President Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, Vladimir Petrovich [Lukin]. Happy holiday!
Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin: A happy holiday to you too. As a guest, I’d like to say a few words straight away.
Vladimir Putin: Certainly. I’m listening.
Vladimir Lukin: First of all, today is a special day. It is International Human Rights Day. This is a date that has been marked following the United Nations’ Organisation’s decisions in 1950, that is, decisions taken exactly two years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, countries all around the entire world observe this date as a day when we pay particular attention to people and their rights in all corners of the globe. In this respect, we are a part of this system through our own free will, as the Soviet Union signed the Universal Declaration and all the subsequent documents, and so we are a part of this system that in turn is part of the overall system of international law, and which includes the Universal Declaration and the observance of this date.
It seems fitting then on this day to talk about the state of affairs in human rights in our country. We can look at the situation from two perspectives. The first is a historical perspective. More than 50 years have passed since that time and over this period there has been much change in our country, and much change for the better.
Then there is the perspective of the most recent developments – sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof – as the Holy Scriptures say, and looking at things from this perspective, I would say the situation is quite contradictory.
This is the first full year of my work as Russian human rights ombudsman, on your initiative, and I soon hope to be able to present you with an annual report that will set out the positive and negative moments in the situation.
Among the positive moments I would name several important changes that have taken place this year. This concerns in particular improvements to the legislation and practice in migration affairs. In this respect, I think that the new amendments that were introduced on your initiative are very timely and are the right steps to take, although I would add that this is an area where ongoing development is needed.
In this regard I wanted to say that I have brought with me a proposal that I will pass on to you soon. The proposal is to finally close the chapter of division in our country, the Civil War period and so on, not just by taking a symbolic step as was done, and rightly so, just recently, but by officially repealing the 1921 Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Soviet of People’s Commissars that automatically deprived from two million to three million people of their Russian citizenship. I think this would be a very timely step.
Some positive changes have been made, or at least work is underway, I would say, in the prison and remand custody system. It is part of my work to visit the prisons and I have been able to speak with prisoners without prison officials being present. Many of them say that the situation is far from idyllic, of course, but then prisons are not supposed to be idyllic, but they say that things are becoming more civilised. This is good to see.
Vladimir Putin: The situation in the prison system still needs close monitoring. There is still a lot of work to be done there.
Vladimir Lukin: There is still a great deal of work to be done. There are still cases of protests. Some of them are justified and some not. But what I am saying is that there is a visible shift in the right direction.
There are other issues that are still of serious concern. Above all, this concerns the situation with children, orphan children – there are a lot of them – and children from problem families. We have yet to see real action taken in this area. This is an area where serious change needs to take place and we will, of course, be beating our drum about the need for action here.
There are also serious problems in the situation for disabled people. There are of course, attempts being made to improve things here, but we need to change the environment, change attitudes towards the disabled. Unfortunately, we are lagging a long way behind a whole number of other countries in this respect and the situation in general here is cause for very serious concern.
Another issue I wanted to mention, one that affects all the different areas, is that we are getting increasingly frequent complaints that the bureaucracy, the state machinery, shows indifference to citizens’ requests and to everything that concerns their practical interests. There are cases of the bureaucracy putting pressure on society or brushing people aside with merely formal replies. Regarding legislation, there is one problem we are all well aware of, which is that, unfortunately, instead of holding serious discussions on this or that complex issue, attempts are made to hastily push through laws, with the public being informed almost as an afterthought. This leads to problems arising that have serious consequences.
Of course, I am also referring in this respect to the draft law on registration [of NGOs] which is at the centre of public attention at the moment. I agree with your conclusions on the draft law, but the fact remains that if we had been able to first discuss this draft law, we might have been able to avoid this whole situation and avoid the damage that has undoubtedly been done to the country and its leadership. We should have learned the lessons from what happened over the initial draft of the law on citizenship. We need not to direct from above, as the state organisation tends to do at times, but to first sit down and talk.
I think that the quality of legislation is far more important than how quickly it gets passed, especially when measured in mere days or weeks. I hope that you will be able to set things going in the right direction here. This has been done for the draft law on registration and it perhaps is a signal that should be sent to the law-making process in general.
I want to stop here and just add that if I came and said that Russia has no human rights problems of any kind, this would be our last meeting because the next thing I would do would be to hand in my resignation. Unfortunately or fortunately, this is not the case.
Vladimir Putin: Let’s discuss the problems you have raised in more detail.