At the end of last year, after analyzing the content of a three-hour meeting between Putin and Kremlin-licensed human rights activists from the Council for Human Rights under the President of Russia (CHR), we confidently concluded that there was no basis for the optimism expressed by many about its outcome.
And now the first confirmation of our prediction is that the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) have come out against the introduction of a separate article in the Russian Criminal Code for the crime of «torture» committed by public officials.
According to the security forces, this article is superfluous, since there are already relevant articles in the Criminal Code — paragraph «d» of Part 2 of Article 117 (torture) and paragraph «a» of Part 3 of Article 286 (exceeding official powers with the use of force).
The rhetorical question is: why worry if there are already such articles? What difference does it make to the perpetrators?
And the difference was obvious — the UN Committee against Torture repeatedly recommended to the Russian authorities to introduce an article explicitly criminalizing torture and providing tools for a more effective fight against it. The CHR also insisted on this. But the security forces were against it.
Another proposal of human rights activists, which was strongly rejected by the FSB, is the creation of a unified database of detainees, which would allow their relatives, lawyers and human rights defenders to monitor their whereabouts and movement (transportation) in real time.
According to FSB officials, access to such information could pose a threat to national security, especially in the case of individuals convicted of treason and espionage.
In essence, what Putin promised human rights defenders at the CHR meeting is now happening. After all, he responded to their suggestions, which he did not immediately dismiss aggressively, by saying: «we have to look into it», «we will look into it».
So now they are «investigating». It was clear from the beginning who was going to do it.