it will also help to identify problems in the judicial system, law enforcement bodies and pre-trial detention centers, up to medical problems that arise in such circumstances and on the basis of our work we are going to make proposals to the president, indicating the changes necessary to take place in judicial activity, laws on the status of judges and of personnel issues. Examinations of cases of precedent help very much in the development of legislation.
Elena Topolyeva-Soldunova, head of the working group of the Presidential Council for Civic Society Institutions and Human Rights
Non-profit organizations are very often the center of attention. A lot is happening on the part of the authorities and the public in relation to these non-profit organizations. Quite a number of platforms which are in some ways connected with the development of NGOs have been created. The uniqueness of the group on the development of NGOs in this Council is that it is primarily aimed at protecting NGOs, because this Council is protecting human rights. Unfortunately, the current situation will, I am afraid, force us to pay a lot of attention to this issue. On the day that the law on NGOs as foreign agents entered into force,unfortunately, several very bullying attacks against well-respected, long-serving NGOs, such as Memorial, Transparency International and several others were carried out.
Evgeny Bobrov, head of the working group on migration policy and protection of human rights in international relations
I believe that my primary objective is to simplify migration legislation, particularly in the area of citizenship, as well as the legalization of our former compatriots and in labor migration. We will also protect the rights of migrants outside of Russia, our former compatriots. On November 12 the president signed amendments to the citizenship law, and now there is a new category of people - citizens of the Russian Federation who have illegal passports of citizens of the Russian Federation. It would be very amusing if we didn't have 70,000 such people according to official figures. What is this about? 10 years ago there were some inconsistencies in procedures, and people received passports without being registered in the lists of the Interior Ministry, Foreign Ministry and now FMS after receiving Russian citizenship. The FMS now considers this list as a criteria for announcing that someone who is not on them is a foreigner and proposes that they once again go through the procedure of becoming a Russian citizen, starting from getting a temporary residence permit, then a residence permit, then to live five years with a residence permit and then receive a new Russian passport, having rejected a current passport. What sort of thing is this? By law, if a citizen of Russia has not given up his Russian citizenship acquired by birth, or because he lived in Russia in 1992, or due to other reasons, then he cannot lose his citizenship, regardless of what passport he has at the moment. Rather than leaving these people alone, given that the five-year cancellation option for naturalization has already passed, in case it was illegal, as well as the three-year old court case to recognize these actions as illegal and even the statute of limitations to bring to trial a chief passport officer who in the opinion of the state has illegally issued the passport, for some reason, these people are declared illegal immigrants and forced to re-naturalize. This is the most obvious example, which we will have to work on. In general, I think that already a long time ago we should have seized the practice of registration, citizenship and other legal documents in the metro, through advertisements in the press. In order not to be ashamed, it is necessary to have a clear and predictable immigration policy so that we will not have illegal immigrants - neither involuntary ones, nor others.
