July 18, 2019

The Constitution is not a sacred cow for the Russian police

topic:	Humans
located:	Russia
editor:	Igor Serebryany

The constitution cannot protect Russian citizens from being searched and interrogated by police on a whim, an official spokesperson in the Russian Guards – an umbrella agency for the law-enforcement structures – admitted earlier this week.

Police captain Natalia Novgorodtseva made her declaration following an incident in the regional capital of Vladimir, where a policeman has attempted to take a cellphone from local journalist Kirill Vasiliev. "Russian Guards do not need any formal excuses while searching or arresting a person if there is a ground to assume the person could be dangerous for public order," she said citing the law about Russian Guards. The same law, she added, allows the police to temporarily confiscate personal properties without the court's orders.

Novgorodtseva is formally correct, confirms Moscow lawyer Oxana Mikhalkina. "In a number of Russian laws, including the law about Russian Guards, there is a clause about 'exceptional circumstances'. The problem is, there's no explanation what those circumstances might be."

Such a gap in a judicial terminology makes Russian citizens helpless against law enforcement officers, who may use that clause to justify force. "If someone on the street snatches your cellphone, that qualifies as robbery. But if the same act is perpetrated by a police officer, they could say that the 'circumstances were exceptional', and that's it", Mikhalkina explains.

Complaining to a court is of no help, she adds, as the judges take the police's side in nearly 100 percent of the cases. The thing is, the law has been unconstitutional, lawyer Alexander Zheleznikov says. "The law gives the Guards powers, which place them outside of the public control and violates constitutional rights and freedoms. A similar status enjoyed by the Latin American 'death squads' or 'Securitate' of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu," he reminds us. "We have an armed structure, which can on its own discretion use force spitting on what the Constitution states. This is why the law about Russian Guards must be challenged in the Constitutional Court", the lawyer suggests.

That can actually be the only way to stop police violence, the human rights lawyer Violetta Volkova agrees. "The legal practice shows that it is quite senseless to look for justice in a district court. One shouldn't fight for justice in a particular case but try to fight the system as a whole," she says.

The Russian independent news agency Ridus said on Wednesday it was going to lodge an application to the Constitutional Court, demanding to review the law about Russian Guards. Over the weekend, Russian Guards brutally dispersed a meeting near the Moscow City Election Committee arresting 15 people. The protesters demanded the Election Committee to allow the independent candidates to run for the members of the City legislative assembly.

Image: Vladimir Varfolomeev / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)