Postcards from Russia: No Explanation Necessary

Filed under: Russia

If you are a driver, you are probably familiar with the situation when a traffic officer stops you and offers to settle the issue by paying the official fine (that is, according to the law), or by paying a somewhat lower amount, which is unofficial -- meaning, of course, that it ends up in the officer's pocket. Many drivers agree to the unofficial fine not so much to save money but to save time. To resolve an ordinary traffic violation officially, a driver has to spend at the very least half a workday at the traffic police station.

--Ivan Novitsky, a deputy in the Moscow City Duma, in the Moscow Times, Thursday August 30th

Official statistics show the number of children [in Russia] has fallen from 36 million to 29 million over the past eight years [i.e., the Putin administration], part of an overall fall resulting from low birth rates, an antiquated public health care system, poverty, alcoholism and crime. Child's Right, a Moscow-based advocacy group, says that every year about 2,000 of the country's 29 million children aged up to 17 are killed by their parents or other relatives -- a rate of about 6.9 per 100,000. By rough comparison, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that in 2005, the overall homicide rate for children 13 and under -- regardless of the perpetrator -- was 1.4 per 100,000. The overall U.S. rate for children aged 14 to 17 was 4.8 per 100,000.

-- The Associated Press, August 30th

On August 29, 2007 police raided the office of the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation to Promote Tolerance, the successor to the Russian Chechen Friendship Society, with an order to seize the organization's computers to investigate alleged "computer related crimes." The police also said that they were carrying out an investigation into the organization's finances. The raid has resulted in further disruption of the legitimate activities of a non-violent independent human rights organization that has now been the target of sustained repression for over two years. In that time, the organization's leaders have received threats; RCFS director Stanislav Dmitrievsky has been prosecuted and convicted under laws supposedly intended to curb racist violence but increasingly used by the authorities to penalize peaceful dissent, including the legitimate work of human rights defenders; the organization has been ordered to close, forcing it to re-register under a new name, and to create a base of operations outside of Russia; and on August 17, 2007, a court in Nizhny Novgorod imposed further restrictions on the activities of Stanislav Dmitrievsky. Human Rights First regards all of these measures as unwarranted official interference in the legitimate activities of a human rights organization.

-- Human Rights First, August 30th

Private Sergei Sinkonen was beaten by two drunken superiors, then thrown into a kennel with guard dogs, officials say. He was found in a coma the next day and underwent an emergency operation, but died of his head wounds. Bullying incidents are frequent in the Russian armed forces, sometimes resulting in the deaths of soldiers, either by killing or by suicide.

-- The BBC, August 28th

A Chilean graduate student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis has been detained in Russia for more than two months after customs officials found several Soviet medals and currency she bought from a street vendor. Roxana Contreras, 29, faces up to seven years in prison, her supporters say. She "acquired USSR state honors illegally" and attempted to export them, according to Russian court documents. Supporters in the United States say the physics student was visiting friends in the southern city of Voronezh and probably did not realize she was doing anything wrong when she bought the six military medals, currency and coins for $66 and tried to bring them on the plane home with her.

--The International Herald Tribune, August 20th

A Moscow court on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for billionaire Mikhail Gutseriyev, amid speculation that the former Russneft president had fled the country to avoid what he last month called a politically motivated campaign against him. Gutseriyev explained the reasons behind his departure in a letter published in Russneft's internal magazine in late July. "I was invited to leave the oil business 'on good terms.' I refused. Then, to make me more compliant, the company was subjected to unprecedented hounding," Gutseriyev wrote. "I am handing control of the holding to a new owner whose appearance, I am sure, will ensure that all Russneft's problems will be resolved in time," he wrote. The letter appeared to provide insight into the workings of a sector coming under increasing state control, with a boldness unseen since former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky accused the Kremlin of orchestrating his arrest to wrest the company from him.

--The Moscow Times, August 30th

Russian prosecutors have announced a breakthrough in the hunt for the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading journalist and prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, who was murdered last year. Conveniently for the Kremlin, the finger of suspicion points directly at President Vladimir Putin's main enemy, the exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky. Experts and former colleagues of the assassinated journalist expressed satisfaction that arrests had been made, but scepticism at Mr Chaika's conclusions. "It's good that there has been progress in the case," said Igor Yakovenko, secretary-general of the Russian Union of Journalists. "If we believe everything that Chaika says then this is the end of the sad tradition of the murders of journalists in Russia going unsolved." But, he said, there were several doubts about the allegations. "It's worrying that, even before the investigation has been officially completed, they are pointing the finger at people abroad," he said. Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, the opposition newspaper where Politkovskaya published her hard-hitting reports on Russian politics and the conflict in Chechnya, expressed similar doubts. "We have known about this for a while. We've worked together with their investigation and we trust their professionalism," said Mr Muratov. "But we are absolutely amazed that they have openly stated they know who ordered the crime before the investigation has even been completed."

-- The Independent, August 29th