Johnson's Russia List #7391 30 October 2003 [log in to unmask] A CDI Project www.cdi.org #3 gazeta.ru October 20, 2003 Falling birth rate linked to poor human rights By German Prokhorov Russian authorities have set up a dictatorship of power-wielding structures, lavishly flavoured with Orthodoxy, a leading Russian human rights activist said on Wednesday. Russian scientists are afraid to communicate with their foreign counterparts, whereas civilian service, introduced as an alternative to military duty, has been turned into a punishment worse than imprisonment. As a consequence, the birth rate in Russia is sinking. Leading Russian human rights groups including the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial, the Grazhdanskoye Sodeistviye Committee, the Human Rights Institute, the Union of Soldiers' Mothers' Committees, the For Human Rights movement, the Sakharov centre and the Glasnost Defence Foundation took part in a TWO-DAY ALL-RUSSIAN CONFERENCE OF CIVIC ORGANISATIONS, held in Moscow this week. The participants of the conference adopted a statement denouncing the arrest of YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. With the tycoon's arrest "a war has been declared on civic society", the statement reads. In the opinion of human rights groups, Russian authorities "have embarked on a path of undisguised repressions". "Khodorkovsky's arrest is not the proof of equality of all citizens before the law. This is the demonstration of all citizens' equality before arbitrariness," the document reads. The participants of the conference also condemned the unlawful actions of law enforcement agencies against defence counsel Sergei Brovchenko, who has been held in prison for six years now on fabricated charges, after "drugs were placed on him", and Mikhail Trepashkin, arrested without a court's sanction and held in custody ever since. The state, human rights advocates believe, openly backs arbitrariness of force-wielding agencies. The conference called for instituting public and parliamentary control over the Federal Security Service. "The FSB's arbitrariness of late against scientists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, journalists, environmentalists and representatives of other public organization shows that special services, unreformed and beyond control of the public and the legislature, have become extremely dangerous for society, citizens and the state." According to human rights activists, the FSB has never had any evidence of the guilt of Nikitin, Pasko, Sutyagin, Babkin, Danilov and all the cases against them were fabricated. Resulting from the security services' actions, "scientists and diplomats are afraid to communicate with their foreign counterparts," for they may be accused either of espionage or of divulging state secrets. That is why the conference demanded President Vladimir Putin "to oblige the FSB to act within the framework of the law, and to place that service under public and parliamentary control". On their part, state-owned media outlets "service the authorities, forgetting their function," and thereby violate Russian citizens' constitutional right to information, the conference said. Human rights groups voiced their intent to enter into a public agreement with the RSPP (the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs), the Delovaya Rossia (Business Russia) business support group and the Opora Rossii small businesses association, that Russian businesses would use only private media for advertising and thus "restrict the inflow of funds to the state-owned and state controlled media". Participants of the conference also voiced alarm in connection with the ever-increasing political role of the Russian Orthodox Church. In another statement adopted at the conference, human rights groups warned of the clericalization of Russia. In the opinion of human rights activists, Russian authorities are pursuing an "anti-constitutional religious policy", whereas the liberty of conscience enshrined in the Constitution is but a declaration. According to the participants of the conference, the authorities violate the rights of unprivileged religious minorities and atheists, having in fact made Orthodoxy the official religion in a secular state. To prove their case, the human rights activists recalled the defacement in January this year of an exhibition entitled ''Beware: Religion!'' by vandals, charges against whom were later dropped. The attack was reportedly backed by the Moscow patriarchy. The ''Beware: Religion!'' exhibition, organized by the Sakharov Museum in Moscow, dealt with issues such as religious fundamentalism and church-state relations, and the title reflected the need to be cautious and respectful in matters of faith. In a separate statement the conference denounced the authorities' attempts to introduce compulsory basic military training in Russian schools, and called for amending the controversial law on alternative civil service. . Furthermore, the participants of the conference accused Russia of its failure to observe international laws concerning the well being of children and families. According to statistics, in the past ten years the child population in Russia sank from 44 million to 32 million, of which over 700,000 are orphans, many with living parents deprived of their parental rights. Russia's human rights envoy Oleg Mironov, who did not take part in the conference, said on Wednesday, he agreed with many issues raised by human rights advocates. "I have many questions concerning Khodorkovsky's arrest, whether it was really necessary, for he had many times said he would not go anywhere from Russia. Even more so that he stands accused of economic crimes, he is no murderer, no terrorist," the Russian ombudsman told Gazeta.Ru in a telephone interview from Strasbourg, where he is taking part in the EU conference on indigenous peoples' rights. Despite the fact that most statements of human rights groups usually go unnoticed by the authorities, Mironov believes that their efforts will not prove futile. "Constant dropping wears away the stone, if we act jointly, the authorities will have to hearken to us," the ombudsman said. *******