Violence and human rights in Russia: how human rights defenders develop their tactics in the face of danger, 2005–2013

Abstract

Between 2005 and 2013, the Russian State Duma passed legislation restricting the activity of human rights defenders (HRDs). Although these measures complicate their work, this study contends that Russian HRDs creatively manage constraints. Through an interview study, this article contributes to the literature on human rights defence in dangerous circumstances by identifying the coping practices of two groups of HRDs: opposition youth activists in Moscow and human rights lawyers in the Northern Caucasus. Here, we argue that those activists at high risk often reinvent their tactics to counter curtailing legislation, experiment with the boundaries of police violence and manage the fear of fellow activists.

Keywords:

• Russia
• rule of law
• civil society
• non-governmental organisations
• Chechnya
• human rights defenders

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the editors Alice Nah, Karen Bennett, James Savage and Danna Ingleton for hosting the workshop on the protection of human rights defenders at the University of York (UK), for their support, and for their critical comments. We also wish to express our gratitude to the external reviewer (Lutz Oette) and the Associate Editor (Lars Waldorf) for their supportive comments on previous versions of this manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank Markku Lonkila, Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, and the members of the Helsinki Political Sociology seminar for their suggestions to improve the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding statement

This work was completed under the Finnish Distinguished Professorship (FiDiPro) project ‘Regimes, Institutions and Change: Politics and Governance in Russia in a Comparative Perspective’ at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. A part of this research was completed under the Finnish Graduate School for Social Sciences (SOVAKO), the Finnish Graduate School for Russian and East European Studies, and with the support of Academy of Finland mobility grants.

Notes on contributors

Freek van der Vet is with the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Laura Lyytikäinen is with the Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Finland.

Notes

1. Tanya Lokshina, ‘Russia's Civil Society Crackdown Continues’, 25 September 2012, http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/25/russias-civil-society-crackdown-continues/ (accessed 21 April 2015).

2. Human Rights Watch, ‘Russia: Government against Rights Groups’, 18 January 2015, http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/01/18/russia-government-against-rights-groups (accessed 20 April 2015).

3. Paul Gready and Brian Phillips, ‘An Unfinished Enterprise: Visions, Reflections, and an Invitation’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 1, no. 1 (2009): 1–13; Robin Redhead and Nick Turnbull, ‘Towards a Study of Human Rights Practitioners', Human Rights Review 12, no. 2 (2011): 173–89.

4. Human Rights Watch, An Uncivil Approach to Civil Society: Continuing State Curbs on Independent NGOs and Activists in Russia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009), http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/russia0609webwcover.pdf.

5. Debra Javeline and Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, ‘How We Assess Civil Society Developments: The Russia Example’, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo, no. 34 (2008): 1–6.

6. Amnesty International, Confronting the Circle of Injustice: Threats and Pressure Faced by Lawyers in the North Caucasus (London: Amnesty International, 2013), http://amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR46/003/2013/en/6af890a1-d79f-487d-bd39-2af4020a5835/eur460032013en.pdf; Vanessa Kogan, ‘Protecting Human Rights Defenders in the North Caucasus: Reflections on Developments from 2009 to the Present’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 5, no. 3 (2013): 500–11.

7. Vladimir Gel'man, ‘Subversive Institutions, Informal Governance, and Contemporary Russian Politics’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 45, no. 3–4 (2012): 295–303; Vladimir Gel'man, ‘Cracks in the Wall: Challenges to Electoral Authoritarianism in Russia’, Problems of Post-Communism 60, no. 2 (2013): 3–10.

8. Richard Sakwa, ‘The Dual State in Russia’, Post-Soviet Affairs 26, no. 3 (2010): 185–206; Alena Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

9. Alfred B. Jr. Evans, ‘Vladimir Putin's Design for Civil Society’, in Russian Civil Society: a Critical Assessment, ed. Alfred B. Jr. Evans, Laura Henry, and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom (London; New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2006), 147–158.

10. James Richter, ‘The Ministry of Civil Society? The Public Chambers in the Regions’, Problems of Post-Communism 56, no. 6 (2009): 7–20.

11. Robert Horvath, ‘Putin's “Preventive Counter-Revolution”: Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution’, Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 1 (2011): 1–25; Graeme B. Robertson, ‘Managing Society: Protest, Civil Society, and Regime in Putin's Russia’, Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (2009): 528–47.

12. Françoise Daucé, ‘The Duality of Coercion in Russia: Cracking down on “Foreign Agents”’, Demokratizatsiya 23, no. 1 (2015): 57–75.

13. F. Joseph Dresen, ‘Anti-Extremism Policies in Russia and How They Work in Practice’, Wilson Center, 2013, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/anti-extremism-policies-russia-and-how-they-work-practice.

14. Federal Law #18-FZ, On Introducing Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation, 10 January 2006.

15. Richter, ‘The Ministry of Civil Society?’, 10.

16. Thomas Carothers, ‘The Backlash against Democracy Promotion’, Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (2006): 55–68.

17. Thomas Ambrosio, ‘Insulating Russia from a Colour Revolution: How the Kremlin Resists Regional Democratic Trends’, Democratization 14, no. 2 (2007): 232–52; Mark R. Beissinger, ‘Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions’, Perspectives on Politics 5 (2007): 259–76; Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 107–13; Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘International Diffusion and Postcommunist Electoral Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39, no. 3 (2006): 283–304. These revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine took place in the early 2000s and were seen to have started democratic ‘transitions’ in those countries.

18. Human Rights Watch, Choking on Bureaucracy: State Curbs on Independent Civil Society Activism (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008), http://www.hrw.org/en/node/62400/section/1.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 57–8.

21. Gel'man, ‘Cracks in the Wall'.

22. Sean Roberts, Russia's Pressure Politics: The Kremlin's Uncompromising Approach to Opponents Threatens Political Stability (Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2012), 6, http://www.fiia.fi/en/publication/301/russia_s_pressure_politics/.

23. Human Rights Watch, Laws of Attrition: Crackdown on Russia's Civil Society after Putin's Return to the Presidency (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2013), http://www.hrw.org/node/115059.

24. Ibid.

25. Niklaus von Twinckel, ‘NGOs Face ‘Foreign Agent’ Harassment’, The Moscow Times, 21 November 2012, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/ngos-face-foreign-agent-harassment/471796.html.

26. Human Rights Watch, Choking on Bureaucracy; Human Rights Watch, An Uncivil Approach to Civil Society; Human Rights Watch, ‘Russia: Reject Restrictions on Peaceful Assembly’, 8 June 2012, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/08/russia-reject-restrictions-peaceful-assembly.

27. Roberts, Russia's Pressure Politics, 7. Roberts finds, however, that targeted arrests were made. For instance, three members of the punk band Pussy Riot were arrested after they had staged a ‘punk prayer’ on 21 February 2012 in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

28. Javeline and Lindemann-Komarova, ‘How We Assess Civil Society Developments’, 3.

29. Richter, ‘The Ministry of Civil Society?’, 11.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., 10.

32. Meri Kulmala, ‘Russian State and Civil Society in Interaction: An Ethnographic Approach’, Laboratorium 3, no. 1 (2011): 51–83.

33. Linda J. Cook and Elena Vinogradova, ‘NGOs and Social Policy-Making in Russia's Regions’, Problems of Post-Communism 53, no. 5 (2006): 28–41; Suvi Salmenniemi, Democratization and Gender in Contemporary Russia (New York: Routledge, 2008).

34. Daucé, ‘The Duality of Coercion in Russia'.

35. Ibid.

36. Human Rights Watch, Choking on Bureaucracy, 4.

37. Human Rights Watch, Laws of Attrition.

38. Ibid.

39. Masha Gessen, ‘Putin Shows His Iron-Fisted Hand’, Newsweek, 24 February 2014, http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/02/28/putin-shows-iron-fisted-hand.html (accessed 19 April 2015).

40. Kathy Lally, ‘Trial of Bolotnaya 12 Seen as a Warning against Challenging the Kremlin’, The Washington Post, 2 November 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/trial-of-bolotnaya-12-seen-as-a-warning-against-challenging-the-kremlin/2013/10/29/5e1dec92-381f-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html (accessed 20 April 2015).

41. The Moscow Times, ‘Judge Extends Bolotnaya Case Detentions Until February’, The Moscow Times, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/judge-extends-bolotnaya-case-detentions-until-february/489946.html (accessed 22 November 2013).

42. Interfax, ‘ECHR Requests Info from Russia on Bolotnaya Square Case, Expects Answer by Jan 17 – Lawyer’, Russia beyond the Headlines, http://rbth.co.uk/news/2013/11/11/echr_requests_info_from_russia_on_bolotnaya_square_case_expects_answer_b_31640.html (accessed 22 November 2013).

43. Todd Landman, ‘Holding the Line: Human Rights Defenders in the Age of Terror’, The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 8, no. 2 (2006): 123–47.

44. Ibid., 141.

45. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978).

46. Mara Loveman, ‘High-Risk Collective Action: Defending Human Rights in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina’, American Journal of Sociology 104, no. 2 (1998): 477–525; Doug McAdam, ‘Recruitment to High Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer’, the American Journal of Sociology 92, no. 1 (1986): 64–90.

47. Rosanne Rutten, ‘High-Cost Activism and the Worker Household: Interests, Commitment, and the Costs of Revolutionary Activism in a Philippine Plantation Region’, Theory and Society 29, no. 2 (2000): 215–52.

48. McAdam, ‘Recruitment to High Risk Activism’, 67.

49. Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Loveman, ‘High-Risk Collective Action’, 481.

50. Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

51. James C. Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).

52. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1959).

53. Jeff Goodwin and Steven Pfaff, ‘Emotion Work in High-Risk Social Movements: Managing Fear in the U.S. and East German Civil Rights Movements’, in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 282–302.

54. Michael Lane Bruner, ‘Carnivalesque Protest and the Humorless State’, Text and Performance Quarterly 25, no. 2 (2005): 136–55.

55. Ron Dudai, ‘Introduction – Rights Choices: Dilemmas of Human Rights Practice’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 3 (2014): 389–98.

56. Laura Lyytikäinen, Performing Political Opposition in Russia : The Case of the Youth Movement Oborona (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2014), https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/45024. Lyytikäinen collected the data among liberal youth movements in Moscow from 2009 to 2012. The data consist of 39 interviews, participant observations in five Strategy-31 demonstrations and in various other meetings, as well as activists’ writings in online blogs and social media.

57. Graeme B. Robertson, ‘Russian Protesters: Not Optimistic, But Here to Stay’, Russian Analytical Digest, no. 115 (2012): 2–4; Denis Volkov, ‘Protestnoe Dvizhenie v Rossii v Kontse 2011-2012 Gg.’, Scribd, 2012, http://www.scribd.com/doc/108557232/Протестное-движение-в-России-в-конце-2011-2012-гг.

58. Data of this case were collected between 2009 and 2012. Van der Vet conducted 40 interviews with HRDs working for NGOs in Russia, the United Kingdom, Finland and the Netherlands. These associations primarily work on litigation projects before the ECtHR.

59. Amnesty International, Confronting the Circle of Injustice; Kogan, ‘Protecting Human Rights Defenders in the North Caucasus’.

60. Emma Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya: Russia and the Tragedy of Civilians in War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). Although the end of the conflict is disputed, the year 2009 marks the end of the anti-terrorist campaign in Chechnya with the withdrawal of most of the Russian federal military forces.

61. Human Rights Watch, ‘Who Will Tell Me What Happened to My Son?’: Russia's Implementation of European Court of Human Rights Judgments on Chechnya’ (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009), http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/russia0909web_0.pdf.

62. Aleksander Cherkasov and Dmitry Grushkin, ‘The Chechen Wars and the Struggle for Human Rights’, in Chechnya: From Past to Future, ed. Richard Sakwa (London: Anthem Press, 2005).

63. SRJI: http://www.srji.org/en/, EHRAC-Memorial: http://ehracmos.memo.ru/.

64. Interview, activist 1, St Petersburg, May 2011.

65. Interview, activist 2, Moscow, April 2011.

66. Interview, activist 3, Moscow, March 2011.

67. Interview, activist 4, Moscow, October 2009.

68. Interview, activist 4, Moscow, October 2009.

69. Interview, activist 5, Moscow, May 2010.

70. Facebook account, Anonymous, September 2010.

71. Russia Today, ‘Court Clears Rights Activist Orlov of Slandering Chechen Leader Kadyrov’, 14 June 2011, http://rt.com/politics/clears-activist-libeling-chechen/ (accessed 20 April 2015).

72. Françoise Daucé, Report: Russian Federation: Kadyrov vs. Orlov: The Defence of Human Rights on Trial (The Observatory of the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, 2012), http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/obsrapportru28022012eng.pdf.

73. Interview, HRD, Nizhny Novgorod, May 2011.

74. The Nizhny Novgorod Oblast’, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Mari El Republic, the Chechen Republic and Orenburg Oblast’.

75. Interview, HRD, Nizhny Novgorod, May 2011.

76. Interview, HRD, Helsinki, March 2010.

77. Seth Mydans, ‘Monitoring Rights in Chechen Region, a Month at a Time’, The New York Times, 24 September 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/world/europe/in-chechnya-human-rights-workers-from-afar-put-in-tours-of-duty.html (accessed 4 April 2015).

78. Ibid.

79. Interview, Lawyer, Nizhny Novgorod, May 2011.

80. Frontline Defenders, ‘Russia: Members of Joint Mobile Group in Chechnya Subjected to Verbal Abuse and False Accusations by Chechen President and Local Authorities’, Frontline Defenders, 7 June 2012, http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/18593.

81. Frontline Defenders, ‘2011 Joint Mobile Group Winner of the Seventh Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk’, 2011, http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/16876.

82. Human Rights Watch, ‘Russia: Stop Efforts to Ban Human Rights Book: Local Authorities Go After Activist's Account of Chechnya Conflict’, 3 July 2013, http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/12/03/russia-stop-efforts-ban-human-rights-book (accessed 20 April 2015).

83. Stanislav Dmitrijevski, Oksana Chelysheva and Bogdan Gvarely, Mezhdunarodny Tribunal Dlya Chechni (Chast 1 & 2) (International Tribunal for Chechnya (Part 1 & 2)) (Nizhny Novgorod: Obshchestvo Rossisko-Chechenskoi Druzhby, 2009).

84. Interview, HRD, Nizhny Novgorod, May 2011.

85. Human Rights Watch, ‘Russia'.

86. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 2nd edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

87. Interview, HRD, Nizhny Novgorod, May 2011.

88. BBC, ‘Chechnya Human Rights Office Set on Fire’, BBC News, 14 December 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30470085.

89. Interview, activist 6, Moscow, October 2010.

90. Interview, activist 4, Moscow, October 2009.

91. Goodwin and Pfaff, ‘Emotion Work in High-Risk Social Movements', 285.

92. Interview, activist 7, Moscow, October 2009.

93. Interview, activist 2, Moscow, April 2010.

94. Interview, activist 8, Moscow, October 2009.

95. Majken Jul Sorensen, ‘Humor as a Serious Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression’, Peace & Change 33, no. 2 (2008): 167–90.

96. Lyytikäinen, Performing Political Opposition in Russia; Bruner, ‘Carnivalesque Protest and the Humorless State'.

97. Interview, activist 9, May 2009.

98. Gene Sharp, The Role of Power in Nonviolent Struggle (East Boston: Albert Einstein Institution, 1994), 13, http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationse4f0.html.

99. Freek van der Vet, ‘Seeking Life, Finding Justice: Russian NGO Litigation and Chechen Disappearances before the European Court of Human Rights’, Human Rights Review 13, no. 3 (2012): 303–25; Freek van der Vet, ‘Holding on to Legalism: The Politics of Russian Litigation on Torture and Discrimination before the European Court of Human Rights’, Social & Legal Studies 23, no. 3 (2014): 361–81.

100. Memorial reports that between 3000 and 5000 people have disappeared during the Chechen conflicts after their alleged unlawful detention by state agents. Memorial, ‘Chechnya, 2004 God. Pokhishcheniia I Izcheznoveniia Liudei’, 2005, http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/caucas1/msg/2005/02/m31404.htm.

101. Freek van der Vet, ‘Transitional Justice in Chechnya: NGO Political Advocacy for Implementing Chechen Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights’, Review of Central and East European Law 38, no. 3–4 (2013): 363–88.

102. Başak Çalı, ‘The Logics of Supranational Human Rights Litigation, Official Acknowledgment, and Human Rights Reform: The Southeast Turkey Cases before the European Court of Human Rights, 1996–2006’, Law & Social Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2010): 311–37; Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, ‘Advocacy beyond Litigation: Examining Russian NGO Efforts on Implementation of European Court of Human Rights Judgments’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 45, no. 3–4 (2012): 255–68.

103. Van der Vet, ‘Seeking Life, Finding Justice’, 313; Roemer Lemaître, ‘Can the European Court of Human Rights Provide Justice for Victims of Russian Human Rights Abuses in Chechnya?’, in Russia and the Council of Europe: 10 Years After, ed. Katlijn Malfliet and Stephan Parmentier (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 165–85.

104. SRJI, Russian Justice Initiative Annual Report 2002 (Moscow, SRJI: 2003), 9, http://www.srji.org/en/about/annual/.

105. http://www.srji.org/en/legal/security/ (accessed 1 March 2013).

106. Telephone interview, Lawyer, Ingushetia, May 2011.

107. Van der Vet, ‘Seeking Life, Finding Justice'.

108. Loveday Hodson, NGOs and the Struggle for Human Rights in Europe (Oxford; Portland: Hart Publishing, 2011); Van der Vet, ‘Seeking Life, Finding Justice'.

109. Van der Vet, ‘Seeking Life, Finding Justice'.

110. Alice M. Nah et al., ‘A Research Agenda for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 5, no. 3 (2013): 401–20.

111. Sean Chabot, ‘Framing, Transnational Diffusion, and African-American Intellectuals in the Land of Gandhi’, in International Review of Social History Supplements (No. 12), Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements: Framing Protest in Asia, Africa, and Latin-America, ed. Rosanne Rutten and Michiel Baud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 19–40; Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism.

112. Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation (Boston, MA: Albert Einstein Institution, 2003).

113. See also Randall Collins, ‘The Micro-Sociology of Violence’, The British Journal of Sociology 60, no. 3 (2009): 566–76.

114. Ellen Barry, ‘Russian Dissident's Passion Endures Despite Tests’, The New York Times, 12 January 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/world/europe/12dissident.html (accessed 23 April 2015).

115. Interview, activist 10, Moscow, April 2010.

116. Taras Kuzio ‘Civil Society, Youth and Societal Mobilization in Democratic Revolutions’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39, no. 3 (2006): 365–86.

117. Ibid.

118. See Anna Rotkirch, The Man Question : Loves and Lives in Late 20th-Century Russia (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Social Policy, 2000); Suvi Salmenniemi, ‘Civic Activity–Feminine Activity? Gender, Civil Society and Citizenship in Post-Soviet Russia’, Sociology 39, no. 4 (2005): 735–53; Laura Lyytikäinen, ‘Gendered and Classed Activist Identity in the Russian Oppositional Youth Movement', The Sociological Review 61, no. 3 (2013): 499–524.

119. Interview, activist 4, Moscow, October 2009.

120. Human Rights Watch, Choking on Bureaucracy.

121. Human Rights Watch, ‘Russia'.

122. Ibid.

123. Interview, Lawyer, Moscow, December 2010.

124. Interview, Lawyer, Moscow, June 2012.

125. Claire Bigg, ‘NGO's Legal Woes Threaten Pursuit of Justice for Chechens’, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, 10 April 2012, http://www.rferl.org/content/russian_justice_initiative_struck_off_chechen _atrocities/24543341.html (accessed 24 April 2015).

126. Interview, Lawyer, Moscow, June 2012.

127. Ibid.

128. Ibid.

129. Presentation, Human Rights Council of St Petersburg, December 2012.

130. HRRC, Inostrannye Agenty’: Mificheskie Vragi I Real'nye Poteri Rossiiskogo Obshchestva (St Petersburg: Human Rights Resource Center, 2015), http://www.hrrcenter.ru/public/detail.php?ID=1763.

131. Memorial, ‘My Ne Agenty!’, Pravozashchita, 2013, http://www.memo.ru/d/145816.html.

132. Daucé, ‘The Duality of Coercion in Russia'.

133. Dudai, ‘Introduction – Rights Choices'.

134. Daucé, ‘The Duality of Coercion in Russia'.