Tatarstan. The Public Monitoring Commission may become controlled by the republic’s Ministry of Internal Affairs
The Kazan Human Rights Centre expresses concern over the formation of the new composition of the Public Monitoring Commission (ONK) for monitoring the assurance of human rights in places of compulsory detention.
According to human rights defenders, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan is actively promoting its supporters into the ONK, representing organisations that cooperate closely with the police department, up to and including the Ministry of Internal Affairs Veterans’ Council. Moreover, one of the nominees works directly for the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a press secretary for the criminal police.
As human rights defenders report to *Novaya Gazeta*, all these candidates have received recommendations from the Public Chamber of Tatarstan. At the same time, the Chamber refused to recommend the current chairman of the Public Monitoring Commission, Igor Sholokhov (head of the Kazan Human Rights Centre), its incumbent members Lidiya Chuprina, Nail Kuramshin, and Nikolay Arkhipov, as well as Vladimir Rubashny and German Aletkin, who were nominated by the Interregional Association of Human Rights Organisations “AGORA”. Rubashny is a retired lieutenant colonel of the internal service who worked for over fifteen years in the penal system, and Aletkin is the director of the Centre for Peacemaking and Human Rights Actions.
The powers of the commission’s current composition expire on 10 December. During two years of work, the current ONK composition visited all correctional colonies and pre-trial detention centres of the Federal Penitentiary Service (UFSIN) and 34 police special institutions (temporary detention facilities, special holding facilities, and cells for those administratively detained).
Social activists note: while there were no delays in visiting UFSIN institutions, the problems with the Ministry of Internal Affairs are of a systemic nature. For instance, in August–September 2009, police officers under spurious pretexts did not admit the commission to the temporary detention facility of the Tatarstan Ministry of Internal Affairs, the special holding facility of the Kazan Internal Affairs Directorate, and the cells for administratively detained persons of the Vakhitovsky District Internal Affairs Directorate of Kazan. And this is despite the fact that the ONK has the right to unhindered access to such institutions. In the summer of this year, the social activists were not allowed into places of compulsory detention in the city of Almetyevsk. And in October, in the city of Yelabuga, the head of the Internal Affairs Department, Police Colonel Sergey Ryazanov, demanded that commission members provide an extract from the federal law confirming their right to public control, stating that he himself had no time to look for the law in question.
“A reluctance on the part of the department to engage in a constructive dialogue with human rights defenders, who regularly identify violations in special institutions, report them to the mass media, and initiate prosecutorial inspections, is evident,” says ONK chairman and head of the Kazan Human Rights Centre Igor Sholokhov. “The principled position of the Public Monitoring Commission members is apparently not to the liking of the Ministry of Internal Affairs leadership, which is accustomed to obedient representatives of the public. And the impression is created that the Public Chamber of Tatarstan is deliberately sidelining certain human rights defenders and giving the green light to candidates favoured by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”
The new composition of the Public Monitoring Commission of Tatarstan will be named by the Public Chamber of Russia on 10 November, on Police Day. Human rights defenders jokingly suggest that for the Tatarstan Ministry of Internal Affairs, this day could become doubly festive.
our own correspondent