Three pieces of legislation infringing on human rights marked the first few months of Putin’s presidency and attracted fierce criticism from leading human rights activists.

On June 9, 2012, changes to the federal law on assembly, rally, demonstration, and picketing came into force. They were initiated by the “United Russia” party and increased the fine for participating in “unsanctioned public meetings” by 150 times.  According to the introduced changes, each public gathering must be sanctioned in advance by local authorities. Individuals who initiate a peaceful assembly, rally, demonstration, or picketing without the authorities’ permission will pay a fine of up to 30,000 rubles (about 1,000 USD), and a civil servant will be fined for 40,000 rubles for the same “violation”. The fines rise dramatically if a public meeting obstructs the movement of vehicles or pedestrians or violates other “norms” established by the law.

Amnesty International states that it considers “ridiculous” the new provision in the law that allows public gatherings to be held only in “particular places designated by local authorities for public events”. John Dalhuisen, the director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia program, believes that isolation of participants in a designated zone where they cannot address those to whom they would like to express their protest is against the essence of the right to assemble. He further states that the law on public meetings is meant to prevent any political protests and curb free expression of thoughts that are different from the officially accepted point of view.

On July 13, State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament adopted a law turning certain types of libel from administrative into criminal offense. Human Rights Watch advised that the international community call on President Putin not to sign the law because “criminal penalties for libel are regressive and out of step with international human rights law”. Just seven months earlier, President Medvedev ensured that libel is considered an administrative offense, a step which was praised by the Council of Europe.

Human Rights Watch is especially concerned with a provision in the law that makes libel against judges, jurors, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials subject to a fine of up to 2 million rubles (about 61,000 USD). It states that “Under international human rights law, the threshold for criticism of a public official is greater than for a private individual, and this provision could restrict legitimate criticism of public officials to an extent not permitted under international standards”.

On July 13, the State Duma also approved a law which was soon named the “smear campaign against NGOs” by leading human rights organizations. The notorious law requires NGOs receiving funding from abroad, financially or in kind, to register as “non-commercial organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent”. The changes apply specifically to those NGOs that are engaged in political activities, that is in the law’s wording, if they attempt to influence decision making by public authorities in order to change public policies pursued by them or if they attempt to affect public opinion for the same purpose. Amnesty International believes that such a broad definition of political activities includes any human rights organization and most civil society organizations. The penalties for a failure to register an organization as “performing the functions of a foreign agent” are severe and range from a fine of up to 1 million rubles for organizations to imprisonment of certain NGO members.

A notion of a “foreign agent” has strongly negative associations in the Russian language, as Amnesty International pointed out. The fact that NGOs registered as “performing the functions of foreign agents” are obliged to state that on all their publications, whether available in hard copy or via the Internet, means that the law also aims to delegitimize the work of such organizations by making them appear as serving some foreign powers.

With regard to these three important legislative changes that happened in just two months, United Nations human rights chief, Navi Pillay, urged the Russia’s government “to avoid taking further steps backwards to a more restrictive era,” referring to the more than 70 years of communist rule.

Sources

HRW :

http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/16/russia-criminal-libel-law-blow-free-expression

http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/17/president-putins-first-60-days

AI :

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/russia-putin-urged-reject-law-restricting-right-peaceful-assembly-2012-06-07

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR46/029/2012/en/242fadd2-c20c-4cce-b78c-071edd1c142a/eur460292012en.html

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/russia-end-smear-campaign-against-ngos-2012-07-13

http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/russia-end-smear-campaign-against-ngos-2012-07-13

Russian sources :

http://www.rg.ru/2012/06/09/mitingi-dok.html

Other :

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/18/227107.html

A recent series of articles on corruption in Russia’s education system has attracted my attention. Most of the articles try to estimate the bribes annual turnover or quote officials from the Ministry of Education on the measures they take to combat corruption. For example, according to the Russian online newspaper Nezavisimaya (“Independent”), “Experts estimate the capacity of the bribes market in the education system at 500 million dollars.” However, it may be interesting to learn about the issue from the students’ perspective.

I have collected a few students’ accounts of their experiences in Russian institutions of higher education:

“A few days before the exam I realized that a few people from my group (In Russian universities students attend classes with a group of other students majoring in the same discipline) are planning to pay the professor a certain amount of money to get good grades without taking the exam. I asked them how they were going to do this. They said they came up to the professor after class one at a time, and asked her “if it was possible to not take the exam.” The professor, from their words, replied that “it will cost correspondingly.” So excellent was worth 5 thousand rubles, or about 170 USD, and good was estimated at 4 thousand rubles, or about 135 USD. Short after the exam was over and the professor was grading the group’s exams, they, one by one, went to her office and returned with excellent and good.”

“After I had been admitted to my university, on the day of signing the agreement at the dean’s office, my parents and I had a conversation with the dean. I was granted a merit-based scholarship covering the cost of tuition. The dean asked if my family could make a “small donation” to the university and named the sum of 50,000 rubles, or a little less than 2,000 USD. My family couldn’t afford such a donation: 50,000 rubles is the cost of a year’s tuition at my university, and I applied for the merit scholarship precisely because my family wouldn’t be able to pay my tuition (Russian universities do not offer need-based financial aid, only orphans are guaranteed financial aid). When we said we can’t afford that much, she started bargaining with us. We clearly felt the pressure to make this “voluntary” donation and ended up paying 15,000 rubles, or about 500 USD. I know we could refuse to pay anything, but I have heard a lot of stories from college students that if your family doesn’t make a donation to the university at the time of admission, it will reflect on your grades later. My parents did not want me to experience anything like that so they paid.”

“In one of my classes my group took a final exam. Professor came to class and said that everyone in my group got an F and would probably get an F as a final grade. We were surprised that everyone got the same grade, so we asked the professor to show us our exams. She refused. She gave us a list of books and said that if we bought those books “for the department” she would not take the final exam into account when giving final grades for the course. The books were expensive and some of us did not have money, but she insisted that we buy them. So we divided into smaller groups and shared the costs.”

“In my university professors do not take bribes, they only do at the time of admission. Merit-based scholarships are very limited for students applying to some departments. For example, when I applied, there were 7 scholarships available in my department. But applicants who take tutoring sessions with the Department Chair are silently guaranteed admission. So I took tutoring sessions with the professor. She tried to talk my parents into paying for my application essay because, as she said, no one gets a high grade for the composition if they write it themselves.”

“I lived in a village. In my high school I started thinking about applying to a university in the nearby big city. Once I went to the career fair in that city, where professors from different universities, including the one I had selected, offered tutoring to prospective students. I attended tutoring sessions with one of the professors I met there for about half a year. Then she introduced me to another professor from the same university who replaced her. When it was time to apply, that professor told me that if I paid him 20,000 rubles he would give me the admission test before the exam so that I could prepare in advance. I paid him for the test, got a high score on my admission exam and was admitted. I think everyone did the same.”

Although these personal experiences of students from different Russian cities reveal the fact that corruption inRussia’s education system is still an issue, some of the students I interviewed said they had never faced corruption in their universities. In fact, most of the students replied that they had never dealt with it. So corruption is not something that happens in every Russian college and to every Russian student, but it does happen in many educational institutions.

An interesting question about corruption inRussia’s higher education is who is more to blame for it – professors or students? In some situations, professors or representatives of a university demand that students give bribes, while in other situations students themselves offer bribes to faculty or admission committees’ officials. To say that Russian professors are underpaid would be to see only one root of the problem. The other one is the decaying morality of students and their parents. Of course there are cases when students give bribes out of fear, but the cases when students bribe professors because they are too lazy to study for an exam are also prevalent. So improving the morality of all – students, their families, and professors, as well as making teaching profession more respectable and well-paid are probably the only two ways Russia can curb corruption in its universities and raise the value of its education.

By: Anna Malinovskaya

Russian newspaper Sobesednik has called Russia’s recent parliament elections “the dirtiest in Russia’s history.”

German media company Deutsche Welle released an article titled “Independent observers: these are the dirtiest elections over the last decade.”

Independent observers from Deutsche Welle, registered many violations during the elections of December 4th.

One of such violations they noticed was that officials refused to show empty ballot boxes to independent observers, which is clearly against the law and made falsification easily possible.

Observers from the association of nonprofits protecting voters’ rights, “Golos”, said they saw buses that took people from one voting center to another so that the same people could vote more than once.

In one of the voting centers in Moscow, observers found a pile of ballots already filled out to have been thrown into the ballot box. In most such cases, the police asked independent observers to leave the voting center.

Almost none of the violations resulted in any adequate response from the police or the Central Election Commission.

In December of last year, one of my professors told me she had listened to national radio that morning and heard about a students’ protest against unfair elections in my home town Khabarovsk. Here’s a video of that protest which its participants named “My voice has been stolen.”

It is clear from the video that the protest documented was a peaceful demonstration of college students. Nevertheless, policemen grabbed random people from the crowd and forced them to get on the bus which, after having been filled, rode to the local police department.

This video from the protest in Khabarovsk also features a reporter from the federal tevelvision channel ,The First Channel, being arrested and taken away by the police. Russia’s federal law “The law about mass media” states in article 3 that “Censorship of mass media … is prohibited” and in article 25 that “Interfering of state officials … into dissemination of mass media products is prohibited.” Article 25 proclaims that “A reporter has the right to search, ask for, receive and disseminate information” and “to attend … places of mass protests and demonstrations.” Obviously, the reporter’s rights were violated as recorded in the video.

Other video clips from protests against unfair elections in Russian cities:

1. Khabarovsk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGvMKO0y3g&feature=related

2. Krasnodar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMu7FPau1PY&feature=related

The crowd asks the police officer why a young man has been arrested

3. Tomsk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SolXN3UwgBc&feature=related

People shout “We want new elections!”

4. Nizhniy Novgorod

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uhX3g6ej9k&feature=related

People shout “New elections!” “We don’t want a party of bandits and thieves!”

5. Saint Petersburg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_XZjhZbYr8&feature=related

People shout “Freedom to political prisoners!”

One woman says: “Because they have stolen my voice in elections, that’s why I have come here. I have come to stand up for my interests. We need fair elections and a fair country so that the government serves its people not the vise versa.”

6. Syktyvkar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT145vh3y3A&feature=related

People shout “Police be with people, don’t serve the bandits.” The police arrest the man who was the first to shout out this slogan. Someone says that 31st article of the Constitution allows people to get together for a peaceful demonstration.

The man says: “Don’t give the police a reason to arrest you because that’s what they are waiting for. They have been going to dormitories the whole day today asking people not to come here. They said they will let people in to movie theaters and art galleries for free. They want us to be 20 or 30 people here but I think there are about 500 of us here now.”

7. Kirov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PopI-Pi0O0o&feature=related

The voice in the video:

Are you disappointed?

-Yes

Are we sheep?

-No

We are people and we demand our rights. We demand that all Central Election Commission officials resign. We want new elections to State Duma ….Russiawithout Putin!”

Additional sources:

http://sobesednik.ru/politics/vybory-4-dekabrya-samye-gryaznye-v-istorii-rossii?nocache=1#comment-30043

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15577854,00.html

RUSSIA.— Gadzhimurat Kamalov, one of Russia’s leading investigative journalists has been shot dead in Russia’s North Caucasus region.

Kamalov was the  founder of Chernovik, a newspaper well known for its investigation into government corruption.

Authorities say Kamalov was shot eight times by an unidentified gunman as he was leaving his office at Chernovik in the capital of the republic of Dagestan.

Kamalov was pronuonced dead on the way to the hospital.

Alledgedly, two years ago, Kamalov and several other journalists received death threats in anonymous leaflets that circulated in Makhachkala.

Regional coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Nina Ognianova, said in a statement that Kamalov’s murder “is a massive loss for independent journalism in the North Caucasus.”

According to the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPT), Russian journalists who investigate corruption face serious risks, especially in the provinces where authorities are held less accountable.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has urged the authorities to ensure the safety of all journalists working in the region.

There have been at least 19 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since 2000, including the 2006 killing of Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, according to the CPJ.

“Dagestan and the Northern Caucasus are known to be among the most dangerous places in the world for journalists,”  OSCE media freedom chief, Dunja Mijatovic said.

“I am alarmed by this murder, which targets a newspaper known for its investigative reporting,” Dunja Mijatovic said in a statement.

In the last two decades, more than 70 journalists have been murdered in Russia.

The Committee to Protect Journalists lists Russia as the ninth worst country in the world for the treatment of journalists with Iraq, Somalia, and Mexico holding the top three positions.