News and views of the other Russia(n)s
O dostoevskimo of moving clouds!
O pushkinotes of swooning noon!
Night looks like Tyutchev,
Filling the measured with immensity.
—Velimir Khlebnikov, circa 1907-08
Thanks to Sergey Birjukow for the heads-up
As the free world mourns the passing of Prince Rogers Nelson, the Russian State Duma has appointed a former (?) police general, Tatyana Moskalkova, to the post of Russian federal human rights ombudsman.
Appearing in the State Duma, Moskalkova spoke of the need to raise the prestige of the Russian ombudsman to the world level.
“The topic of human rights has been actively used by western and American organizations as a weapon for blackmail, speculation, and threats, as a weapon for attempting to destabilize and pressure Russia,” TV Rain quotes her as saying.
The new ombudsmen added that “compatriots living abroad” are in need of her protection.
“Russian schools have been closed. The basic rights of Russian citizens living abroad—political, social, economic, and other rights—have been infringed. The human rights ombudsman should take up this problem.”
In 2012, as the trial of punk rock group Pussy Riot was taking place, Moskalkova proposed criminalizing “assaults on morality,” but the State Duma did not support her bill. In April 2015, she also proposed renaming the Interior Ministry the Cheka and giving the police the “appropriate powers for restoring order and preserving the country’s peace and security” in connection with the crisis.
According to the information on her website, she served 27 years in the Interior Ministry [i.e., the Russian police].
Source: Mediazona
Translated by the Friends of the People
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Last Saturday night, I read this story by Lika Frenkel on her Facebook page:
Near my house, just off Nevsky, two drunken Russian FC Zenit fans assaulted an Uzbek worker repairing the porch. They were giving him a ferocious beating, but when I cried for help, a a Russian dude popped up and yelled, “Young lady, those are our own Russian lads. They’re doing the right thing!” Thank God, another [Uzbek] worker came running and fought out his countryman’s attackers. I called the police. The Russians dashed off down Nevsky. Only a skateboarder reacted to my heart-rending cries of “Stop them! They beat up a man!” But it was too late: the fascists got away. The police went looking for them. I returned home and brought the Uzbeks clean towels. The young man’s head was badly injured. The other man turned out to be his brother. He said to me, “You think this is the first time? My brother is a doctor himself. He just arrived [in Russia]. I’m used to it. I would have given them what they had coming, only there are cameras everywhere here, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself.
Just like my fierce friend Lika Frenkel, Al Jazeera’s doco about former Perth zookeeper Leif Cocks and his Orangutan Project, below, will restore your faith not in humanity per se but in the fact that our planet still occasionally produces actual human beings, people capable of seeing and actively defending the humanity in Tajiks and Uzbeks (as in Lika’s case) and personhood in endangered and captive orangutans (as in Leif Cocks’s case).
If you are wondering how I make such absurd thematic leaps, it’s simple. After reading Lika’s late-night story, I got into bed and listened to this interview with Leif Cocks on ABC Radio National before drifting off to sleep.
Needless to say, a double dose of militant empathetic humanity like that made me sleep like a baby all through the night. All is not right with the world, to be sure, but there are heroes in our midst like Lika Frenkel and Leif Cocks. We need to identify them, celebrate them, and, most of all, emulate them.
Story translated by the Russian Reader. Image, above, courtesy of the Orangutan Project.
The Russian Reader 