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Politics & Society


INTERVIEW MIKHAIL FEDOTOV


Fools and Roads and Fedotov’s First Hundred Days


NEW PRESIDENTAL ADVISER ON HUMAN RIGHTS WANTS TO HELP RUSSIA UNDERSTAND ITS PAST, ESPECIALLY STALIN'S TERROR


Mikhail Fedotov is ready to face challenges that hinder civil society development in Russia. Police and judicial reform is one of his priorities.


EVGENY ABOV RUSSIA NOW


When a top official takes of- fice, people focus on the first 100 days in office. As the pres- ident’s human rights adviser, what are you hoping to achieve during this period? If I succeed in stopping people from getting beaten and roughed up during opposition protests on Triumph Square on the 31st of every month, this will be an important achieve- ment: Our human rights and opposition leaders have sub- mitted 12 applications for hold- ing protests [on the square] each month, and each time they have been turned down by the Moscow authorities. I hope to resolve this deadlock. We Russians know that our main problems are fools and roads. I think this combination (fools and roads) is the re- sponse to the two classic ques- tions in Russian history: Who


is to blame? Fools. What is to be done? Roads. I think our priority during the first 100 days in office will be to turn dead ends into roads.


What is your agenda for the foreseeable future? We are looking to discuss three issues at our next meeting with the president. The first one is about state policy on children, maternity and childhood, while the second is about judicial and police reforms. As you know, President Medvedev prepared a draft law on the police.


That is, the reform of the Minis- try of Internal Affairs? Yes, it is the reform of the Min- istry of Internal Affairs. And the third issue we plan on looking at is "de-Stalinization." We call it “de-Stalinizing the public con- sciousness.” In fact, this covers a broader range of problems, including eliminating the rem- nants of a totalitarian state.


How will you evaluate your campaign’s success? Indeed, we have no plans to rename streets or remove mon-


uments. We want people to re- member the victims of Stalin’s regime and erect monuments to them; we want to name streets after them; we want to build museums devoted to their memory. We believe that this can be very useful for educat- ing young people, because they should know the truth about their past. Opinion polls will show us how successful we are.


The Western press reports that Russia is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists. The names Khleb- nikov and Politkovskaya come immediately to mind, as well as those working with journal- ists by supplying them with information, such as Natalya Estemirova.[Oleg Kashin was beaten after this interview.] Investigations into journalist murders are very slow in Rus- sia. What has to be done to en- sure greater security for jour- nalists in our country? I was director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situa- tions of the Russian Union of Journalists. I dealt with all kinds


of cases involving attacks on journalists, their persecutions and firing, and all other cases of their rights being violated. Journalist killings are indeed in- vestigated very poorly, but I do not think the authorities are doing this on purpose. ... I think they really do want to know the truth. But today it is sim- ply not something we are ca- pable of doing. Things are made even worse by our law enforcement agencies simply having forgotten how to do their job, and they only show any desire to work when they understand that there is some- thing in it for them.


In other words, this is not just about journalists, but also about our law enforcement agencies in general? Yes, I know of cases when law enforcement officers name a price from the victim for find- ing the criminal. Pay us and we will find them. I think it shows just what a disgrace our law enforcement system has become. Unfortunately, corrup- tion is not exclusive to our law enforcement system. Corrup-


Mikhail Fedotov on Triumfalnaya Square, where the October 31st demostration went smoothly.


Corruption corrodes the state from within. It is the biggest evil that exists in Russia.


tion corrodes the state from within. It is the biggest evil that exists in Russia today.


Speaking of the law enforce- ment system in general, what are you, as the council chair- man, going to do with respect to the law enforcement agen- cies? At our next meeting with the president, we plan to raise a whole number of issues regard- ing the police and judicial re- forms. During these discussions with the president, we will pro- pose some ideas on how to make our law enforcement sys- tem more effective and more transparent. I will propose that


Rights RN continues its series on the disabled in Russia Russia’s Disabled: No Longer Invisible


Ben Aris glimpses the life of the disabled through the eyes of Evelina Matveeva, 15 years after she walked into a firefight.


BEN ARIS SPECIAL TO RUSSIA NOW


Evelina Matveeva is lying in bed, surfing the Internet on her com- puter and chatting on the phone in the Moscow apart- ment she shares with her moth- er and younger sister. The na- tive of Grozny in Russia's Chechen Republic has spent a lot of time in bed since a bul- let tore through her torso, grazed her heart and smashed her spine 15 years ago. It was January 1995, early on


in the first Chechen war. Eveli- na, then 11 years old, was stroll- ing down the road to her friend’s house. In the next in- stant she was a child trapped in a firefight between Russian federal forces and Chechen reb- els. A stray bullet changed ev- erything for Evelina, who has no control over the lower half of her body and is destined to live the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Evelina said she was relative-


ly lucky as the Russian soldiers immediately whisked her away by helicopter to the hospital in nearby Mozdok, where doctors spent the next two days trying to save her life. Once out of danger, she and her mother were flown to a specialist hos- pital in Moscow. It was the be- ginning of a long process of re- habilitation that will never finish.


There are more than one mil-


lion disabled children and a dearth of services in Russia. Many children will not make it to adulthood, but Evelina did.


the president’s law on police should include an independent commission to deal with com- plaints. There is a special com- mission in Britain that consid- ers complaints against the police and has a staff of sever- al thousand investigators. The idea is to take the so-called in- ternal security system within the Ministry of Internal Affairs out of the ministry, making it an independent body.


There has been much talk re- cently that the Federal Secu- rity Service (successor to the KGB) has an excessive amount of power, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs also has broad powers in all matters concern- ing the fight against extrem- ism. How do you understand extremism? Can public pro- tests and dissatisfaction be seen as extremism? Under extremism I understand everything having to do with


violence or the threat of vio- lence that puts people’s lives and health in danger. Overturn- ing cars, crashing shop windows and beating passersby is extrem- ism because it is violence, no matter what kinds of noble slo- gans you use to cover it up. Un- fortunately, our law “on coun- tering extremist activities” does not support this concept be- cause it offers a very broad def- inition of extremism, from de- faming civil servants to terrorism. I do not understand how events like September 11th and de- faming some minuscule munic- ipal official can be put together. I cannot grasp it. Therefore, we will see what we can do to amend the law “on counteract- ing extremist activities." I have been dealing with this


issue for eight years already, but so far to little avail. I, how- ever, had also not been a pres- idential adviser, which I am now.


03


1999


The Russian constitution states that required medical treatment be free of charge. “But when I go to the state-run pharmacy, they just say, ‘We don’t have that medicine’.”


She has been rebuilding her shattered life, and her family has settled in Moscow with some help. Joseph Kobson, the Soviet-era crooner and Russia’s answer to Frank Sinatra, came to the family’s rescue, donat- ing $20,000 toward the cost of their apartment. They could never have purchased their four- room place just outside the city limits without his help. Though she still receives reg-


ular treatment at state-run hos- pitals and goes once a year to a sanatorium for extensive phys- iotherapy, Evelina finds that the government support is of little assistance day to day. While the state is not yet enforcing its own protections for the disabled, public attitudes are not much better. Russians are extremely polarized on the rights of peo- ple with disabilities. Russian law demands that


local authorities provide wheel- chair access to any public build- ing or apartment as needed, but Evelina’s family had to build the rough concrete ramp that leads to her front door themselves. The Russian constitution


states that required medical treatment be free of charge. “But when I go to the state-run pharmacy, they just say, ‘We don’t have that medicine’,” said Evelina’s mother, Samantha. “Those bureaucrats just pass papers to each other and we have to buy the medicines from the pharmacy.” “Things are much better


today than they were five years ago, but it is still very difficult,” Evelina added. She recently completed a photography course at a Moscow institute and earns some money on the side making portraits for friends and family. “All the new malls


must have wheelchair access, but nothing that was built be- fore does. I couldn’t live any- where else in Russia except here.”


Money is tight. Samantha is


on a pension of $333, an in- crease from a few years ago. Evelina also has a job at the re- habilitation clinic she used to attend, where she earns anoth- er $490 a month. But getting a job outside the disabled com- munity is extremely difficult for the wheelchair-bound, as dis- crimination is widespread; Eveli- na’s older brother works as a masseuse at the same clinic and earns twice his sister’s pay. “In the West, if your legs


don’t work then you are con- sidered to be a person whose legs don’t work, but you are still a person,” Evelina said, frus- trated by the limits her disabil- ity causes. “But here you are


just ‘balnoi,’ sick, and can’t do anything.” Evelina’s best friend, Yulia Bessonova, who is also wheel- chair-bound and shared a ward with Evelina as a teenager, put herself through college; she is now qualified to be an English teacher. Bessonova was lucky enough to not only find a job but also a school with an ele- vator so she can get to her class- room. Both young women saved


enough money to buy cars they converted to hands-only con- trol, which they clearly adore, as it gives them the freedom to move around the city. The other key piece of equipment is a laptop with an Internet con- nection, without which their education would have been im- possible. Another friend, Anna Tukbae- va, is also from the same ward


2010


Evelina Matveeva (pictured left in both photos) and Anna Tukbaeva (right) 11 years ago and today: Both girls shared a medical ward. Evelina was paralyzed after being caught in a firefight during the first Chechen War that rocked Russia’s south in the 1990s. Both young women are having some success rebuilding their lives even though they are disabled in Russia.


and has just finished school. Her mother has no car, so she did the bulk of her schooling on- line at home and even took her final exams online this sum- mer. “I want to study psychology,


and there is an institute in Mos- cow that offers a distance learn- ing course where I have a place,” said Tukbaeva, who has been disabled since birth by a defect in her spine. “But what I would really like to do is study law. Trouble is there are no dis- tance learning courses in Mos- cow; there are in other cities but not here!” Evelina remains cautiously optimistic about her future: “I have to bide my time and


see what comes up,” she said. “Really it is up to other people to realize that you can be pro- ductive and work even if you are an invalid.”


BEN ARIS


BEN ARIS


SERGE GOLOVACH


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